Speakers

Megan Bassendale

Megan Bassendale

Founder & CEO

Forensic Guardians International Consulting Inc.

Beth Brinston

Beth Brinston

Senior Manager, Risk Advisory Crisis & Resilience

Deloitte

Beth is a Senior Manager in the Risk & Advisory Practice based in Halifax Nova Scotia.  She has over 18 years of experience in Business Continuity Management (BC) and Disaster Recovery Program Management (DR), Crisis Communications and Emergency Response.  She has developed and implemented BC and DR program policies and procedures to meet ISO22031 and ISO27001 standards, performed assessments on existing programs and facilitated Business Impact Assessments (BIA)  and Technology Impact Assessments (TIA) across several industries.  She has led the implementation and testing of several DR strategies including on-premise and cloud technologies.

Tom DeSorcy

Tom DeSorcy

Fire Chief (ret)

District of Hope

Tom DeSorcy joined the fire service in 1983 and became the first paid firefighter in his hometown of Hope, B.C., when he became fire chief in 2000. Originally a radio broadcaster, Tom’s voice could be heard in the early 1990s across Canada as one of the hosts of Country Coast to Coast. Tom is married with children, and grandchildren. He is equally at home at a bonspiel, on the golf course or in the kitchen, and continues to enjoy his connections to the Canadian fire service.

David Etkin

David Etkin

Professor, Disaster & Emergency Management

York University

Joshua Johnston

Joshua Johnston

Forest Fire Research Scientist / WildFireSat Principal Investigator

Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada

Dr. Johnston is a former wildland fire fighter and incident commander. Today he is a Forest Fire Research Scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the development of remote sensing tools for studying the physical properties of combustion and fire behaviour, as well as the adaptation of remote sensing tools for operational fire management. Dr. Johnston represents Canada’s satellite fire monitoring interests globally through a number of international leadership roles (e.g. GOFC-GOLD Fire Implementation Team and CEOS WG Disasters). In 2017 Josh launched Canada’s first national emergency tactical wildfire mapping systems, known as Torchlight. In 2018 he was named the Principal Investigator for the WildFireSat (WFS) satellite mission, and in 2022 he led the mission to a fully funded state, making WildFireSat the world’s first publicly owned, purpose built operational wildfire monitoring satellite system.

Vito Mangialardi

Business Continuity Management (BCM) and Operational Resiliency Strategic Advisor

Angela McAllister

Angela McAllister

Health and Academic Partnerships

Canadian Centre for Cyber Security

Miranda Myles

Manager, Emergency Management and Community Resilience, Vancouver Emergency Management Agency

City of Vancouver

Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith

Senior Policy Analyst

Environment and Climate Change Canada

Katia Tynan

Katia Tynan

Manager, Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction

City of Vancouver