Season 2
Ep1: What is the Gender Wage Gap?
Paulette Senior
Paulette Senior is President & CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation. She has devoted her career to empowering women and girls to overcome barriers and reach their full potential.
Paulette started her career on the front lines of social service organizations in some of Toronto’s most underserved neighbourhoods. Her work and advocacy with shelters, as well as employment and housing programs, paved the way toward leadership roles at national organizations. She served as CEO of YWCA Canada for 10 years before joining the Canadian Women’s Foundation as CEO in 2016. Her work with the Foundation is guided by the vision of an inclusive, national movement toward gender equity that will strengthen all Canadians.
Throughout her career, she has earned numerous awards and become one of the most respected women leaders and speakers in Canada. Paulette is a member of the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, an advisory body that develops recommendations on gender equality issues across the G7 agenda. In 2021, she received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Lethbridge. She is featured in the book Inspiring Canadians: 40 Brilliant Canadians and Their Visions for the Nation.
Ep2: Biases from daycare to workplaces
Julie Cafley
Dr. Julie Cafley is a creative, strategic leader and an accomplished thought leader with expertise in equity and inclusion, public policy and higher-education leadership. She is the Executive Director of Catalyst Canada, a non-profit organization that supports over 500 organizations in building more inclusive workplaces. Julie holds a PhD from the University of Ottawa with sought-after expertise in university presidential mandates. Her thesis focused on higher education leadership and governance through the lens of unfinished terms of Canadian university presidents. She is a frequent writer and speaker on gender equity, inclusive workplaces and leadership. Julie is a committed advocate for women and leadership, a constant ally for First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples and an indefatigable champion for diversity initiatives.
Ep3: Paternity leave and maternal bias
Maya Roy
Maya Roy is a Director of Research and Impact at WomenatthecentrE.
Maya is an experienced social worker and is the past CEO of YWCA Canada and Newcomer Women’s Services Toronto. Experienced in affordable housing and public policy, Roy has served on a range of committees and task forces providing expert council to decision-makers. Roy served on the 2018 Gender Equality Advisory Council during Canada’s G7 Presidency and was the Co-Chair of the Future of Jobs Working Group. In 2019, she was a member of Canada’s official delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. In partnership with Rotman School of Business, she served as Strategic Co-Lead on A Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for Canada: Making the Economy Work for Everyone, the first nationally focused plan of its kind in the world. Roy currently serves on the board of Women’s College Hospital where she serves on the Quality Assurance Committee and is an appointed member of the National Housing Council. She has also worked internationally as a front-line social worker where she worked to mainstream gender-based analysis in Brazil, India, Thailand, and the U.K., in human rights and violence prevention programming. Her contributions have been recognized nationally and internationally. Roy was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, where she serves on the YGL Advisory. She has been a recipient of many honours including being named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, Toronto Community Foundation’s Vital People, and has received the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA)’s Gender Equity Advocate Award. Roy is proficient in Bengali, French, and English. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in Social Work from Toronto Metropolitan University. In 2022, she completed executive education with the Harvard Kennedy School and Wharton School of Business in public leadership and board governance.
Ep4: Care and “domestic” bias
Katherine scott
Katherine is a Senior Researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and serves as the director for its gender equality and public policy work. She has worked in the community sector as a researcher, writer and advocate over the past 25 years, writing on a range of issues from social policy to inequality to funding for non-profits. She is currently working on a national project examining the labour market experiences of marginalized female workers with the goal of identifying policy alternatives for advancing women’s economic security in the post-pandemic economy.
