Reboot?... they've all done it.
Come hear from 4 inspiring individuals who've decided to take a leap and start fresh. An (Un)conventional path aims to showcase and bring to light a fascinating trend
Tickets: $20 (incl. food and drinks)
Event is Chaired by Paul Budovitch
Our panelists:
**** Joelle Faulkner, President & CEO Area One Farm Ltd.
By the end of business and engineering undergrad, Joelle still couldn't write a good essay, so she decided to go to law school. When she finished she lived in beautiful California. She completed the bar as a trade with her father, but to keep from the allure of practicing law she wrote in New York, where she did not live. She went to work in medical devices where she learned design, but there were many challenges about the medical device business that she didn't enjoy. After short-term jobs in finance, consulting, and academic administration, Joelle and her brother Benji started a business investing in farms in partnership with top performing Canadian farmers. Joelle thinks her design skills were super helpful to that endeavour, but the first few years sort of sucked because it is hard to go from great achievement to great achievement to something that may or may not work. All is well that ends well, though and this work is making her very happy!
**** Mark Halpren, Principal FirstCFO inc.
As a newly minted CA, Mark left a big 4 firm on a contract to lead the finance team of a small, high-tech automotive parts supplier. In less than a year he assisted in the sale of the business and boomeranged back to the Firm in a leadership role. He never guessed that 14 years later he’d be back in small tech as a fractional CFO. The journey through the Firm gave Mark insight into the internal workings of a professional services business as well as forensic accounting and corporate restructuring. Mark left the Firm for public company experience with a video game company and then a private software company before returning to the contracted and often titled “finance-guy” role he held early in his career.
**** Naomi Loewith, Investment Manager & Legal Councsel, Bentham IMF
Naomi Loewith is an Investment Manager and Legal Counsel with Bentham IMF. Naomi obtained her J.D. at Harvard Law School, served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, and was a litigator with Lenczner Slaght for almost a decade before joining Bentham.
Bentham is a global litigation funder, investing in complex commercial litigation. Bentham helps clients – including individuals, small businesses and large corporations – bring meritorious cases to court by providing funds for legal fees, disbursements and court-ordered costs. Bentham has five offices in Australia, four in the U.S., one in Singapore and opened its Toronto office in 2016.
Prior to moving to Toronto in 2006, Naomi had lived in 10 cities in 10 years, and is very happy to be settled in Toronto with her husband and their three energetic boys.
**** Saeed Darvish-Kazem, Co-Founder WeMesh and Rave Media Inc.
Dr. Saeed Darvish-Kazem is a graduate of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and completed his Internal Medicine and Cardiology residencies at McMaster University. He is an active staff physician at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ontario and across Ontario within the William Olser Health System and the Sault Area Hospital. During his training and professional career, Saeed has co-founded and managed multiple startups in the technology sector, and has helped advise students and aspiring entrepreneurs within the Toronto-Kitchener-Waterloo corridor.