The Power of Diversity: Better decisions? Better outcomes?

Hiring for “fit” is the worst thing you can do. Diversity can actually enhance innovation within different fields by bringing in different cultural perspectives, experiences and forces everyone to confront the biases of their own expectations.

Join us for an evening of dialogue as our panel shares their insights and experiences, and explores how inclusion of diverse voices and perspectives can deliver more innovative, more creative, and more inclusive outcomes – whether it’s in health, science, research, or the wider community.

Moderator

Panelists

  • Dr. Kendall Ho – Emergency Medical Specialist & Professor, UBC Faculty of Medicine; Lead, Digital Emergency Medicine Unit; Executive Director, interCultural Online Health Network (iCON)
  • Dr. Minelle Mahtani – Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty, UBC; Professor, Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, UBC Faculty of Arts
  • Dr. Daniel Steel – Associate Professor, W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics in the School of Population and Public Health
  • Tina Strehlke – CEO, Minerva BC
Tuesday, October 30th
6:30PM – 8:30PM
Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre
6163 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC

Tickets are $10. Free for students. Additional financial accommodation on request.

A complimentary drink and light refreshments will be provided after the program.

Registrations are now closed. Limited seating may be available at the door. Tickets at door are cash-only.

 

This event is delivered in partnership with alumni UBC.

Moderator

Angela Sterritt

Journalist

Angela Sterritt is an award-winning journalist, writer, and artist from British Columbia. Sterritt has worked as a journalist for close to twenty years and has been with the CBC since 2003. Her reports have appeared in the Globe and Mail, The National, CBC’s The Current, and various other national and local news programs. She currently works with CBC Vancouver as television, radio and online reporter, producer and host.

In the spring of 2017, Sterritt traveled to Toronto to accept the Investigative Award of the Year from Journalists for Freedom of Expression for her team at CBC Indigenous and their coverage of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Kendall Ho

Emergency Medical Specialist & Professor, UBC Faculty of Medicine; Lead, Digital Emergency Medicine Unit; Executive Director, interCultural Online Health Network (iCON)

Dr. Kendall Ho is an emergency medical specialist at Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver, BC, Canada, a professor in the UBC Faculty of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine, and a member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He leads the Digital Emergency Medicine Unit, and is the executive director of the interCultural Online Health Network (iCON) funded by the BC Ministry of Health.

His areas of research include: sensors and wearables in health care settings, health apps to improve patient care, virtual health to support care access, and raising digital health literacy for health professionals and patients. Provincially, he is a member of the BC Ministry of Health provincial home health monitoring joint management committee, Ministry of Health Patients as Partners provincial working group, BC Emergency Medicine Network Management Committee, and the Rural Patient Transport and Transfer Working Group.

Nationally, he is a member of the National Research Council Medical Devices Advisory Board, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians Leadership Subcommittee, and Canada Health Infoway telehomecare forum. He is a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Health Professional Investigator, and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health.

Minelle Mahtani, PhD

Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty, UBC
Professor, Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, UBC Faculty of Arts

Dr. Minelle Mahtani is the Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty, a new position at UBC that will support the university’s institutional commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in the scholarly and leadership environment for faculty members at UBC. Dr. Mahtani is also a Professor in the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice in the Faculty of Arts.

Since 2009, Dr. Mahtani has been an Associate Professor in Human Geography and Journalism at the University of Toronto Scarborough, serving as the Associate Chair of the Department of Human Geography from 2014-2015. She received her PhD in Geography from University College London in 2000. Dr. Mahtani is the Past President of the Association for Canadian Studies, and former Chair of Metropolis-Ontario (CERIS – Centre for Excellence on Immigration and Settlement).

She is the 2012 Winner of the Glenda Laws Award from the Association of American Geographers for outstanding contributions to geography and social policy, and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal Award winner. Dr. Mahtani is a former television news journalist with the CBC and has consulted with a variety of organizations on diversity and journalism, including Citizenship Immigration Canada and the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Integration, among other groups. She is the former strategic counsel for the not-for-profit IMPACS (Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society).

Professor Mahtani’s research interests are in the areas of diversity initiatives; anti-colonial approaches in critical geography; global mixed-race theory and critical race theory; and structural and systemic racism as experienced among academics of colour.

Daniel Steel, PhD

Associate Professor, W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics in the School of Population and Public Health

Dr. Steel is Associate Professor in the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics in the School of Population and Public Health.

His research focuses on the intersection of values and science in the context of environmental and/or public health issues. Current research includes a SSHRC funded project on different concepts of diversity, and how these are relevant to explanations of how diversity can generate better science or better science-informed policy.

Dr. Steel is also the author of Philosophy and the Precautionary Principle: Science, Evidence and Environmental Policy (2015 Cambridge University Press), and is currently interested in the fair distribution of costs of precautions taken to protect public health or the environment.

More recently, he has worked on ethical issues related to the ongoing opioid crisis, including voluntary consent in clinical trials that offer access to pharmaceutical grade heroin and bias in research on and regulation of prescription opioids.

Tina Strehlke

CEO, Minerva BC
As CEO of Minerva BC, Tina leads a team of thoughtful, talented change makers who develop, empower and promote women’s leadership. Tina first discovered Minerva in 2001 when working as an employment counsellor at a leading career development company. She remembers referring clients to Minerva’s Women Helping Women Work program because it offered them mentorship and connection with accomplished women leaders. After 15 years’ developing her expertise in leadership, career development, program design, adult learning, human resources and communications, she joined Minerva BC as the Programs Director. Eighteen months later she assumed the role of CEO.

Tina feels honored to lead Minerva BC into its third decade and appreciates working at the intersection of education, leadership and reconciliation. Tina has a BA in International Relations from UBC and a MA in Communications from Royal Roads University. She has lived and worked in Germany, Costa Rica, Guyana and Taiwan. Her strengths are: seeing the big picture, connecting the dots, and empathetic thinking.