Past speakers
Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
Labelled by the Kansas City Star as “the most interesting man in the NFL,” Laurent Duvernay-Tardif became the first Quebecer in 15 years drafted to the NFL when he joined the Kansas City Chiefs in 2014. In 2020, the team would go on to win its first Superbowl victory in 50 years. He made history in 2020 when he was the first NFL player to opt out of the season as a precaution due to COVID-19 – choosing instead to work as a much-needed orderly in a long-term care setting in Montreal. His decision led to Sports Illustrated naming him one of their Sportspeople of the Year, he was a co-winner of the Lou Marsh Trophy for Canada’s top athlete and won the Muhammad Ali Sports Humanitarian Award at the 2021 Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards. The exciting conversation with this esteemed young Canadian leader as he reflected on his career, life lessons, and experiences in long-term care during the pandemic.
Sandy Hudson, Political Activist and Co-Founder of the Black Lives Matter Movement Canada
Since CNA declared racism to be a public health emergency in June 2020, we have convened national nursing leaders to develop declarations of intent to tackle anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and laid out steps to take on this complex injustice. Where and how to act have not been clear choices. As Sandy Hudson says, “Racism is far more complex and pervasive a phenomenon than how it is commonly understood.” To facilitate our action going forward, Sandy will provide a comprehensive introduction to what racism is, how to recognize it, how it operates and how to actively address it in organizations and as individuals. Engaging in anti-racist work for over 15 years, Sandy has developed the ideal atmosphere to learn about the difficult topic of racism. As an anti-racist scholar and activist, Sandy will also use first-person storytelling to engage participants to consider how they can shift into active anti-racist action throughout their lives. Join us for this landmark moment in Canadian nursing and take the chance to engage in direct conversation with Sandy!
Richard Booth, RN, Phd, Associate Professor at Western University
Dr. Richard Booth, RN, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing at Western University in London, Ontario. His program of research seeks to explore the relationships between human and technological interactions within health care and educational contexts. Dr. Booth’s main research streams include technological teaching-learning innovation for nursing education and digitally-enabled health care and nursing. His program of research is dedicated to exploring ways students and nurses learn, use, and repurpose health technology used in, and for, practice. And he is studying how current trends in the development of communication technology, artificial intelligence, automation/augmentation, and big data science have been examined and leveraged to generate future-forward ideas to support the health and wellbeing of people in an interconnected, rapidly changing technological landscape. In his most current work includes Social robots in the home: exploring the influence of intelligent non-human agents on human behaviour in domestic environments, and Evaluating the impact of social media technology on mental health awareness and health system use in youth.
André Picard, National Health Writer and Author
André Picard is one of Canada’s top health and public policy observers and commentators. He is a health reporter and columnist for The Globe and Mail, where he has been a staff writer since 1987. He is also the author of five bestselling books. He was named Canada’s first “Public Health Hero” by the Canadian Public Health Association and as a “Champion of Mental Health” by the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, and he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his dedication to improving health care.
André Picard, Canada’s award-winning author and journalist for The Globe and Mail, discussed his highly anticipated book Neglected No More at our first-ever speaker series, presented by the Canadian Academy of Nursing. In his timely new book, Picard reveals the full extent of the crisis in long-term care and offers an urgently needed prescription to fix a broken system.
Karen Furneaux, Olympic champion, hall of fame athlete and international speaker.
Karen is a three-time Olympian and two-time world champion in sprint kayaking and author of Strong Beauty: Power Up the Champion Within. She is a 2016 inductee into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame and has been named one of the province’s top 15 athletes. Participants leave Karen’s sessions feeling a powerful shift in momentum along with a sense of optimism and courage to implement new ideas into practice.
Laurie Gottlieb, Professor and Nurse Scholar-in-Residence
Laurie Gottlieb is a Professor in the Ingram School of Nursing at McGill University, Montreal Canada. She holds the Flora Madeline Shaw Chair of Nursing at McGill University, and is the Nurse- Scholar-in-Residence at the CIUSSS-Centre Ouest (Jewish General Hospital) in Montreal, Visiting Professor of Leadership at the Canadian Nurses Association, and co-director of the International Institute of Strengths-Based Nursing and Health Care (SBNHC). She was the former director of McGill University’s Ingram School of Nursing and was the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research for 22 years. She is the developer of SBNHC that has evolved from the McGill Model of Nursing, of which she was a major developer. She is the principal investigator of a multi-site, multi-disciplinary Partnership Grant entitled Transforming Nurses’ Work Environments Through a Strengths-Based Leadership and Management Training Program co-funded by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institute of Health Research.