Cammi Pham is a digital strategist at Kwinmedia by day, blogger by night, but a learner 24/7. To date, she has gained a following of over 77,000 followers on Twitter and trended #1 in the U.S. on Justin Bieber’s birthday. Cammi is no stranger to the digital marketing world with her years of experience and also previously working with the Digital Media Zone at Ryerson University. Her blog content has been viewed by millions of people and translated to many different languages. In fact, on Medium, one of the largest blogging communities, one of her articles is the 2nd most read on the entire website, gaining over 1.2 million views. At Kwinmedia, her focus lies on data driven content marketing and has helped her clients reach millions of people. Cammi lives by her personal motto, “Learn, Unlearn, Relearn.” and hopes to share some of those thoughts during her TED talk. She believes when someone stops learning, they start dying.

From a physically small person comes a big voice. Gizelle Lao is a third year Sociology major at Ryerson University, who has been exposed to many theories on human nature and also the winner of our Student Speaker Auditions. With strength in her words and knowledge, she wants to pursue a career in human resources management and activism. She has an interest in surfing, public speaking, and music. Aspiring to teach others to stay calm when waves come, and be strong enough to swim back up when they bring you down. Her journey all started from living in another country before she moved to Canada. This transition has helped her realize the importance of certain aspects of her life. From where she came, to where she is, and to where she wants to be, she realizes the importance of sacrifices.

In addition to being a visiting speaker at Ryerson University, Rémy Huberdeau has worked as a freelance documentary director, editor and subtitler (with Trans & Sub Coop) based in Montreal, Quebec for the past 7 years. His directorial work explores gender and transexuality, as well as linguistic and decolonial dynamics on Turtle Island. His most recent film Transgender Parents will be broadcasted on The Documentary Network in December 2014. Rémy is part of the programming team of Cinema Politica, a network that makes political documentaries accessible around the world. He is also really into cooking dinner, sharing food and building community. He will be stepping out from behind the lens of his camera to give a talk about his documentary Transgender Families and will be challenging social gender norms to enlighten the audience on the many different shapes a family can be.

Despite losing his vision at 19, Kevin Shaw has forged a successful career in media production, radio advertising and broadcast management. Over the past 15 years, he has become a leader in live entertainment, music production, and communications, earning a reputation for being a thorough, skilled, action-oriented entrepreneur and communicator. He holds an undergraduate and a graduate degrees from Ryerson University in Radio & Television Arts and Media Production respectively. In 2012, Kevin Shaw founded Zagga Entertainment, a startup company incubated at the Digital media Zone at Ryerson University. He is working to create a video-on-demand service featuring movies and TV shows with described video for consumers with vision loss. His talk will tell the story of how he developed this service and discuss how tomorrow’s leaders can create inclusive experiences in media and other disciplines.

Dr. Pamela Palmater is an Associate Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University. She completed her Doctorate in the Science of Law (JSD) at Dalhousie University Law Faculty in 2009. Her thesis is entitled: Beyond Blood: Rethinking Aboriginal Identity and Belonging.  In addition, she holds a Master in Laws from Dalhousie University in Aboriginal Law, a Bachelor of Laws at the University of New Brunswick, and a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Native Studies and History from St. Thomas University in New Brunswick. Over 25 years, Pamela has spent time working and volunteering to resolve issues issues facing the Indigenous people and their community. At TEDxRyersonU, she aims to do much of the same by unrooting the echoes of the past by shedding new light on matters concerning her research.

Dr. Frauke Zeller received a PhD in English linguistics and computational philology from Kassel University in Germany in 2005. Since then she has furthered her research on organizational communication, Human-Computer Interaction/Human-Robot Interaction, digital communication, and method development for digital research analyses. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University where she along with David Smith of Mcmaster Univeristy conceived hitchBOT. A robot developed to hitchhike across Canada and develop not only robotics but the relationship between humans and robot. Dr. Zeller combines the experiences behind the creation of hitchBOT to build her theory on trust, attitude and relationships we have to technology and robots.

Vicki is a serial entrepreneur, author, passionate mentor, advisor-at-large to the next generation of change makers and a leading advocate for entrepreneurship as a way of creating positive transformation in the world. Vicki has co-founded and run 4 ventures in Europe, Toronto and Silicon Valley including The NRG Group which went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2000. Vicki was selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum and currently building SheEO, a 2 decade-long initiative to dramatically transform how we support, finance and celebrate female entrepreneurs who are creating new mindsets, new models and new solutions for a better world. Her talk aims to shine light on entrepreneurship from an angle focused on redesigning and redefining.