Changing our brains. Is it possible to do this and improve our overall wellbeing? The answer is yes. Like any good athlete, we too can adopt mental training strategies to transform our minds, and our lives, for the better. We can develop healthy new habits that involve empathy, compassion, resilience and emotional balance. These strategies can be used to improve not only the well-being of individuals but ultimately communities.

This session will explore the perspectives of Jimmie Briggs, journalist, activist and writer ("Innocents Lost"), and Jesse Lipscombe, entrepreneur, activist, actor, regarding the perils and joys as Black fathers to Black children in a period of historical racial, ethnic and political divisiveness around the world.

What is empathy? Before we can talk about empathy in any context, we need to grasp what it is - and what it's not. Dr. Dan Siegel looks at the fundamental aspects of empathy and how it can dissolve the border between "you" and "me." Through empathy, we achieve a greater understanding of ourselves and others, and a deeper relationship with nature and the world around us.

Our empathy for others is impacted by our experience of social justice. It is easier to feel empathy for others when those around us acknowledge our rights. In this brief message, I will explore how empathy fuels a cycle of social responsibility.

Well known educator and author Michele Borba has never been more concerned about children than today. She sees kids who are well educated, accomplished, and privileged - but they're anxious and depressed. Why are these kids not flourishing? Dr. Borba will share her findings on those who struggle and those who succeed and how it comes down to seven teachable skills. Her new book is called "Thrivers" which she'll talk about and take questions from symposium participants.

Huge societal shifts in recent years like the #MeToo movement have forced us reexamine what it means to be a man - and a boy - in society today. Washington Post reporter Emma Brown interviewed hundreds of people looking for answers. The results are unsettling and documented in her new book "To Raise A Boy." Host Mary Ito will interview Emma about the crisis young men are facing and what we can do to help them. And we'll take questions from symposium participants.

Jimmie Briggs, a journalist, activist, and writer, and Jesse Lipscombe, an entrepreneur, activist, and actor, continue their dialogue “Black Fatherhood: a Conversation across Borders”. This Cafe will be moderated by Keita Demming (PhD), the Head of Innovation and Development at The Covenant Group (TCG). Participants are invited to broaden the conversation to include their experiences of parenting in a post-pandemic world where the curtain has been drawn on all kinds of inequalities and discrimination.

A special conversation with three of Canada's most successful female leaders and CEOs: Christy Clark, former Premier of British Columbia and Senior Advisor with Bennett Jones; Tamara Vrooman, President and CEO of the Vancouver Airport Authority and Chair of the Canada Infrastructure Bank; and Shahrzad Rafati, CEO of Broadband TV. They'll discuss how their leadership has been tested during the pandemic, what skills are critical to corporate leaders going forward, and the vital role of empathy both within and outside of organizations.

Educators often think of academic skills as separate from social skills, empathy, and emotion. But this is not true according to research from my lab and others. Even humans’ biological and genetic foundations are deeply social. Our brain development is quite literally reliant on cultural experiences and learning—such interpersonal experiences help our brains grow, both for thinking and for wellness.

What predicts selfless, even heroic behaviour during the pandemic? It's a fascinating question that NYT Journalist and co-founder of Solutions Journalism Network, David Bornstein, explores in his interview with renowned neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Dr. Meltzoff's latest research reveals what might predict helpful vs. hurtful behaviour during these extraordinary times. This session will be relevant to all but maybe of special interest to researchers and policymakers.

Neuroscientist Dr. Bruce Perry says we underestimate the importance of empathy in the world. He gives a compelling argument on how empathy is foundational to all healthy relationships and our success as human beings. Dr. Perry's most recent book, "What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing," co-authored with Oprah Winfrey was released this year.

In honour of our 25th anniversary, Roots of Empathy is thrilled to present our inaugural Empathy Award with a focus on Social Justice. We present this award to His Honour Justice Murray Sinclair. His Honour was the first Indigenous Judge appointed in Manitoba and the second in Canada; he served as Co-Chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba and was Chief Commissioner of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). After a lifetime of commitment to social justice, equality and ensuring the rights of society's most vulnerable, we are honoured to present this award to His Honour Justice Murray Sinclair.

