Stress Management & Mental Wellness for Entrepreneurs
Join H2i on Monday March 3rd as we kick off University of Toronto Entrepreneurship Week with an event exploring stress management and mental wellness for entrepreneurs!
About the Event:
Stress management is a critical skill for everyone, including entrepreneurs. Since many entrepreneurs are juggling school, work, family and starting their own businesses, we want them to know early on in their careers that it is important to understand the difference between good and bad stress, and learn ways to support their own mental health and that of their team. The session will kick off with a Keynote from Dr. Lauren Brown, which will explore how entrepreneurs can harness their intuition and disrupt the ‘stress status quo!’ A panel discussion and audience Q&A will follow, with reflections and insights from a panel of remarkable founders. Join H2i on March 3rd and give your brain a break before a busy Entrepreneurship Week!
Schedule
3:30 PM | Doors Open
4:00 PM | Opening Remarks
4:10 PM | Keynote Speaker|Small, Simple & Sustainable Approaches to Stress Management| Dr. Lauren Brown
4:30 PM | Panel | Neil D’Cruz, Dr. Cameron Stewart, Vishar Yaghoubian; Moderator: Paul Santerre
5:00 PM | Q&A Discussion
5:25 PM | Closing Remarks
Meet the Speakers:
Dr. Lauren Brown holds a B.Ed. and M.Ed. in Adult Education and a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Teaching & Learning from the University of Toronto. She is a mental health literacy educator and advocate and has led the mindfulness and yoga programming at the University of Toronto for the past seven years. During this time, she has seen the annual engagement in this programming grow by more than 800%. She has also been a guest lecturer across campus and a keynote speaker in healthcare, non-profit, and entrepreneurial settings. Dr. Brown is currently working as a subject matter expert on multiple initiatives on campus including a modular wellness curriculum for the classroom. Lauren recently received the Exemplary University of Toronto Ambassador for her support of the University’s mission through her outstanding contribution and daily work on campus.
Neil is an accomplished healthcare executive with 20+ years of Canadian, US and international healthcare experience in executive management, management consulting and entrepreneurship. Known for helping organizations identify and implement innovation and growth strategies, Neil specializes in assisting organizations to scale commercially.
Neil currently serves as Owner/ CEO at Odyssey Health Services. Previously, he held roles at Dynacare, where he led the company’s business transformation and diversified growth by commercially scaling two businesses, Dynacare Insurance Solutions and Dynacare Plus. Neil was also a management consultant servicing the biopharmaceuticals industry in New York, Sao Paulo, and Toronto.
Neil holds a Master of Business Administration from The University of Rochester Simon School of Business and an Economics degree from McMaster University.
Dr. Cameron Stewart, Mesosil’s Founder and CEO, has led the development of Mesosil’s technology at the University of Toronto and its commercialization through successful financing activities, team-building, and sales negotiations with industrial collaborators. Prior to Mesosil, he obtained his PhD from the University of Toronto and holds a Bachelor of Science in Nanotechnology Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Mesosil develops and manufactures antimicrobial and bioactive additives for dental and medical materials. Dental treatments like fillings have very high failure rates due to reinfection, and manufacturers of these materials have very few ways to compete in a crowded marketplace. By partnering with these companies, Mesosil enhances the material’s survivability without altering its underlying performance or use, providing manufacturers with field leading capabilities and clinicians and patients with truly permanent solutions to some of the most common diseases on the planet.
Vishar is the founder of Toothpod, a dental healthcare startup. She has her Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, specifically in psychology and public health. During her time as a student, she was on the board of governing council and the Mental Health Director for Woodsworth for several years at the University of Toronto. She is nominated for Forbes 30 under 30 this year and was named Entrepreneur of the year and Valedictorian by Next Canada.
Professor J. Paul Santerre has published >230 peer reviewed publications and is a listed inventor on >70 patents in the area of medical polymers. He has trained over 80 graduate students and generated over $61M in grant funding. He is co-founder and current director of the Health Innovation Hub at the University of Toronto (a student focused entrepreneur training co-curricular program that has trained > 750 client health science companies which have generated > $520M Cdn). He is also the current chair of the Health Entrepreneuship Pillar for the African Higher Education Health Collaborative supported by the Mastercard Foundation. He is a co-founder of Interface Biologics, along with having spun-out five other start-up companies from his lab, and has won multiple national awards for his achievements in enabling entrepreneurship, included Canada’s Governor General award for Innovation, and the Professional Engineers of Ontario Entrepreneurship Award in 2017, among others. He has received multiple awards for his community activity including the 2018 President’s Impact Award from the University of Toronto, and in 2018 and 2020 he was recognized respectively by the US Society for Biomaterials and the Canadian Biomaterials Society for lifetime contributions to the scientific literature.