Episoder
-
What is the impact of ambiguity in the workplace?
Professors Laura and Jan Doering from University of Toronto help answer this question from their recently published research, co-authored with Professor András Tilcsik.
Laura Doering is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and is cross-appointed in the Department of Sociology. Jan Doering is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto.
As an economic sociologist, Laura examines how interactions and social psychological processes shape outcomes for households, organizations, and markets. Jan’s research is situated in two areas: social control and conflict in urban neighbourhoods and individual experiences and responses in relation to discrimination.
We speak to Laura and Jan about ambiguous incidents in the workplace, uncertainty, and blind spots. We learn about their unique collaboration: in research, marriage, and life.
-
How do you future proof yourself in a world of technology that is rapidly changing?
Iliana Oris Valiente is an accomplished corporate executive, innovation and emerging tech pioneer, startup investor, respected board member, published author, and sought-after global public speaker. With a clear vision and unwavering determination, she is a thought leader on a mission to build a future humans want to live in.
Iliana is currently the Managing Director and Innovation Lead at Accenture Canada. Iliana is widely recognized for her trailblazing contributions to the blockchain industry, having advised corporations, government leaders, regulators, and startups as a translator between the web2 and web3 worlds.
Her expertise and perspective have expanded, now encompassing overall technology and societal trends, particularly emphasizing the future of work, life, and human-centred approaches.
As a published author and frequent speaker at global conferences, Iliana has been featured in various media outlets, including television, radio, and print. Additionally, she’s an active board member at Sunnybrook Hospital, CPA Ontario, and DIACC and mentors startups through incubators such as CDL.
Through Iliana's unique life experiences and contributions, she has developed an ability to see the bigger picture and drive toward meaningful outcomes.
We talked to Iliana about her digital twin, the future of work and what it's like to be a sequoia tree or an air plant. -
Manglende episoder?
-
What opportunities lie on the other side of taking risks and embracing changes in your career?
Ava Yaskiel is a Senior Strategic Advisor to the public and private sectors focusing on business planning, strategy and structure. She was the G7/G20 Deputy Minister of Finance & Associate Deputy Minister of Finance for Canada until 2021.
Ava has held various roles over her 30-year career as a lawyer at Norton Rose & Fulbright where she was Partner, Global Head of Corporate, M&A and Securities. Ava also spent six years at the Ontario Securities Commission holding a variety of positions in Senior Legal Counsel (Acting Director) of the Office of the General Counsel, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, related party transactions and related policy matters.
We talk about Ava’s one-of-a-kind career journey, her experience working on boards, the importance of having a vision for your life, and her time spent representing Canada as Deputy Minister of Finance. -
How do you revitalize a company as it bounces back from a low point?
Yousry Bissada is President and Chief Executive Officer of Home Capital Group. Yousry has more than 30 years of financial services experience focused on the mortgage industry. He is a CPA, GCA and Accredited Mortgage Professional.
Prior to joining Home Capital, Yousry served as President and CEO of Kanetix Ltd., an insurance and financial products digital platform. He has held many senior executive roles across the financial services and fintech industry in Canada. He was named CFO of FirstLine Trust Company in 1989, which was later acquired by CIBC. In 1999, he was named SVP of Real Estate Secured Lending Products at TD Canada Trust, overseeing one of Canada's largest mortgage businesses.
We talk to Yousry about how to lead through a crisis, how to live your company values, and the importance of teamwork. -
This episode features two thought leaders – Professors Maja Djikic & Tiziana Casciaro.
Maja is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Self-Development Laboratory at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Tiziana is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and the Marcel Desautels Chair in Integrative Thinking at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
This conversation is a blend of the thought leadership between Maja and Tiziana. We discuss Maja’s recently published book “The Possible Self: A Leader’s Guide to Personal Development” and integrate this with elements of “Power, for All: How it Really Works and Why It Is Everyone’s Business”, a book Tiziana co-authored in 2021.
This insightful discussion focuses on self development, its impact on relationships, the balance of power, and how interconnected each of these elements are in your work, and your life. -
How do you overcome the feeling of "being stuck" to become your possible self?
