TEDxOCADU

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Aisling Nolan

  Aisling Nolan is a circular design strategist rethinking how we consume, reuse, and value everyday goods. Her work reveals how systems of convenience, cost, and cognitive load shape sustainable behaviour at scale, and how redesigning those systems can make sustainability the effortless default.

• Aliya Ahmed-Mohamoud

  A Somali-Canadian storyteller and designer who focuses on the intersection of community knowledge, Afrofuturism, and strategic foresight. Drawing on lived cultural experience, she challenges dominant futures frameworks by centering Black diasporic oral traditions as powerful and legitimate tools for imagining more inclusive futures.

• Ann de Sequeira

  Ann is an accountant-turned-strategist who completed her Master’s in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University. Her background spans corporate strategy, innovation, and public sector policy.

• Ann and Meg de Sequeira and Lin

  Ann is an accountant-turned-strategist who completed her Master’s in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University. Her background spans corporate strategy, innovation, and public sector policy. Meg is a strategic product designer with a background in human-centered and graphic design. Her expertise spans user research, data visualization, and problem-solving. Her graduate MRP explored AI-driven futures and Gen Z loneliness, equipping young people with resilient strategies for their desired futures.

• Aradhana Verma

  Aradhana Verma is a designer from India and a Master’s student in Inclusive Design at OCAD University. With a background in fashion and UI/UX design, her work explores cultural inclusivity, decolonising design, and storytelling through digital experiences, focusing on creating meaningful systems that celebrate diverse ways of thinking.

• Dania Idam

  Dania is a strategist and storyteller. From Lagos to Toronto, across financial services, creative entrepreneurship and corporate communications, her practice has been the same: connecting dots into something worth following. She manages communications at a legal-tech firm and is completing her MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University.

• Delina Yohannes

  Delina Yohannes is a designer, model and researcher working at the intersection of inclusive design, fashion systems, and participatory research. Her work explores how representation and accessibility are shaped through fashion and emerging technologies. Through her project Reimagining the Runway, she examines how fashion can be redesigned as a system of care, access, and collective imagination.

• Everton Lewis

  Everton Lewis leads Futures Design at OCAD U CO, advising clients and enabling teams to deliver impactful, forward-looking work. With experience leading large design teams and small boutique consultancies, he brings deep expertise in service design and innovation. An award-winning practitioner and university lecturer.

• Janine Pierre

  Janine Pierre is a Multidisciplinary Design Leader and Innovation Strategist specializing in foresight and systems thinking. With experience across advisory, crisis management, finance, and non-profit sectors, she leads high-impact work. A 2025 CivicAction DiverseCity Fellow, she advances housing and community resilience through design and cross-sector collaboration.

• Jeff Ranson

  Jeff leads Responsible Development for YZD, a 370-acre city-in-a-city on a former airfield in Toronto. He spent two decades at the intersection of sustainable cities, public policy, and innovation, and received an MDes and the President’s Award for graduate studies at OCADu for his work on low-carbon housing in Peru.

• Luke Correia-Damude

  Luke Correia-Damude is an innovation consultant, researcher, filmmaker, and musician. He has worked in innovation and strategy for almost a decade. As a filmmaker, he served as a producer and director for numerous companies and projects. Luke founded Whippersnapper Gallery, a community hub supporting young artists. This artist-run center has continued its mission for over two decades.

• Malu Cascelli

  Malu is a Brazilian service designer and dreamer, dedicated to creating transformative change in the world. With experience across private and not-for-profit sectors, she weaves systems thinking, visual storytelling, research, facilitation, and co-design. Her futures work intersects embodied practice, participatory design, and decolonial futures-making to challenge systems of today and imagine new possibilities for tomorrow.

• Markhan Hussain

  Markhan holds a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University. Her career spans project management, marketing, customer experience design, festival management, and exhibition curation. She brings an interdisciplinary approach grounded in research, systems thinking, and foresight to the work she does across private and public sector organizations.

• Marolin Solano

  Marolin Solano is a UX Researcher and Experience Designer specializing in digital banking and complex product ecosystems. She is currently pursuing a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University. With over five years of experience, she leads human-centered research that transforms insights into impactful solutions. Her work spans innovation across both public and private sectors, where she fosters collaboration, empathy, and psychologically safe teams to drive meaningful change.

• Meg Lin

  Meg is a strategic product designer with a background in human-centered and graphic design. Her expertise spans user research, data visualization, and problem-solving. Her graduate MRP explored AI-driven futures and Gen Z loneliness, equipping young people with resilient strategies for their desired futures.

• Roxanne Nicolussi

  Roxi Nicolussi is an innovation strategist, futurist, and Founder of The Big Bold Consulting Company. With a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, she has spent the past decade solving complex problems and driving intentional innovation.

• Sara Blanke

  Sara is a qualitative researcher, centering storytelling and collaboration in her approach to knowledge-building. Her practice is grounded in integrity and honouring lived experiences. Sara is passionate about connecting research to meaningful, collective change in ways that remain accountable to community. Her collaborative student work has received an honourable mention from the Association of Professional Futurists.

• Valeria Suing

  I’m Valeria Suing, a designer based in Toronto. I work at the intersection of coffee and strategic foresight, exploring more sustainable and equitable futures through human-centred and community-driven design.