Summit 2026

Erika Aubertin (They/She/iel) is the Executive Director of the Association canadienne-française de l’Alberta, Régionale Centralta. With experience in entrepreneurship, education, and extensive non-profit work, Erika has dedicated their career to supporting community growth and engagement. She resides in Edmonton, Alberta, and has a passion for travel, nature adventures, improv, and community involvement. Proudly French Canadian, they are an animal-lover who embraces an alcohol-free lifestyle with intention and joy.

Dr. Cathy van Ingen is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Brock University whose work bridges academic research and community activism. Her scholarship examines gender-based violence and the intersections of sport, inequality, and social change through feminist and critical race frameworks. As co-founder of Shape Your Life, a trauma-informed boxing program for violence survivors, van Ingen has directly impacted over 3,000 participants over 17 years, creating safe spaces for women, trans, and youth communities. In 2024, van Ingen completed an MFA in documentary media, expanding her research practice to include film as both methodology and medium. This interdisciplinary approach allows her to document and amplify voices often missing within traditional academic boundaries. Her work demonstrates how sport can serve as a catalyst for social change, and she focuses on community-engaged scholarship that prioritizes social justice and transformative change.

Dr. Glynnis Lieb (she/her) is the Executive Director of Fyrefly, housed in the Faculty of Education. She identifies as a 2SLGBTQI+ community member. Dr. Lieb holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and has received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Award (2022) for her activism for 2SLGBTQI+ rights. Prior to her role at Fyrefly, Dr. Lieb served in a number of direct social service provision roles, as well as with Alberta Federation of Labour.

Gillian Robinson was a French Immersion Junior High and High School classroom teacher for many years in the metro Edmonton area. During this time, she loved welcoming pre-service teachers into her classroom. Now, as an Assistant Professor at Campus Saint-Jean, she brings the same practical strategies for teacher education into her University courses and research focus. Her research focuses on the ways in which institutions, and especially schools, manage equity initiatives in daily practice. She studies how inclusive policy and student belonging become spaces of negotiation in educational contexts. Her experience as a classroom teacher informs her research methodology, through trying to understand the ways in which well-meaning educators can sometimes entrench settler colonial ideologies in praxis in ways that reproduce exclusion. Centering the work of Indigenous feminist theorists in her analysis and using a critical Foucauldian lens, her scholarship highlights the maintenance of hierarchies and institutional whiteness in schools, and provides pathways for educators to resist said reproduction.

Conroy is a doctoral student at the University of Alberta, researching how stigma functions as both a barrier and a catalyst in entrepreneurship. His work explores how stigma shapes entrepreneurial strategies, fosters resilience, and redefines success, while also examining its role in the journey toward entrepreneurial emancipation and identity construction. Through this lens, he seeks to deepen the understanding of marginalized groups' experiences in business and society. Originally from Jamaica, Conroy migrated to Canada in 2013 as a temporary foreign worker, spending four years working at Tim Hortons. He later pursued higher education at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, earning a Bachelor of Business Administration, and in 2023, he completed a Master of Business Administration at Thompson Rivers University. Throughout his academic and professional journey, he has gained experience in both banking and retail management. In addition to his research, Conroy is the event director and founder of the Edmonton Drag Festival and the Edmonton Jerk Festival, as well as the owner of Fula-Flava Ltd. "Be the best you, and know that you are good enough. Love yourself."

Marlon has spent over a decade working at the cross-section of innovation, economic inclusion and community. He is a seasoned executive, startup founder and career startup investor. In 2024, Marlon founded Opening Round, an inclusive advisory firm for early-stage startups and progressive venture investors. In 2020, Marlon launched Future Capital with a mission to bring a new kind of equity to the venture capital space. The company was acquired by Spring Activator in 2023. Marlon is also trained in instructional design and financial modelling for venture capital. Marlon has served on the Board of Directors for QueerTech since 2022. QueerTech is Canada’s leading organization dedicated to queering the tech ecosystem in Canada.

Randy is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. At the graduate level, he teaches in the area of adult and higher education in the Faculty of Education, in Health Sciences, and law and ethics for teachers at the undergraduate level. As a researcher, Randy works alongside marginalized communities including Indigenous, international, and gender diverse educators. He is also affiliated with the Fyrefly Institute for Gender and Sexual Diversity and with the Centre for Research in Teacher Education both at the University of Alberta.

Andrew Hartman (they/them), is a queer, Métis evaluator and applied social psychology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Saskatchewan. Andrew’s education and training focuses on program evaluation, where they have led evaluations at local and national levels utilizing an array of theoretical approaches and mixed-method designs. Their primary areas of focus are natural supports, gender-based violence, help-seeking, psychological healing, housing, 2SLGBTQI+ youth homelessness, undergraduate and graduate student affairs programming, and STEM pipelines. Andrew has been sharing evaluation knowledge through evaluation workshops, assisting in graduate program evaluation course lectures, mentoring emerging evaluators, and presenting and publishing on queer and community-based participatory evaluation and research. Andrew has a love for evaluation and using evaluation to amplify the voices of those who access services.