Maja Djikic is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Self-Development Laboratory at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
She is a psychologist specializing in the field of personality development. Her work focuses on how self changes, and means of developing a congruent and flexible self. Her work also examines the impact of self-change on relationships.
She has published more than 30 articles and book chapters in the area of personality development in journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Research in Personality, Creativity Research Journal, New Ideas in Psychology, etc. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Scientific American Mind, and many other media outlets.
Maja’s first book “The Possible Self: A Leader’s Guide to Personal Development” was released on March 5, 2024.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/H_A_hNTuDOU?si=3Ge7moZIYknRp-2c -
How do you transform doubt into focus and determination?
Janet speaks to us about her career journey from Procter and Gamble to Staircase Ventures, being a competitive long distance runner, and maintaining focus and determination when people say “it cannot be done!”
Janet Bannister is the Founder and Managing Partner of Staircase Ventures. In 2004, Janet launched Kijiji.ca and grew it to become one of the most visited websites in Canada.
Before Kijii, Janet spent four years at eBay in Silicon Valley where she helped transform eBay from a Collectibles to a mainstream marketplace. She started her career as a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble and then joined McKinsey & Co. where she was an Engagement Manager. She also founded and built a successful consulting business and was CEO at a venture-backed start-up prior to joining Real Ventures.
Janet has won numerous awards and recognition including Venture Capital Journal’s 2021 “Women of Influence in Private Markets”, Pitchbooks’ 2021 “Female Founders & Investors to Know”, and American Bankers’ 2019 “Most Influential Women in Payments”. -
How can AI enable transformation in addressing population and public health challenges?
This video episode brings back our recurring segment Going Viral with Dr. Rosella because the list of things we bring to work sometimes includes viruses(!) The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how and where we work, and made us all aware of the importance of public health. So, we invite epidemiologist Laura Rosella to chat about the state of global public health. In this episode, we discuss the current state of COVID-19, Dr. Rosella's new program, AI for Public Health, and robot doctors.
Professor Laura Rosella is a Canadian epidemiologist and Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in the University of Toronto, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Analytics. Laura is the Principal Investigator and Scientific Director of the Population Health Analytics Lab. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars and the inaugural Stephen Family Research Chair in Community Health at the Institute for Better Health, Trillium Health Partners. Laura has authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of epidemiology, public health and health services research. Her work has been featured in major news outlets such as Forbes, Newsweek, Reuters, CBC, CTV, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail.
Laura has an incredible way of simplifying complex public health situations. Please enjoy Going Viral with Dr. Rosella – Season Six edition! -
Is our future with generative AI terrifying, exciting, or fascinating?
In this episode, we talk about the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, the opportunities to implement AI in healthcare delivery, and privacy in a world enabled by generative AI.
Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is the Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.
Along with Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans, Avi is the author of the bestselling books Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence and Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence.
In this episode, we talk about the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, the opportunities to implement AI in healthcare delivery, and privacy in a world enabled by generative AI. -
This is our annual Year in Review with Professor Janice Stein where she helps us understand key global events and news stories of 2023 – from global unrest to climate change, from technological advances in artificial intelligence to the Toronto Blue Jays.Janice is a legendary Canadian political scientist and international relations expert. She is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the Founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Janice is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada; among her many distinctions.We wish our Connected Intelligence community a safe and happy holiday season and new year!
-
How can we reimagine everyday conversation for more connective personal and professional dialogue?
Caitlin (Caity) Begg is the founder of Authentic Social and sociological researcher researching technology’s effect on conversation. She founded Authentic Social in 2016 after writing her undergraduate Harvard sociology honors thesis on how digital communication affects relationships and social interaction.
Caity presents her sociological research around the United States and Europe at a variety of academic and industry conferences. In parallel, she is conducting ongoing independent sociological research, with a focus on technology's effect on conversation and sociotechnical systems. Within these contexts, further areas of focus include: the effect of asynchronous communication and hypercommunication on daily interactions, artificial intelligence and human interaction, and more.
We chat with Caity about Authentic Social, the hyperactive digital world we live in, responsible AI, and how we can incorporate more intention in our daily conversations. -
It’s been one year since the launch of chatGPT - how has regulation and policy evolved since then? And where does it need to go?
