Opening Keynotes - Social Pioneers

(BMO Auditorium 1100, 1:00-2:00pm)

Vice President Strategy at TVO, founding CEO of the Pecaut Centre for Social Impact, and former Senior Advisor to the Premier of Ontario, Ivey EMBA Andrew Steele explains how any organization can multiply positive impact.

Serial social entrepreneur and 2013 recipient of the prestigious Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Innovating Innovation Award, Ashley Good reveals how organizations can transform failure into resilience.

Ashley Good

Founder & CEO, Fail Forward

Before launching Fail Forward, Ashley worked in Cairo with the United Nations Environment Programme and as a management consultant in Vancouver, Canada. In both lines of work, Ashley saw a fear of failure inhibit innovation, adaptation, and general growth. In response, she launched both AdmittingFailure.com and the consulting firm, Fail Forward, to spark a shift in how civil society perceives and talks about failure, and to help organizations learn, innovate and build resilience. 

Ashley has spent the past three years working with a range of organizations from donors and foundations to not-for-profits and private sector companies to use failure as a learning tool and culture driver to support and foster innovation. She is well known for building the Organizational Learning Team at Engineers Without Borders Canada, and continuing to lead the development of their annual Failure Report.

Her work on failure has received coverage in a wide range of media and news outlets, including the  Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Guardian, Harvard University’s Hauser Center for NonProfit Organizations, TED talks, BBC World, The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail and, most recently in interview with Arlene Dickinson on CBC.  Ashley was also the 2013 recipient of the prestigious Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Innovating Innovation Award.

Andrew Steele

Vice President, Strategy at TVO

Andrew Steele is Vice President, Strategy at TVO, Ontario’s public educational media organization. He works with and across all TVO departments to develop and communicate the strategic plan, to drive and influence strategic decision-making, manage market research and business intelligence, and to lead external relations and communications.

Prior to joining TVO, Andrew was the founding CEO of the Pecaut Centre for Social Impact, working with the Boston Consulting Group, Cossette, Ernst and Young, McCarthy Tétrault and others to develop and implement growth strategies for leading non-profits.

Andrew served as Senior Advisor to the Premier of Ontario and Chief of Staff to the Minister in several departments, where he successfully concluded negotiations with unions resulting in a win for both taxpayers and the public service, and expanded Service Ontario from a counter model to an online platform.

As a strategy consultant, Andrew developed a tire recycling program that reduced stockpiles and diverted waste to reuse, and produced a major reform in electricity demand response pricing, improving system efficiency and lowering costs.

Andrew graduated with distinction from the Richard Ivey School of Business MBA program at the University of Western Ontario. He also earned degrees at the University of British Columbia and Trent University, focusing on statistics and public opinion. He authors a regular column for The Globe and Mail's digital media platform and is on the board of the Toronto East General Hospital Foundation.