Ep5: Labour market bias
Sarah Kaplan
Sarah Kaplan is Distinguished Professor, Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE), and Professor of Strategic Management, at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. She is a co-author of the bestselling business book, Creative Destruction. Her latest book—The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation—is based on her award-winning course at the Rotman School. Her current research focuses on applying an innovation lens to social challenges such as gender inequality. She was a strategic lead in developing the Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for Canada. In 2020, she co-authored with Peter Dey, 360º Governance: Where are the Directors in a World in Crisis which outlines corporate director responsibilities for the 21st century. She regularly advises corporations, governments and agencies on policies related to environmental, social and governance issues such as board diversity, board governance, care work, employment, pay equity, gender-based analysis and other topics. In 2021, the Governance Professionals of Canada awarded her the Peter Dey Governance Achievement Award, and in 2022, she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women Executive Network. Formerly a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (where she remains a Senior Fellow), and an innovation specialist for nearly a decade at McKinsey & Company, she earned her PhD at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She has a BA with honors in Political Science from UCLA and an MA with distinction in International Relations and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Ep6: Confronting bias to close the gender wage gap
Anthony Greenwald
Anthony Greenwald is a social psychologist and, since 1986, professor of psychology at University of Washington. In 1959, Greenwald received a B.A. from Yale University. In 1961, he received a M.A. from Harvard University, and in 1963, he completed his Ph.D., also at Harvard.
He has also served on the editorial board for more than a dozen psychological journals, including Psychological Review, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, and Consciousness and Cognition.
Anthony Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji, Brian Nosek, and others, have conducted extensive research on cognition and have collaborated to create the implicit association test (IAT). Their work on implicit bias was honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science with a 2018 Golden Goose Award.
Greenwald has received many other awards for his contributions to psychology. These include the National Institute of Health’s Research Scientist Award, the Donald T. Campbell Award from the Society for Personal and Social Psychology, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology’s prestigious Distinguished Scientist Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Psychological Science.
Season 1
International Equal Pay Day: A Global Call to Action
Monika Queisser
Monika Queisser has worked with the OECD since 1997. She currently supervises and coordinates the work on social protection, social indicators, pensions, affordable housing, family and LGBTI policies. In 2007-8, she worked as an adviser to the OECD Secretary-General. Prior to joining the OECD, Ms. Queisser worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. where she was a member of the pensions and insurance group in the Financial Sector Development Department. Ms. Queisser began her career with the German Ifo Institute for economic research in Munich. Her professional experience also includes employment as a journalist at daily newspapers and broadcasting in Germany.
International Equal Pay Day: A Global Call to Action
Emanuela Pozzan
Ms. Pozzan has more than 15 years of experience working in the Middle East, Africa and Asia on gender equality and non-discrimination in the world of work. Her educational background includes a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and a Master of Science in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies with focus on gender equality and forced migration. Her career included serving for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NGOs, UNFPA and the ILO. She is now working in the Gender, Equality and Diversity (GED&ILOAIDS) Branch at the ILO HQ in the capacity of Senior Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination Specialist. She coordinates a portfolio of initiatives around access to work for women, care economy, pay equity and violence and harassment in the world of work. Ms. Possan is part of EPIC (Equal Pay International Coalition), led by the ILO, UN Women, and the OECD. The Coalition’s goal is to achieve equal pay for women and men everywhere.
Technology and Gender-Based Inequality
Dr Debora Spar
Dr. Spar is the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean for Business and Global Society. Her current research focuses on issues of gender and technology, and the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. Spar tackles some of these issues in her latest book Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny.
Dr. Spar served as the President of Barnard College from 2008 to 2017. During her tenure at Barnard, Spar led initiatives to highlight women’s leadership and advancement, including the creation of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies and the development of Barnard’s Global Symposium series.
Before joining Barnard, Spar spent 17 years on the HBS faculty as the Spangler Family Professor as well as the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. A prolific writer, Spar’s books include Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet (2001), The Baby Business (2006), and Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection (2013).
Myth-Busting the Gender Wage Gap
Janelle Benjamin
Janelle Benjamin is the Founder of All Things Equitable Inc., a new Greater Toronto Area-based Management Consulting Firm, addressing workplace inequities for all historically marginalized groups. Her firm goes beyond diversity and inclusion and offers creative solutions for leadership development and employee engagement and education.
Janelle is a Juris Doctor who has worked in government, in professional regulation, and in the not-for-profit sector since 2006. She has extensive experience setting policies; assessing practices; monitoring and enforcing compliance; and tracking and reporting progress both in regulatory bodies and in fledgling government agencies/divisions tasked with oversight for the implementation of ground-breaking diversity and inclusion legislation and initiatives like the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act for people with disabilities and the Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act for professional and highly-skilled newcomers. She also has experience leading and championing corporate diversity and inclusion strategies.