Recently appointed a Schmidt Futures AI2050 Senior Fellow, Professor Gillian Hadfield is a scholar of law and economics with a focus on the intersection of legal system design and the governance of AI.
She is currently spending her time in an area of urgent importance for humanity: innovative design for legal and regulatory systems for AI and other complex global technologies; computational models of human normative systems; and working with machine learning researchers to build machine learning systems that understand and respond to human norms.
She is the director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society, professor of law and of strategic management at the University of Toronto. Professor Hadfield was a Senior Policy Advisor for OpenAI, and is an advisor to courts, governments and several organizations and technology companies engaged in innovating new ways to make law and policy smarter, more accessible, and more responsive to technology and artificial intelligence.
We chat with Gillian about how she frames the two different challenges at hand with AI: conventional risks and frontier risks, how we build regulatory infrastructure that interfaces well with these new technologies, as well as the importance of interdisciplinary teamwork to solve these complex problems. -
How does the CEO of a skunkworks operation built in a garage in Alberta – become a globally recognized leader in agriculture, technology and innovation?
Alison Sunstrum is the CEO of Conserve X, a Canadian company developing and investing in emerging technology in agriculture, and a General Partner of The51 Food and AgTech Fund, investing in outliers transforming the business of food and agriculture.
Alison is a Venture Partner and LP at Builders VC, a San Francisco/Calgary venture capital fund. Alison is a Founding Partner and Fellow in the Ag Stream of CDL-Rockies, and the Manufacturing stream at CDL-Seattle.
Alison’s company GrowSafe won the Intel award for Innovation, Canada’s Ingenious award, and the AsTech-Dow Sciences award for agricultural science innovation. In 2021, Alison was recognized as one of Canada’s most influential leaders in agriculture.
We speak to Alison about her early career journey and her passion for science, technology, and innovation. Alison shares with us her philosophy on continuous learning and mentorship, the importance of a first customer, and how technology founders should think about growth. A very special feature of this episode – Alison teaches us about the Internet of Livestock Things! -
What did it take to become the youngest woman ever to hold the role of Chief Economist at a major Canadian financial institution?
Patti Croft is regarded as one of the country's most influential business leaders and financial commentators. She has 30 years of experience on Bay Street, working at Burns Fry and Wood Gundy.
In 1996, Patti was named Chief Economist of TD Canada Trust. Patti has worked with Sceptre Investment Counsel, Phillips Hager & North Investment Management and was named Chief Economist of RBC Global Asset Management in late 2008.
Patti has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, commenting on Canadian financial market developments and the national economic outlook. Patti is a graduate in economics from the University of Toronto and is the proud mother of three young adults. She is also a Senior Associate member of the Ticker Club.
Patti shares her unfiltered story about how she built her life and career, the trade-offs she made along the way, her best advice to prepare for the worst, and the importance of self-compassion. -
Why can’t large language models make us a cup of tea? Suzanne walks us through the answer to this question to illustrate the importance of developing embodied artificial intelligence. We chat about Geordie and Suzanne’s working dynamic, how both robots and AI are essential to the factory of the future, how we might manufacture in outer space, and why it is critical to maintain hope and purpose in life.
Geordie Rose and Suzanne Gildert are co-founders of Sanctuary AI - a company on a mission to create the world’s first human-like intelligence in general-purpose robots.
Prior to Sanctuary, Geordie founded D-Wave, the world’s first quantum computing company, and was the CEO of Kindred, the world’s first robotics company to use reinforcement learning in a production environment. He was named the 2011 Canadian Innovator of the Year, was listed on Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2013, and won the 2014 Canadian Technology Leader award. Geordie holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of British Columbia. He is a two-time Canadian national wrestling champion and McMaster Engineering Physics graduate.
Before Sanctuary, Suzanne founded Kindred. The acquisition of Kindred by Ocado in November 2020 was the third-largest exit for a robotics company in Canadian history. While at DWave, Suzanne invented and implemented MAXCAT, the world’s first game ever played against a quantum computer, worked on the world’s first supervised classifier run on a quantum computer, and was the first person to control the motion of a robot using a quantum computer. Suzanne holds a Ph.D. in experimental physics from the University of Birmingham. Suzanne is a published digital artist and poet, has worked as a graphic designer, and pioneered a technique for creating art using a quantum computer.
>> Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S3WLySNyDcc?si=vxmqlXscOTEqBpwD -
How do you find signals for greatness in a noisy world with thousands of ideas?
James Cham is a Partner at Bloomberg Beta. At the firm, he focuses on investments in data-centric and machine learning-related companies. Previously, he was a Principal at Trinity Ventures where he focused on investments in consumer services specifically ecommerce, social media, and digital media. James was a Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners where he focused on advanced web technologies and investments in consumer internet services, security, and digital media sectors along with a number of seed investments. While with Boston Consulting Group, James developed marketing strategies for entertainment and information technology companies.
James received an A.B. degree in Computer Science from Harvard University, an M.B.A. from MIT's Sloan School where he was a Siebel Scholar and interned at Sun Microsystems.
In this episode, we discuss how to think about organizations as technology, James’s early investments in artificial intelligence, and his views on the best path towards AI regulation or “bugs as a public good”. We talk about the latest developments in large language models and the problem with anthropomorphizing AI. -
How does one “get it done”?
Brendan Calder is the former CEO, chair and president of CIBC Mortgages (1995-2000) and former chair of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Brendan created the award-winning MBA course, GettingltDone.
Brendan is chair of Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking and the founding chair of the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management at the Rotman School of Management. He is also a corporate director and continues to make major philanthropic contributions throughout his community. For his efforts spanning more than three decades, he has been awarded numerous honours and awards, including induction into the Canadian Mortgage Hall of Fame in 2004 and over ten excellence in teaching awards.
We talk to Brendan about his transition from banking to teaching – his transition from teaching to retirement; Buddhism, motorcycles, movies, and leadership. -
We welcome singer-songwriter legend, Chantal Kreviazuk (sitting at her piano!) to the podcast. Chantal is a one-of-a-kind talent - she has recorded 9 studio albums including her debut album “Under these Rocks and Stones” in 1996 and her latest “Get To You”, released in 2020. Chantal is a prolific songwriter, collaborating with global superstars like: Drake, Pitbull, Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood, Kendrick Lamar and Pink. Her work has been recognized through numerous awards, and the Order of Canada.
Outside of music Chantal dedicates her time to War Child, Artists Against Racism, and Jane Goodall Institute of Canada. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba – she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace, and her three sons - Rowan, Lucca and Salvador.
Chantal talks about her creative process, the concept of fame, and how songs evolve over time. Bonus tracks at the end of the podcast chat -- of Chantal singing a handful of her incredible songs live at the piano. -
How do you build a Canadian organization into a globally recognizable brand?
Piers Handling was CEO of TIFF from 1992 - 2018. Piers is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has been awarded the Order of Ontario. He was named to France’s highest cultural insignia.
We talk to Piers about his vision for bringing Canadian cinema to a global audience, the similarities and differences between TIFF, Cannes, and Sundance Film Festival, his “pinch me” moments as CEO, how and when directors like Steven Spielberg have launched their films at TIFF, and the 10-year journey to build a forever home to celebrate Canadian cinema – the TIFF Bell Lightbox. -
How do we embrace failure in a fast-changing world?
Harvard Business School Professor, Amy Edmondson, is ranked #1 on the latest Thinkers50 ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers. Amy is the winner of Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award for being a “pioneer of psychological safety and author of The Fearless Organization, a ground-breaking blueprint on creating a fear-free culture.” Amy is also the winner of the 2019 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management. Named the Most Influential International Thinker in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2019, one of Amy’s books - The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 2018) - has been translated into more than 15 languages and is consistently among Amazon’s top-sellers in the human resources category.
Amy’s latest book Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well hits bookshelves and online stores on September 5, 2023.
In this episode, we talk about organizational design and transformation, her research on psychological safety, the three type of failures: intelligent, basic, and complex, as well as self-awareness vs. systems awareness. Amy unpacks the connection between failure and regret. And we even brainstorm a new concept of a “discussability index” to evaluate team cohesion. - Vis mere