Richard Jenkins is a 61 year old Cree-Metis with Indian Status from the mixed community of Moose Mountain, Alberta. He is a gay Two Spirit cis-gendered man and has been ‘out’ to friends, family and community since he was 19 years old. Over the past forty plus (40+) years, he has been working with Indigenous communities and governments throughout Canada as a community developer and health promotions advocate in the areas of addictions, long-term care, HIV/AIDS, sexual orientation and gender identity, family and community healing, child welfare, health policy and programs and urban Indigenous development. In the mid-2000’s Richard received the community development award from the Alberta Aboriginal Role Model Awards and more recently received the Health and Medicine award from the Okimaw (Men’s) Awards. He has served community both as a paid employee as well as a volunteer at local, provincial, national and international levels. Richard currently sits as a member of the Community Council of the E2S – Edmonton 2 Spirit Society as one of their Knowledge Keepers/Elders. Richard was the first Executive Director for the 2 Spirits in Motion Society and is a founding member of the organization when it was first conceived in 2003 at the 1st Canadian Forum on Two Spirit Peoples, HIV/AIDS and Health in Edmonton, Alberta. “I ‘came in’ to the 2 Spirit circle in 2001 when I was invited to help bring together 2SLGBTQI+ people together in Edmonton. I’ve stayed in the 2 Spirit circle since then to continue expressing my commitment to helping improve the quality of life of 2 Spirit and gender and sexually diverse people and co-create safe and supportive social environments for our part of the Indigenous gender diverse community.

Kyng "Cxsper" Rose is a multidisciplinary artist, storyteller, and founder of the groundbreaking record label Trans Trenderz. Known on stage as Blxck Cxsper, Kyng blends music, theatre, and visual storytelling into a unique creative universe that amplifies trans voices and reimagines what entertainment can be. Based in Montréal, Kyng’s work bridges hip-hop, R&B, and pop with bold narratives that center love, resilience, and justice.

Shalini Sinha (they/she) brings more than 25-years of experience consulting for large organizations on integrating equity principles, developing equity strategies, and creating organizational structures and practices to achieve increasing equitable outcomes. They are from Bihar, in India, are born in Canada, and lived half of their life in Ireland where they consulted for universities and national governmental departments on antiracism in education and justice. In Canada, Shalini has founded Inclusiv, and for the last three years, has been the equity lead supporting large universities and health campuses to centre equity and climate justice in climate change action planning. They have a strong academic foundation in Gender Studies, specializing in the intersections of gender, racism, and colonization, and continue to teach at MacEwan University. They have been part of grassroots social and climate justice movements since they were a young teen. As the inaugural Chair of the City of Edmonton’s Anti-Racism Advisory Committee, they led on collaborative decision-making and centring the most marginalized and impacted community voices in creating the strategy. As Chair of the Pride Centre of Edmonton, they introduced and helped integrated an Indigenous and de-colonizing structure to strategic planning. Shalini had the honour of interviewing Angela Davis in Edmonton, was the keynote speaker for the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services Lead with Respect series, the International IAP2 Conference, and was featured in End Poverty Edmonton’s LiftEd podcast. Their proudest moments are speaking on being a Change-Maker at the event hosting His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Ireland, and delivering the TEDx Talk, ‘Are you Consciously Creating a Culture of Respect?’.

Naoufel started his career in the non-profit sector as General Manager for AIESEC in Morocco, which provides young people with leadership development and cross-cultural global internships. He later transferred to the AIESEC United States in New York City and managed the expansion to Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE through a US government grant of over $1 million. He then took on the interim COO's role and managed a team of 10 people with a budget of $4 million. Naoufel joined Microsoft Middle East and Africa as a Regional Program Coordinator, managing the Microsoft Software Donation Program for Internet safety and security. He also managed relationships with crucial Microsoft partners in the region, like the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development. After two years at Microsoft, Naoufel moved to Montreal to join tech startups. He started at TandemLaunch Technologies, where he built relationships with university tech transfer offices worldwide. Naoufel was Head of Business Development at Local Logic, his last company. Today, Naoufel is the Co-Founder and CEO of QueerTech. This organization aims to Queer the Tech Ecosystem by breaking down barriers, creating spaces, and connecting communities to support and empower 2SLGBTQI+ people to thrive.

Seon Yuzyk is a doctoral candidate (ABD) in political science at the University of Alberta, specializing in Canadian politics, political theory, and racial capitalism. Yuzyk's research explores systemic racism, economic inequality, Black Queer radical traditions and climate colonialism. Yuzyk publishes articles on Substack, addressing race, economy, and environmental justice to drive change and is the Research Lead for the Emancipatory Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub qualitative segment, supporting 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurs. He is also Associate Director for the Black Youth for Social Innovation Program, where he trains the next generation of Black social scientists.