The New World of Work

Grace Chang is currently a Finance and Strategy Intern at Atom Finance and a dual-major Finance and Psychology student in her third year at the University of Calgary. She will be joining RBC this summer as an Investment Banking Summer Intern in the Calgary office, focusing on transactions in the energy industry. Grace is also a founding member of the UCeed Haskayne Student Fund, Canada's largest student-led venture capital fund with over $2MM in committed capital. In her spare time, she serves as a tutor for ScholarsX and is an ardent advocate for the development of formalized mentorship programs for women in STEM and the capital markets. 

Brian Palmer is a leadership and career coach with more than 14 years of experience in the consulting and energy industries. Throughout his career, Brian has recruited and coached professionals in a variety of industries including engineering, business, geosciences, IT and HR. He has helped more than 750 individuals break through and advance their careers. In addition to coaching, Brian has also held roles as a compensation analyst, recruiter and talent management advisor. Brian holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance from the University of Calgary, a Professional Coaching Certification through the International Coaching Federation and is a Leadership Circle Practitioner. 

Keri Damen is passionate about the new work of world and how everyone from students to leaders can use entrepreneurial thinking to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world. At the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking, she is dedicated to creating the next generation of changemakers who will positively transform lives and societies, helping to achieve UCalgary’s vision to be Canada’s most entrepreneurial university. The Hunter Hub fosters and supports entrepreneurial thinking by building programs, initiatives, and synergies in innovation for students and faculty across the campus, classroom and greater community environments. Previously the founding Managing Director of University of Toronto Entrepreneurship, Keri has an International MBA (IMBA) from York University and an extensive background in entrepreneurship education, venture creation, and building highly-networked organization within the entrepreneurship and innovation space. 

Tim Rhodes is a champion for designed experiences. As of March 2021, he leads and contributes to a team working on engagement programs across the colleague journey including onboarding, orientation, training, wellness, and work enablement through an internal ideation platform. His passion is with leadership development, performance and effectiveness, and how these topics come together across a remote & distributed workforce. 

Between 2017 and 2020, his team was responsible to champion experience design tools such as human-centered design, behavioral economics, journey/ecosystem mapping to influence, design, test, and build future-state customer experiences. 

Tim joined TD in 2008 and has held roles across sales and operational functions, learning and development, organizational effectiveness, marketing, as well as both customer and colleague experience. He moved from Edmonton to Toronto in 2014 with the bank, and now resides in Collingwood, Ontario with his wife, two kids, and family pet: Red Dog. 

Bogdan is the Program Lead for the Entrepreneur First Toronto team, where he works with founders to help them go from pre-team and pre-idea to building a Seed-funded company. Prior to joining EF, Bogdan was the Artificial Intelligence Lead at Creative Destruction Lab in Toronto, working with AI-focused deep tech start-ups. Additionally, he's had experience both on the investment side working at Oxford Sciences Innovation (a $1B+ fund investing in Oxford science and engineering) and the start-up side working at Frequency Therapeutics in the lead-up to their Series A round of financing (they've since gone on to IPO). Bogdan has a PhD in computational genomics from the University of Oxford, and did his BSc. in Neuroscience at the University of Calgary.