Planning, practicing and fine tuning social enterprise are the themes of our upcoming Enterprising Spirit: Creating Value and Social Good conference. Our speakers, session leaders and panel participants are a unique group of thinkers who bring a rich knowledge and professional expertise to the social enterprise movement.
The final three Conference participants we would like to tell you more about are Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Tonya Surman, and Bill Young. We are thrilled that Tonya Surman will be providing the keynote address during the lunch portion of the Conference and Mayor Nenshi will be speaking at the Social EnterPrize Awards Reception. During the Enterprising Spirit Conference, both Tonya and Bill will be participating in the “Show Me the Money: Solutions to Challenges of Growing Your Social Enteprise” panel session.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi is a passionate Calgarian, an accomplished business professional, and a community leader with a solid track record of getting things done. He’s run a large non-profit, he’s been a trusted advisor to corporate leaders in Canada and the US, and he literally wrote the book on Canadian cities.
Mayor Nenshi spent many years at the international business consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., where he advised large telecommunications, banking, retail and oil and gas companies in corporate strategy. Mayor Nenshi was Canada’s first tenured professor in the field on non-profit management, at Mount Royal University’s Bissett School of Business. His real passion, though, is making cities, especially Calgary, work better. He’s been the Chairman of the EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts, and has lent his expertise to non-profits across the city, including the Calgary Foundation, the United Way, the Coral Springs Community Association, and Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids.
Mayor Nenshi grew up in Calgary and has lived and worked in cities around the world before coming back to make his home here. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (with distinction) from the University of Calgary, a Masters in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he studied as a Kennedy Fellow.
Tonya Surman is a social entrepreneur, community animator and network choreographer. With a passion for bringing life to world-changing projects, Tonya is the founding executive director of the Centre for Social Innovation – a dynamic convergence space in Toronto whose mission is to catalyze, connect and support new ideas that are changing the world. CSI provides shared space to 200 social mission groups, acts as a community centre for social innovators and is an incubator for world-changing projects.
In 2009, CSI was awarded the ‘City Innovation’ award from the Canadian Urban Institute and Tonya was recognized as a ‘Leader in Social Change’ from the Canadian New Media Awards. In 2010, Tonya became a Global Ashoka Fellow for her innovative work building models of collaboration. 2010 also saw CSI innovate a citizen-based Community Bond for the purchase of an old building to create another vibrant social change community in Toronto.
Prior to CSI, Tonya was the founding Partnership Director for the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment, whose work, in part, led to a new legislative framework to manage chemicals and the banning of Bisphenol A in baby bottles. Tonya has been creating and leading social ventures since 1987 and has built her body of knowledge around multi-sectoral collaboration and entrepreneurship for social change.
Bill Young is the founder and President of Social Capital Partners (“SCP”) a non-profit, social finance company started in 2001. SCP’s primary goal is to find innovative ways to provide meaningful job opportunities for people who face employment barriers. Throughout its history it has facilitated thousands of jobs for disadvantaged populations by financing a number of successful social enterprises across Canada and by providing financing and/or advisory services to for profit businesses that implement a community hiring program as part of their recruitment process. SCP facilitates the hiring of these individuals and helps ensure they have the appropriate skills to be successful employees.
Before founding SCP, Bill worked for approximately twenty years in the private sector primarily as CEO of Hamilton Computers, and Optel Communications Corp. He began his career as a Chartered Accountant and holds an Honours BA from the University of Toronto and an MBA from Harvard.
Please join us on November 17, 2011 for a day of interactive workshops, experimental problem solving, and open exchange among people working on or interested in social enterprise and the non-profit sector. Join us for the first annual awards reception where we will distribute the Social EnterPrize Awards – annual grants to grow and sustain social enterprises, provoke innovation and build capacity in the non-profit sector.
Conference registration is ongoing and limited. Please check our Program page regularly for more information.
We look forward to seeing you on November 17th, 2011, in Calgary, Alberta.