Speakers
Learn, Collaborate & Connect!
- Connect with experts and peers, make new connections.
- Learn leading edge, practical strategies you can incorporate in your workplace with measurable results.
- Stay tuned for 2024 conference program & presenters!
2023 Conference Speakers
Barbara Piper
We are delighted to welcome Barbara Piper from the Netherlands to be a part of our final keynote fireside-chat session that will share different perspectives on mindful workplaces.
Sponsored by The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University School of Medicine, Barbara has studied, and continues to be a student of compassion, at CCARE for over seven years. She has grown into becoming part of the faculty and program design in 2021.
Barbara is an entrepreneur and successfully works to corporate global companies as senior leadership facilitator, specializing in bringing human leadership to these environments. Her company Be Rooted, specializes in workplace wellbeing and compassion, she facilitates leadership programs and coaches leaders on how to be more human, mindful, and compassionate leaders.
Not to be missed! Barbara is hosting a pre-conference FREE Webinar, Compassion in Action in the Workplace.
Date: Tuesday, October 24th, 2023 | Time: 9:00am – 10:00am PDT
- What is compassionate leadership & why it’s a game changer
- Learn how high-performing leaders & companies are putting compassion into action!
Joseph Iannicelli
Joseph Iannicelli has extensive experience in the financial services industry and is former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Standard Life Insurance Company of Canada. He also served as CEO of Banyan Healthcare Services and as a strategic and management consultant with a Canadian public pension plan. Joseph has been recognized for several business achievements, including being named top 5 Influential Business Leaders in Quebec for four straight years. He currently serves on boards, including the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), where he is Chair of the Human Resources and Governance Committee. He is also an executive and life coach. Joseph is President of PLAY 2 WIN Inc., a company that has produced an Indie feature film, Crimson Sands, of which he played lead male actor, that has won numerous Canadian and International awards. In addition, as a certified yoga teacher and Reiki healer, Joseph, through a sub-brand, Body By Yoga, offers yoga instruction and Reiki healing. Joseph has recently released his debut novel, Unleash Your Best Self: Discover the multiplier effects to your success.
Martin Shain S.J.D.
Dr. Martin Shain is a social scientist and academic lawyer. His career spans more than 50 years, most of which has been directed toward the creation and maintenance of workplaces that sustain and promote mental health. He is founder and principal of the Neighbour at Work Centre and adjunct lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
He is unreasonably proud of his contributions to Canada’s National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety (CSA Z1003) and its forerunner, Guarding Minds at Work.
He is the author of five books (one with Mary Ann Baynton) and 80 articles that span the evolution of mental health interventions from the early days of individually focussed health promotion and employee assistance programs to today’s emphasis on systemic solutions to mental injury prevention.
In this journey he has been privileged to work with luminaries and trailblazers in the field: Mary Ann Baynton and Deborah Connors being among the foremost.
Today he is concentrating on how to bolster legal provisions for creating and sustaining a psychologically safe workplace; how to design health promotion initiatives that support psychological safety and how to augment the impact of the National Standard by introducing a parallel standard for a psychologically safe culture based on the Neighbour at Work philosophy and practice.
He is delighted to find at this late stage of his career a new leaf in the form of mindfulness at work which he believes will synergize perfectly with the requirements of a “careful” workplace, one in which every effort is made to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm.
Mark Sherman MDCM CCFP
Mark is a family physician in Victoria, British Columbia, one of the founders, and Past Executive Director of the BC Association for Living Mindfully (BCALM). Mark attended McGill University for his medical training and then UBC for his postgraduate Family Medicine residency. Mark has formal postgraduate training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Clinical Hypnosis, Yoga, Medical Acupuncture and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Mark’s passion and principle clinical interests lie in mind-body medicine and in the use and potential of mindfulness and meditation helping people navigate the negative effects of stress in their lives. See full bio here.
