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Monica Darroch, CHRL, CMP (she/her) is a seasoned HR leader with 25 years of experience building learning cultures, driving employee engagement, and fostering leadership across industries including financial services, construction management, and consulting engineering. She has held senior executive roles where she advised leadership teams on professional development, succession planning, and employee engagement—helping to shape talent pipelines and prepare organizations for future challenges. She also founded her own HR consulting firm, providing strategic guidance to small and medium-sized organizations.

After two decades in corporate leadership, Monica transitioned into the post-secondary sector, bringing her expertise in talent development to the next generation of professionals. She has held roles focused on career education, skill development, and preparing students to thrive in a rapidly changing workforce.

Monica holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, a Postgraduate Certificate in Human Resources, and a Certificate in Career Development and Academic Advising. She blends strategic HR experience with a passion for coaching and talent growth and is dedicated to helping organizations and individuals unlock potential, adapt to change, and build sustainable success through learning and development.

Outside of work, Monica is the proud mom of two teenage boys and has a two-legged dog named Luna. She enjoys competing in dragon boat racing both locally and abroad.

Lily Abediny is a strategic, equity-driven leader with more than two decades of experience in career development, work-integrated learning, and student development within higher education. As Associate Director of Career and Co-operative Education at the University of Guelph’s Experiential Learning Hub, she oversees strategic initiatives that align student talent development with evolving labour market demands. Lily has held senior leadership roles at Queen’s University and the University of Toronto, and contributes as a Board Director for Experiential & Work-Integrated Learning Ontario (EWO) and as a member of CEWIL Canada's Certification Committee. She brings expertise in talent forecasting, employer engagement, and program evaluation, and has led the development of cross-sector partnerships to support workforce readiness. With a strong commitment to equity, Lily integrates inclusive strategies into workforce planning, building adaptable, future-ready talent pipelines that support both institutional goals and broader economic resilience. Her work bridges education and industry, offering insight into how talent intelligence and skills forecasting can shape sustainable, innovative workforce strategies in uncertain times.

LC People Consulting supports organizations with independent HR consulting, fractional HR and executive coaching services. Larissa Currah has more than a decade of HR experience working with organizations to support their growth and scale. Most notably, she supported the growth and scale of Waterloo, Ontario based cybersecurity company Magnet Forensics from the IPO on the TSX in 2021 ($MAGT), to the billion dollar exit to private equity firm Thoma Bravo in 2023. Holding various global HR leadership positions, Larissa is well versed in supporting the HR needs of growing organizations. She holds her CHRL and CPHR designations in Canada, is an Everything DiSC Certified Practitioner, and is an ICF member and (executive coach) trained under the Co-Active Training Institute with official certification expected in 2026. Larissa's expertise in leveraging people data to inform strategic needs enable organizations to make the right financial contributions to produce high performing and engaged teams.

Farzeen is a force of creativity and innovation in the world of human resources working at the intersection of people, profit and purpose to help organizations empower their people and inspire performance. Today, Farzeen is the founder & principal of PeopleStrategy.ca a boutique human resources advisory firm dedicated to helping purpose-driven organizations achieve their potential through end-to-end strategic human resources, communications, and leadership support. Farzeen is also an instructor of People Analytics with York University and is an active writer and speaker on organizational effectiveness, leadership, inclusion, and the future of work.

Austin’s career has centred on one question: how do we attract, retain, and develop talent in a rapidly shifting economy? He began exploring this during his MA at Queen’s University, where his thesis examined how academic talent makes locational decisions in smaller cities like Kingston. Since then, he’s worked across Canada helping communities, employers, and educators use data to make smarter workforce and program decisions. His experience spans the full spectrum—from regional economic development to building national LMI tools—and has consistently focused on making labour market data more useful and accessible to decision-makers. For post-secondary leaders, that means supporting program planning, investment, and disinvestment with confidence and clarity. Now at The Conference Board of Canada, Austin is not only equipped with high-frequency job postings data—he’s backed by some of the country’s brightest labour market economists. Together, they’re combining datasets and forecasts to generate deeper insights that inform the future of post-secondary programming and workforce strategy.