Myth-Busting the Gender Wage Gap
Ian Howcroft
Ian Howcroft is the Chief Executive Officer of Skills Ontario, as well as a member of the OACETT Council and the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing.
Skills Ontario is building Ontario’s future skilled workforce. As a charity organization, Skills Ontario enables and empowers Ontarians, including young women, Indigenous youth, underrepresented groups, and more, to consider a career in the skilled trades and technologies. The organization’s programs focus on engagement with students, teachers, parents, volunteers, employers, and mentors in order to connect education, experience, and employment. Skills Ontario delivers presentations, hosts competitions and discovery events, runs challenges, camps, and workshops, and connects students to employers. Visit skillsontario.com for more information.
Myth-Busting the Gender Wage Gap
Alyson Colon
Alyson Colón is the Associate Director at the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Alyson is committed to advancing the conversation on gender dynamics in the workplace and larger society through rigorous research and practical and impactful approaches.
Prior to joining the Institute for Gender and the Economy, Alyson served as the PhD Program Coordinator at the Rotman School of Management, informing the strategic direction of the program and supporting the research activities of the students and faculty. In addition to her tenure at the Rotman School, Alyson has held successively senior roles in the non-profit sector, including work as a gender auditor for international development organizations.
Alyson holds a Master’s degree in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, and a post-graduate certificate in Fundraising and Volunteer Management from Humber College.
Myth-Busting the Gender Wage Gap
Ed Gough Jnr
Ed Gough Jr. (Dr. Vibe) is a sought-after speaker in the areas of fatherhood and manhood. His purpose is to bring purpose and clarity to fathers and men’s lives. He believes that “the better men are, the better the world will be”.
Ed has been the host and producer of his own award-winning online show The Dr. Vibe Show™ for the last decade. He has done over 2000 interviews with people from all over the world. He has gotten into the minds of powerhouses such as Kenneth Brawell (CEO of Fathers Incorporated), Lorenzo Ieraci (Director General · Public Services and Procurement for the government of Canada) and Lisa Hickey (CEO – The Good Men Project – one of the most viewed websites for men in the world). His main mission is to peel back the layers of the mainstream society’s construct around fathers and men, to reveal the positivity that is often clouded.
As of April 2020, as part of the Dad Central Ontario team, Ed is part of the Dad Central Ontario collaboration with Dove Men+Care promoting paternity leave and fatherhood.
Women, Work, and Inequity and Women of the Pandemic
Lauren McKeon
photo credit: Yuli Scheidt
Lauren is the deputy editor of Reader’s Digest Canada. She was previously the digital editor at The Walrus where, in 2019, they won gold at the Digital Publishing Awards for our online series Sex-Ed: Beyond the Classroom. She has also been the editor of Canada’s progressive, independent This Magazine and have worked as a reporter, editor, and writer in the Arctic, living in Yellowknife, and travelling Canada’s territories and northern Alberta to write about everything from prisons to the Peel Valley. Her feature work has been recognized several times at the National Magazine Awards, including four honorable mentions, one silver and, in 2015, a gold in the personal journalism category for my Toronto Life piece “Save me From My Workout.” She has taught long-form writing at Humber College and have a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction from the University of King’s College. Her work has most recently appeared in Toronto Life, Chatelaine, Hazlitt, and The Walrus.
Her new book Women of The Pandemic: Stories from the Front Lines of COVID-19 was published in April 2021 with McClelland & Stewart. She is also the author of No More Nice Girls: Gender, Power, and Why It’s Time to Stop Playing By the Rules and F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best Canadian Essays 2017 and Whatever Gets You Through It.
Women of Colour in the Workplace
Seghen Woldai
Seghen Woldai is a Manager in the Healthcare Consulting practice at Deloitte. She has worked on the strategic planning and large-scale transformation of several academic hospitals and local health regions. Prior, Seghen worked in academic research as an immunologist and biosafety officer, and later in pharmaceutical advertising, navigating the complex regulatory requirements in Canada and the US. In addition to her work experience, Seghen holds a Bachelor of Science in Forensic Science, a Master of Science in Microbiology & Immunology, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Toronto. She also proudly serves as the Director of Engagement on the Lean in Canada board.