Michele Borba, Ed.D. is an internationally-recognized educator who has spoken to over one million parents and educators. She is recognized for her solution-based strategies on raising resilient kids, and has appeared over 150 times on the TODAY show and featured in outlets including New York Times, Dr. Phil, Washington Post, Time, and Dateline. Her 24 books are translated in 20 languages including End Peer Cruelty, Build Empathy, Building Moral Intelligence, UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. Her latest (March 2021) is Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine.

David Bornstein is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which seeks to legitimize and spread the practice of solutions journalism: rigorous reporting that examines responses to social problems. He is a journalist and currently co-authors the Fixes column in The New York Times. His books include How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, and Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know. He lives in New York.

When he joined the Foundation in 2020, he had more than two decades of experience as a journalist, author, and activist. He was a co-founder and executive director emeritus of Man Up Campaign, a global initiative to activate youth to stop violence against women and girls. This led to his selection as the winner of the 2010 GQ Magazine “Better Men Better World” search, and as one of the Women’s eNews ‘21 Leaders for the 21st Century’. Jimmie has served as an adjunct professor of investigative journalism at the New School for Social Research and was a George A Miller Visiting Professor in the Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois: Champaign-Urbana. For a decade, he has been an adjunct teacher of documentary journalism at the International Center of Photography

As a journalist, he has written for scores of publications following staff tenures at The Washington Post, The Village Voice, LIFE magazine and others. The recipient of honors for his work as a journalist and advocate, he’s been a National Magazine Award finalist, recipient of honors from the Open Society Institute, National Association of Black Journalists, the Carter Center for Mental Health Journalism, the Congressional Black Caucus, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and the Freedom Center in Cincinnati, among many others. His 2005 book Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go To War took readers into the lives of war-affected children around the world in half a dozen countries. His next book project is an oral history of Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in 2014. He currently contributes to Vanity Fair magazine in addition to his role at the Skoll Foundation.

Jimmie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors, in Philosophy, from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as a Medal of Distinction from Barnard College. He lives in New York City.

Emma Brown is a reporter on The Washington Post’s investigative team. She previously worked as a wilderness ranger and as a middle school math teacher before discovering journalism during an internship at High Country News, a magazine that covers the American West. She worked as an intern at the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Boston Globe before joining The Washington Post in 2009. She is also the author of To Raise A Boy: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood.

Former Premier of British Columbia the Hon. Christy Clark is a Senior Advisor at the internationally-recognized law firm, Bennett Jones LLP. She Co-Chairs the Advisory Board for the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University and serves as an Associate Member for the InterAction Council, an international organization where former heads of state come together to find solutions to the political, economic, and social problems of today’s world. She is the founder of ‘Pink Shirt Day’ in BC, an anti-bullying imitative which remains a powerful movement even 13 years later. In November, 2018 she was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women’s Executive Network (WXN) and was inducted into the WXN Hall of Fame.

Throughout his career he has received numerous awards and accolades including being named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006 and in 2018 being appointed to the Governing Board of UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP).

Dr. Davidson has published more than 440 articles, numerous chapters and reviews and edited 14 books. He is the author (with Sharon Begley) of "The Emotional Life of Your Brain" and co-author with Daniel Goleman of “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body”.

In 2008, Dr. Davidson founded the Center for Healthy Minds, a research center dedicated to the study of positive qualities, such as kindness and compassion. His research is broadly focused on the neural bases of emotion and emotional style and methods to promote human flourishing including meditation and related contemplative practices.

Keita Demming (PhD) completed his PhD at the University of Toronto and now serves as the Head of Innovation and Development at The Covenant Group (TCG). At TCG, our mission is to educate and coach entrepreneurs, and organizations. Our passion is to enable organizations to achieve and sustain peak performance, as they define it.

At TCG, Keita and his team have built an online coaching platform that acts as a virtual coach for entrepreneurs and business builders. When he is not building new products for the emerging future, Keita helps organizations identify and implement plausible innovation opportunities.

He transforms companies into places and spaces that are idea-driven and people-centered. These companies foster cultures that embrace design, accountability, foresight, strategy, and innovation. High-performing organizations have highly engaged and effective employees. They are wonderful places to work, play, and belong.

You can also visit Keita’s podcast, Disruptive Conversations, where he unpacks how people who are working to disrupt a sector or system think.

Mary Gordon is an award-winning social entrepreneur, educator, best-selling author, parenting expert, and child advocate who has created an international children’s charity, Roots of Empathy (ROE).

