The Victoria Forum presents its inaugural conference on Nov. 17-19, 2017 in Victoria, BC. Conference activities will take place in downtown Victoria and on the University of Victoria Campus. 

Keynote Plenary Speakers

Lord John Alderdice is a Liberal Democrat member and former chairman of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. He is director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Harris Manchester College (University of Oxford) and chairman of the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building (Belfast). As leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland he played a significant role in negotiating the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, was first speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and from 2004 was one of four international commissioners appointed by the British and Irish Governments to monitor security normalization. He continues to work on fundamentalism, radicalization and violent political conflict.

Jaloul Ayed served as minister of finance in the second and third post-revolution governments in Tunisia. He was previously board member and president of the Management Committee of the BMCE Group in Morocco. He presently serves as president of MED Confederation and vice president of Euromed Capital Forum. He also is an active member in several associations of the Tunisian civil society, and a frequent speaker in professional and academic circles. He was the Tunisian candidate for the presidency of the African Development Bank in 2015.

Dr. Kamal Al-Solaylee, associate professor of journalism, Ryerson University is the author of two national bestsellers. Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes won the Toronto Book Award and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and Canada Reads. Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone) won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and was a finalist for the Governor General Literary Awards. Al-Solaylee is a former editor and theatre critic at the Globe and Mail and has written for The Walrus, Toronto Life, Literary Review of Canada, the Toronto Star and the National Post, among others.

The Right Honourable Kim Campbell PC, CC, OBC, QC, a political scientist and lawyer, served as Canada’s 19th - and first female - prime minister in 1993. She also held the cabinet portfolios of minister of state for Indian Affairs and Northern Development, minister of Justice and Attorney General, minister of National Defence, and minister of Veterans' Affairs. She was the first woman to hold the Canadian justice and defence portfolios, and the first woman minister of defence of a NATO country. Since April, 2014, Campbell has devoted three quarters of her time to serving as the founding principal of the new Peter Lougheed Leadership College at the University of Alberta, the first class of which graduates in 2017.

Dr. Juan José Daboub is chairman and CEO of The Daboub Partnership, vice-chairman of Dorado Group, and founding CEO of the Global Adaptation Institute, a foundation dedicated to adaptation to climate change. He is the former chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change (2012-2014). As managing director of the World Bank, from 2006 to 2010, Daboub oversaw operations in 110 countries in Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America. He was also responsible for the oversight of the Human Development and Sustainable Development Networks, the Information Systems Group, the World Bank Institute, the Department of Institutional Integrity and the Arab World Initiative. From 1999 to 2004,

Dr. Donald Kaberuka, 7th president of the African Development Bank Group, Africa’s premier development finance institution, chairman of the bank group’s board of directors (2005-2015) and special envoy, African Union Peace Fund.

Dr. Bessma Momani works on issues of global economic governance and specializes in the political economy of the Middle East. She has extensive expertise in the fields of Canadian foreign policy, Arab Spring and organizational culture. More recently, Momani has turned her attention to studying Arab Canadians and Arab youth.

Hilary Pearson is president of Philanthropic Foundations Canada, a national network of family, independent and corporate grant makers in Canada, representing many of the largest private charitable foundations in the country. Since her 2001 appointment as president, she has grown the organization to become a significant voice in Canadian organized philanthropy.

Dan Pontefract is chief envisioner at TELUS, a Canadian telecommunications company, where he heads the Transformation Office, a future-of-work consulting group that helps organizations enhance their corporate cultures and collaboration practices. Previously, as head of Learning & Collaboration at TELUS, Pontefract introduced a new leadership framework–called the TELUS Leadership Philosophy–that dramatically helped to increase the company’s employee engagement to record levels of nearly 90%.

For photos of keynote speakers contact Krista Boehnert (Gustavson School of Business communications) at 250-721-6630 (office), 250-415-5093 (cell) or boehnert@uvic.ca

Program & Themes

Delegates can participate in six thematic tracks offered throughout the three-day conference:

• Diversity and Economic Prosperity
• Economic of Indigenous Inclusiveness
• Geopolitics of Diversity
• Defining Climate Justice
• Private Philanthropy, Civil Society and Inclusive Development
• Global Trade and the Economics of Diversity

Partners

In addition to the Gustavson School of Business and Global Affairs Canada, the Victoria Forum brings together partner stakeholders including:

• The Global Center for Pluralism
• The Canadian International Council
• World Wildlife Fund Canada
• Philanthropic Foundations Canada
• The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
• The Conference Board of Canada
• University of Waterloo
• University of Victoria
  • National Consortium of Indigenous Economic Development
  • Faculty of Law
  • Centre for Global Studies
  • Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions
  • Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives