Connected Intelligence with Sonia Sennik Sonia Sennik

How do you revitalize a company as it bounces back from a low point?

Yousry Bissada is President and Chief Executive Officer of Home Capital Group. Yousry has more than 30 years of financial services experience focused on the mortgage industry. He is a CPA, GCA and Accredited Mortgage Professional.

Prior to joining Home Capital, Yousry served as President and CEO of Kanetix Ltd., an insurance and financial products digital platform. He has held many senior executive roles across the financial services and fintech industry in Canada. He was named CFO of FirstLine Trust Company in 1989, which was later acquired by CIBC. In 1999, he was named SVP of Real Estate Secured Lending Products at TD Canada Trust, overseeing one of Canada's largest mortgage businesses.

We talk to Yousry about how to lead through a crisis, how to live your company values, and the importance of teamwork.

This episode features two thought leaders – Professors Maja Djikic & Tiziana Casciaro.

Maja is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Self-Development Laboratory at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Tiziana is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and the Marcel Desautels Chair in Integrative Thinking at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

This conversation is a blend of the thought leadership between Maja and Tiziana. We discuss Maja’s recently published book “The Possible Self: A Leader’s Guide to Personal Development” and integrate this with elements of “Power, for All: How it Really Works and Why It Is Everyone’s Business”, a book Tiziana co-authored in 2021.

This insightful discussion focuses on self development, its impact on relationships, the balance of power, and how interconnected each of these elements are in your work, and your life.

How do you overcome the feeling of "being stuck" to become your possible self?

Maja Djikic is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Self-Development Laboratory at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

She is a psychologist specializing in the field of personality development. Her work focuses on how self changes, and means of developing a congruent and flexible self. Her work also examines the impact of self-change on relationships.

She has published more than 30 articles and book chapters in the area of personality development in journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Research in Personality, Creativity Research Journal, New Ideas in Psychology, etc. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, Salon, Slate, The Scientific American Mind, and many other media outlets.

Maja’s first book “The Possible Self: A Leader’s Guide to Personal Development” was released on March 5, 2024.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/H_A_hNTuDOU?si=3Ge7moZIYknRp-2c

How do you transform doubt into focus and determination?

Janet speaks to us about her career journey from Procter and Gamble to Staircase Ventures, being a competitive long distance runner, and maintaining focus and determination when people say “it cannot be done!”

Janet Bannister is the Founder and Managing Partner of Staircase Ventures. In 2004, Janet launched Kijiji.ca and grew it to become one of the most visited websites in Canada.

Before Kijii, Janet spent four years at eBay in Silicon Valley where she helped transform eBay from a Collectibles to a mainstream marketplace. She started her career as a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble and then joined McKinsey & Co. where she was an Engagement Manager. She also founded and built a successful consulting business and was CEO at a venture-backed start-up prior to joining Real Ventures.

Janet has won numerous awards and recognition including Venture Capital Journal’s 2021 “Women of Influence in Private Markets”, Pitchbooks’ 2021 “Female Founders & Investors to Know”, and American Bankers’ 2019 “Most Influential Women in Payments”.

How can AI enable transformation in addressing population and public health challenges?

This video episode brings back our recurring segment Going Viral with Dr. Rosella because the list of things we bring to work sometimes includes viruses(!) The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how and where we work, and made us all aware of the importance of public health. So, we invite epidemiologist Laura Rosella to chat about the state of global public health. In this episode, we discuss the current state of COVID-19, Dr. Rosella's new program, AI for Public Health, and robot doctors.

Professor Laura Rosella is a Canadian epidemiologist and Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in the University of Toronto, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Analytics. Laura is the Principal Investigator and Scientific Director of the Population Health Analytics Lab. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars and the inaugural Stephen Family Research Chair in Community Health at the Institute for Better Health, Trillium Health Partners. Laura has authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of epidemiology, public health and health services research. Her work has been featured in major news outlets such as Forbes, Newsweek, Reuters, CBC, CTV, The National Post, and The Globe and Mail.

Laura has an incredible way of simplifying complex public health situations. Please enjoy Going Viral with Dr. Rosella – Season Six edition!

Is our future with generative AI terrifying, exciting, or fascinating?

In this episode, we talk about the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, the opportunities to implement AI in healthcare delivery, and privacy in a world enabled by generative AI.

Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is the Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.

Along with Ajay Agrawal and Joshua Gans, Avi is the author of the bestselling books Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence and Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence.
In this episode, we talk about the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, the opportunities to implement AI in healthcare delivery, and privacy in a world enabled by generative AI.