Ms. Gordon has consulted with and/or presented to the UN, the WHO, UNICEF, The Nelson Mandela Children’s Foundation, and governments. She is a regular keynote speaker at conferences and has several TEDx talks. She has been honored with the Governor General of Canada Award for innovation, is a recipient of the Order of Canada, Order of Ontario and Order of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is also the recipient of honorary doctorates in Canada and Europe.

Ms. Gordon is considered a serial social entrepreneur. In 1981 she created Canada’s first and largest school-based Parenting Centres which have been used as best practice models internationally. In 1996, based on her belief that the absence of empathy underscored violence of all kinds, she set out to break this cycle by developing empathy in children. As a result, she created the ROE program and shortly after her organization of the same name. In 2005, she created The Seeds of Empathy program for children in child care settings.

The ROE program has been evaluated in both comparative and randomized controlled studies in independent research that has been conducted in numerous countries across three continents. Both Mary Gordon and the program have been featured in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Guardian, The Washington Post, Time Magazine and in features on NBC's Today Show, PBS, CNN, The BBC, NHK Japan and the Huffington Post. Her work is cited in hundreds of academic publications.

Her book, Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child, a Canadian best seller is available in multiple languages.

Prof. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD is a Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California and Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE). She studies the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness, and connections to social, cognitive and moral development in educational settings. She uses cross-cultural, interdisciplinary studies of narratives and feelings to uncover experience-dependent neural mechanisms contributing to identity, intrinsic motivation, deep learning, and generative, creative and abstract thought. Her work has a special focus on adolescents from low-SES communities, and she involves youths from these communities as junior scientists in her work.

Mary Ito has a long history of broadcasting and has been a Toronto based broadcast journalist for over 30 years in radio and television. Mary hosted Fresh Air, CBC Radio One’s regional weekend radio program in Ontario. She worked at TVOntario for five years as host of a daily talk show called More to Life which covered an eclectic range of topics in health, education, arts and culture, business and family issues. Mary was also the host of Second Opinion on TVO – a panel show which dealt with controversial issues in health. She also worked at Global TV as the anchor of a daily health report called Health Matters. She is also the founder of CRAM Cities Learning Festivals. In her spare time, Mary is very active in her community and currently sits on the board of Roots of Empathy.

Jesse Lipscombe is an actor, former athlete, activist and entrepreneur. The Alberta native began his career as an actor at age 14 in the film, Children of the Dust, starring legendary actor, Sidney Poitier. At 18, Jesse accepted a full athletic scholarship to the prestigious Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA where he was a breakout track star. Presently, Jesse continues to act, while also producing many award-winning film and television productions (It’s Not My Fault, I Don’t Care Anyway, Tiny Plastic Men). Outside of the arts, Jesse invests in various businesses and runs a consultancy, inspired by the #MakeItAwkward campaign he launched in 2016 to combat racism, misogyny, homophobia and hatred. He works with organizations and leaders to help them understand and address racism.

In 2017, Jesse was the recipient of the Obsidian Award for Top Business Leader in Western Canada. That year, he was also named the Community Man of the Year by Diversity Magazine.

Through it all, Jesse makes it his top priority to give back to his community. Jesse works with various annual charity fundraisers and partnerships in his home-base of Edmonton.

Dr. Meltzoff holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair at the University of Washington, where he is Co-Director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and Professor of Psychology. He received his BA from Harvard and Ph.D. from Oxford. Dr. Meltzoff is a pioneer in the study of infant social learning. His discoveries about infant imitation shaped our theories about human social-emotional development. His work on infant altruism and prosocial sharing sheds light the roots of human moral development. Dr. Meltzoff has used infant brain-imaging techniques to investigate infants’ early notion of self, body, and interpersonal relationships. His work with preschool and elementary-school children has shown how social bias is first acquired in young children and how societal stereotypes influence children’s learning and achievement. Dr. Meltzoff is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Society for Experimental Psychologists. He is a recipient of the William James Fellow Award, the highest honor of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association G. Stanley Hall Award for distinguished contributions to developmental psychology, and the Kurt Koffka Medal for extraordinary advances in developmental psychology. He has published more than 250 scientific papers, co-authored two books, The Scientist in the Crib and Words, Thoughts, and Theories, and co-edited The Imitative Mind: Development, Evolution, and Brain Bases.

