A talk on the intersection of racial inequality, a global pandemic and climate change will be the focus of this year’s John W. Holmes Memorial Lecture, which takes place Feb. 23 from 12 to 1 p.m. online.
The lecture is in French and English and is free to attend.
This year’s guest speaker, Celina Caesar-Chavannes, will take a deeper dive into what these topics have in common – our democracy. Caesar-Chavannes is a business consultant, coach and international speaker. She currently serves as the senior advisor, EDI Initiatives and adjunct lecturer at Queen’s University. She is the former member of parliament for Whitby, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and parliamentary secretary for International Development.
During her term as a member of parliament, she was awarded:
- Champion of Mental Health Parliamentarian Award by the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health
- Ontario Black History Society, Daniel G. Hill Award for Community Services (2017)
- Black Parliamentarian of the Year
- Featured in the April 2018 edition of O (Oprah Winfrey) Magazine entitled, “What would you stand up for?”
- Named Chatelaine Magazine’s Woman of the Year (2019)
Before entering politics, Caesar-Chavannes was a successful entrepreneur, and recipient of both the:
- Toronto Board of Trade’s Business Entrepreneur of the Year
- Black Business and Professional Association’s Harry Jerome Young Entrepreneur Award.
Caesar-Chavannes has a bachelor of science from the University of Toronto, an MBA in Healthcare Management and an Executive MBA from the Rotman School of Management. She has just published a book, which launched on Feb. 2, titled Can You Hear Me Now?.
The annual John W. Holmes Memorial Lecture at Glendon honours the late John W. Holmes, officer of the Order of Canada, Canadian diplomat, writer, administrator and professor of international relations at Glendon from 1971-81. Holmes was a tireless promoter of Canada at home and abroad, in political, diplomatic and educational circles. He also participated in the founding of the United Nations and attended its first General Assembly in 1945.
For more information on Holmes, visit this website; for more on the upcoming lecture, visit the event page.
To register for the event, visit the RSVP link.