Meet the WORKTECH 16 Toronto Speakers

WORKTECH 16 Toronto will draw industry movers and shakers to Ontario on Tuesday, November 1 to debate and discuss the future of work.

We’re proud to support WORKTECH 16 Toronto. The conference will take place on Tuesday, November 1 at the McCarthy Tétrault office; speakers and guests will explore workplace themes including the future of work and the workplace as well as real estate, technology, and innovation.

Read more and register for the event here, and scroll to get to know the all-star lineup of speakers.

Colleen Baldwin
Global Design Director, Scotiabank

Colleen’s career began in design, where she found great satisfaction in creating beautiful, highly functional spaces for her corporate clients. Over 20 years ago, she was pleased to name Scotiabank among her valued customers, with highlight projects being the Eastern and Western Call Centres as well as many others. She went on to own and operate her own practice, comprising 35-40 design and project management professionals, for 20 years, where her main role was to assist clients with their overall real estate strategy. She joined the Scotiaank in November of 2013 with exactly this in mind. Real estate plays a very strategic role in this endeavor and her team exists to lead innovation help the Scotiabank succeed in reaching all of its cultural change and business goals.

Matthew Claudel
Product Manager, Beco

Matthew is a designer, researcher, and writer. He studied architecture at Yale, where he received the Sudler Prize, the university’s highest award for the arts. He has continued to work on projects, startups, and research in the fields of architecture, innovation science, technology, and art. He has been published widely, writing and co-authoring several books, articles, and opinion editorial pieces. Matthew has co- taught at MIT and the Politecnico di Torino, lectured at Harvard Business School, and has been featured in the BBC Future series. He has presented widely as a critic, speaker, and artist-in-residence. He is currently working as a researcher at MIT’s Senseable City Lab and the MIT Lab for Innovation Science and Policy.

Didhiti Bhoumik
Senior Director, McCarthy Tétrault LLP

Didhiti is a seasoned business operations change agent, experienced at leading diverse organizational transformation initiatives that achieve cost reductions, operational efficiencies, and productivity improvements within large complex corporate multi-office organizations. Currently a senior director at McCarthy Tetrault, she adeptly wears several hats. She holds integrated leadership responsibility for multiple functions including the Vendor Management Office, Project Management Office, and Facilities Management Office which includes Office Services. Didhiti leads all aspects of the firm’s real estate holdings and office management services from strategy through to budgetary and as the firm’s chief purchasing officer she steers vendor management, purchasing, and outsourcing. She is responsible for overall project governance and operational delivery for all of the firm’s high profile strategic projects.

Nada Farah
Corporate Real Estate, Senior Manager Planning, BMO Financial Group

Nada is a senior manager responsible for strategy and planning for BMO’s major buildings in Ontario. This includes integrating the design office standards as well as mobility in all premises related projects. She also manages the occupancy for Canadian office towers.

Melissa Marsh
Founder and Executive Director, PLASTARC

Melissa is the founder and executive director of PLASTARC, a social research, workplace innovation, and real estate strategy firm dedicated to shifting the metrics associated with workplace from “square feet and inches” to “occupant satisfaction and performance.” PLASTARC employs people analytics, building information systems, and a variety of creative methods to enable environments that enhance knowledge, accelerate business, and enrich employees. With a background in social science and a Master of Architecture from MIT, Melissa defined an early career in workplace innovation with projects in design, architecture, and master planning around the world. She and her team have worked with international clients on the forefront of leveraging workplace to inform corporate culture, employee experience, and business strategy. Melissa has contributed to courses for CoreNet and WORKTECH, spearheaded international learning and technology initiatives, and lectured at UVA, Cornell, and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Jeremy Myerson
Director, The WORKTECH Academy; Research Professor, Royal College of Art

Jeremy Myerson is an academic researcher, author and activist in people-centred design and innovation. He has joined Unwired to set up The WORKTECH Academy, a global knowledge network. He has published several influential books on workplace design and holds the Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design at the Royal College of Art, London. His most recent titles include Time & Motion (2013) and Life of Work (2014). A former journalist and editor on such titles as Design, Creative Review and World Architecture, he founded Design Week magazine in 1986 and later co-founded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the RCA in 1999, which he directed for 16 years until September 2015. He has advised businesses and governments around the world and sits on the advisory boards of design institutes in Korea, Switzerland and Hong Kong. He was recently named by Wired magazine as one of Britain’s 100 most influential people in digital technology.

Vanessa Perdue
Senior Director, Global Workplace, Corporate Real Estate, Royal Bank of Canada

Peter Smit
Collaboration Strategist & Founder, Collabogence

Peter is the founder of Collabogence, an organization committed to measuring organizational collaborative performance, helping them understand the collaborative balance of people, processes, and tools, and improve their performance. Peter has lived in seven countries, speaks four languages, and currently lives in Toronto. He holds a BA in Economics from Middlebury College in Vermont and an MBA from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He has worked for and consulted to large global companies, including Honeywell, Siemens, Motorola, Tellabs, and Opentext. He has also worked with numerous early stage technology companies. The common thread has always been orchestrating cross-functional resources, scattered around the globe, to work together toward a common end: collaboration. He also teaches a course on collaboration to fourth year students at the University of Toronto.

Lorri Rowlandson
Senior Vice President, Strategic Solutions, Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions

Lorri oversees workplace solutions for Brookfield GIS, which includes workplace advisory and workplace management, as well as business intelligence, the internet of things, and consulting services. She has an Advanced Management Development Program in Real Estate (AMDP) from Harvard University, a Masters of Corporate Real Estate (MCR), a degree in Business Administration, is an Accredited Outsourcing Practitioner (AOP). She also has over 20 years of experience in strategic sourcing and corporate real estate. Prior to joining Brookfield GIS, she was a senior consultant at one of Canada’s most respected public private partnership and real estate consulting firms.

Kane Willmott
Co-Founder, iQ Office Suites

Kane Willmott is the current president of the Global Workspace Association, an organization which caters to space operators, workplace strategists, real estate investors, and service providers. Throughout his 18 years in commercial real estate, he has been involved in a variety of roles including leasing and investment sale transactions, asset, and property management, as well as capital market structuring. He has participated in a number of successful real estate startups, including the formation and launch of a Capital Pool Corporation, now trading as a public company on the TSX Venture Exchange. In 2009, Kane partnered with Alex Sharpe on the creation of Spire Commercial Realty, an integrated real estate investment and advisory company. After achieving early success with Spire, the partners seized the opportunity to establish iQ Office Suites to capitalize on the emerging market shift towards serviced office space. Kane holds a diploma in Property Management from George Brown College as well as a Degree in Economics and a post graduate Diploma in Accounting from Wilfred Laurier University. Kane is a registered real estate broker, a level one ski instructor, and Air 4 certified freestyle ski coach.