Shawn Y. Holmes, PhD
Dr. Shawn Y. Holmes is practitioner-scholar and has 30 years of experience across the educational spectrum. She holds two doctorates (a DMD and PhD in science education), a master’s degree and has teacher certifications in mindfulness meditation as well as extensive training in trauma-informed practices, anti-racism, and ethical sensitivity. Shawn designs and facilitates embodied mindfulness programs and uses art-based experiential approaches to help us recognize conditioned behaviours and perspectives; shifting from those that limit our connections to each other toward practices of inner-reflection, compassion, and interconnectedness. Shawn is a dedicated Buddhist practitioner and spends several weeks a year attending silent Vipassana meditation retreats. Shawn is also an adjunct faculty in the School of Leadership Studies at Royal Roads University.
Geoffrey Soloway, PhD
As Founder and CEO of MindWell U, Geoff has helped to support the mental health and wellbeing of over 1000,000 Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Over the past 20 years Geoff has been engaged in developing, researching, and implementing innovative approaches to Mindful Wellbeing with organizations such WestJet, TMX and The Privvy Council of Canada. After completing a PhD and Master’s in Education from the University of Toronto focusing on Mindfulness, and Professional Development, Geoff has worked as an Instructor at University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and the University of Fraser Valley and continues to teach in the Organizational Coaching program at UBC. Geoff completed his Yoga Teacher Training in 2002, sat a month-long silent meditation retreat in 2007 and has slept in a tent in every province and territory in Canada!
Mary Ann Baynton
Micheal Pietrus
Director, Opening Minds & MHFA Canada – Mental Health Commission of Canada
Director of the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s international award-winning anti-stigma initiative Opening Minds. In February 2015, Opening Minds received the Innovator Award from the organizers of the 7th Together Against Stigma Conference in San Francisco as the “…program which creates a major impact through new approaches that inspire new possibilities and/or disrupts prevailing views.” He is also the Director of Mental Health First Aid Canada. Under Micheal’s leadership, the Commission launched Opening Minds, its anti-stigma/anti-discrimination initiative in 2009, which is the largest systematic effort to reduce the stigma of mental illness in Canadian history. He was appointed to the World Health Organization’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Mental Health, Brain Health and Substance Use. STAG reports directly to the Director-General of WHO.
Ashley Spetch, PhD
Dr. Ashley Spetch is WorkSafeBC’s chief mental health officer — the first position of its kind for any workers’ compensation board in Canada.
Ashley is responsible for the organization’s overall strategy on mental health, and works with various stakeholders to support B.C. workers affected by psychological injury – with the goal of improving their recovery and safe return to work outcomes.
Prior to joining WorkSafeBC, Ashley held progressive leadership positions in workplace mental health and psychological health and safety. Her background is in clinical and industrial organizational psychology, and she has extensive experience in helping employers develop programs to cultivate return to work, employee well-being, and a psychologically healthy and safe workforce and workplace.
In her spare time, she enjoys fitness and being involved in dog rescue.
Olivia McIvor
Ocean Lum
Ocean is passionate about the Body-Mind-Spirit continuum. She holds a BSc in Nutrition and Biochemistry and a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology. Ocean is a Registered clinical Counsellor in private practice. She specializes in a holistic approach to anxiety, depression, and trauma by integrating talk therapy, somatic practices, and yogic principles. She is ardent about helping distressed couples with Emotionally Focused Therapy. In addition, Ocean is a Yoga teacher and a Yoga therapist. While she loves all aspects of Yoga, she is particularly drawn to the psycho-spiritual aspects of Yoga. She has been teaching Yoga since 2002.
Holistic Counselling Victoria
Jackie Gay
Jackie Gay is a Writer, Clinical Educator and Mindfulness in Nature teacher & facilitator. She writes poetry and fiction, works for Island Health in Mental Health and Substance Use Services, and trained with Mark Coleman to teach Nature-based mindfulness and meditation. She is also a professional sailor and sailed for Canada at the Rio Paralympics. Her experience connecting with land and water as a person with a disability has been a huge impetus behind the development of both her meditation and professional practice, and she is very excited for the opportunity to introduce nature as one of the ‘rafts’ of mindfulness within the context of the workplace and beyond.
Special Guests
Mayor Marianne Alto
City of Victoria
We warmly thank the Mayor and City of Victoria for supporting The BCalm Mindfulness Conference. Her Worship, Marianne Alto, Mayor of Victoria, BC will be offering welcoming remarks at the conference. Read her full bio here.
See you November
9 - 10, 2023
PO Box 39001
Station James Bay
Victoria BC, V8V4X8
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