Dr. Perry is the Principal of the Neurosequential Network, Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy and a Professor (Adjunct) in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and the School of Allied Health, College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia.

Over the last thirty years, Dr. Perry has been an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety of academic positions. His work on the impact of abuse, neglect and trauma on the developing brain has impacted clinical practice, programs and policy across the world. Dr. Perry is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered. Dr. Perry's most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey was released in 2021.

Dr. Perry has conducted both basic neuroscience and clinical research. His neuroscience research has examined the effects of prenatal drug exposure on brain development, the neurobiology of human neuropsychiatric disorders, the neurophysiology of traumatic life events and basic mechanisms related to the development of neurotransmitter receptors in the brain. His clinical research and practice has focused on high-risk children. This work has examined the cognitive, behavioral, emotional, social, and physiological effects of neglect and trauma in children, adolescents and adults. This work has been instrumental in describing how childhood experiences, including neglect and traumatic stress, change the biology of the brain – and, thereby, the health of the child.

Dr. Perry has published over 500 journal articles, book chapters and scientific proceedings and is the recipient of numerous professional awards and honors, including the T. Berry Brazelton Infant Mental Health Advocacy Award, the Award for Leadership in Public Child Welfare, the Alberta Centennial Medal and the 2014 Kohl Education Prize. He serves on the Board of Directors of multiple organizations including Prevent Child Abuse America and the Ana Grace Project.

Shahrzad Rafati is the Founder, Chairperson and CEO of BroadbandTV (BBTV), a media-tech company that is advancing the world by helping influencers and media companies grow their viewership and drive revenue from their content. In October of 2020, Shahrzad led BBTV’s IPO on the TSX, and made history as one of the Top 10 Tech listings of all time, as well as the largest across all sectors with a sole female Founder and CEO and the first in the technology sector.

In addition to building an incredibly successful company that has experienced phenomenal growth, Shahrzad has built a quadruple bottom line business that measures success not only on financial performance but also on employee, culture, social, community and environmental KPIs.

Shahrzad actively pursues ways to encourage social change and is a champion for equality in all forms, and is passionate about job creation, climate action, education, and advancing opportunities for women and girls. In 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Shahrzad as Co-Chair of G20 EMPOWER, a private sector alliance intended to support the greater recruitment and advancement of women in leadership in the private sector in each of the G20 countries.

Shahrzad is a highly sought-after speaker for industry events, and supports a number of influential Boards and Associations, spanning Canadian investment groups, leading media and technology businesses, global leaders in design and architecture, and non for profits. She has also been broadly recognized by industry and community groups for her contributions to the media industry and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute which focuses on the development of mindsight, teaches insight, empathy, and integration in individuals, families and communities.

Dr. Michael Ungar is a Family Therapist and Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience. Since 2002, Dr. Ungar has directed the Resilience Research Centre, designing multisite longitudinal research and evaluation projects focusing on the resilience of marginalized children, families and adult populations experiencing mental health challenges. Building on his work as both a researcher and clinician, Dr. Ungar is also an accomplished writer with numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books for mental health professionals, researchers and lay audiences. These include his most recent, open access, edited volume titled Multisystemic Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation in Contexts of Change, and his 2019 release, Change Your World: The Science of Resilience and the True Path to Success, a book for adults experiencing stress at work and at home.

Tamara Vrooman is a transformational leader with a strong financial background who understands the intrinsic link between a strong and sustainable economy and a healthy community.

Tamara is currently CEO of the Vancouver Airport Authority (YVR), Canada’s second busiest airport. Prior to this, Tamara was President & CEO of Vancity, Canada’s largest community credit union with $28 billion in assets, and Deputy Minister of Finance for the Province of British Columbia and as Secretary to the Treasury Board and CEO of the Public Sector Employers' Council.

Her expertise has been sought by organizations, leaders and governments at all levels—regional, provincial, national and international—whether on the economy, social change, or environmental sustainability, and often at the intersection of all three. Most recently, Tamara was appointed Simon Fraser University’s 12th Chancellor.

Tamara chairs the board of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the Rick Hansen Foundation, in addition to other board roles. She is the recipient of the Order of British Columbia (2019), Peter Lougheed Award for Leadership in Public Policy (2016) and BC CEO of the Year Award – Major Private Company, Business in Vancouver (2015) among many other citations.