Keynote Speakers and Special Guests
Samantha Nutt, MD, FRCPC
Executive Director & Founder, War Child Canada
Voted as one of “12 Canadians making a difference,” as one of the “top 30 Canadian Women” and noted by Time magazine as one of Canada’s top five activists, Dr. Samantha Nutt has made an impact in global health in a very short period of time. Trained as in family practice at McMaster University, Dr. Nutt has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, northern Uganda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of the Congo and at the Thai-Burmese border, advocating for children affected by war through the NGO she founded, War Child Canada. She currently holds an academic position at the University of Toronto in the Department of Community Medicine, and holds a postgraduate degree from London School of Hygiene in Public Health.
Dr. Nutt will be speaking to us this year about the role of global health professionals in advocating for change, and about how War Child Canada relates the MDGs to global health needs.
Dr. Julio Montaner, MD, FRCPC, FCCP
Clinical Director, BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Professor of Medicine, UBC
As one of BC’s most respected doctors, Julio Montaner has worked to create better health for people living with HIV in BC for more than 20 years, especially in his current role as the Clinical Director for the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital. His groundbreaking research in highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), its management, and combating mult-drug-resistant strains of HIV, have put him at the forefront of his field.
As head of the International AIDS Society, clinical director of a clinical and research centre that does international work to study the HIV pandemic, and as a native of Argentina, Dr. Montaner has a unique understanding of the importance of international health collaboration. He is speaking to us this year about his experiences in combating HIV from local to global.
Special Guests
Clement Abas Apaak
An SFU celebrity, founder of Canadian Students for Darfur (now a national organization advocating and fundraising for the wartorn region in Sudan), former President of the Simon Fraser Student Society, outspoken advocate for human rights, and PhD student and sessional lecturer at SFU in Anthropology, Apaak is one of SFU’s most recognizable figures.
He’ll be spinning world music for our Friday night Stand Up Dessert Social - we hope you can join us!
