Irek and his family have lived in the Windsor-Tecumseh riding for more than 35 years after immigrating to Canada from Poland. His father worked in the auto industry and his mom was a teller at a small local credit union. His parents instilled in Irek a passion for community service leading him to a career on Windsor City Council, where he was elected in three consecutive elections. On council, Irek successfully advocated for historic investments in flood protection, road improvements, libraries and parks that improve quality of life.

Irek was elected to Parliament in 2019 to represent the residents of Windsor-Tecumseh and, shortly thereafter, he was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to serve as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion.

Irek earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University in the United States and a Master’s Degree in Government from the London School of Economics specializing in local government and cross-border environmental relations around the Great Lakes. He has government experience working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an Atlantic Council of Canada Fellow.

Irek is the former Director of Partnerships for WEtech Alliance, which helps grow technology companies and jobs throughout Windsor and Essex County. Irek also built partnerships with industry, schools, the university and college to launch the FIRST Robotics program in over 60 high schools and grade schools across our region to prepare our young people for successful careers today and tomorrow.

Jill Pitkeathley was born in the Channel Islands and went to the University of Bristol before training as a social worker. She was employed by several local authorities and also worked in the National Health Service while bringing up her family. In the mid-1980s she founded the carers movement in the UK by setting up what is now Carers UK and was its Chief Executive until 1998. She has been an advisor to many other carers organizations including those in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several European countries.

She was awarded an OBE in 1994 in recognition of her work for carers and in 1997 was raised to the peerage in the House of Lords where she speaks frequently in debates and legislation about carers, social care and health issues.  She is currently chairing a Select Committee on the Integration of Primary and Community Care in England.

She has also chaired several national organizations, including the National Lottery, Children and Family Courts Association and the Professional Standards Authority.

She has written extensively about carers and social care and has had two novels published about Jane Austen.

Laura Tamblyn Watts is the CEO of CanAge, Canada’s National Seniors’ Advocacy Organization. She is an advocate, author, academic, lawyer and media commentator.

She has previously served as National Director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law and Chief Public Policy Officer at CARP. She is an Assistant Professor (status) at the Factor Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. Laura is the recipient of a number of awards for her work, including a Community Leadership in Justice Fellowship by the Law Foundation of Ontario. She is affiliated faculty at a number of global universities and was called to the BC Bar in 1999.

Laura is a Board Director of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and previously of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC).  She also sits on the Board of Directors of Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario, PACE Independent Living and the Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO).  She serves on a number of consumer-focused committees including as Chair of the Consumer Advisory Panel of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), a member of the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority (RHRA) Consumer Advisory Panel.

She was part of the Canadian Standards Association’s team who developed new National Standards for Long Term Care and is now working with the CSA on developing National Standards for Home and Community Care.

Her warm and humorous new book: Let’s Talk About Aging Parents is out in April 2024 (The Experiment distributed by W.W. Norton).

Dr. Samir Sinha is the director of geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the director of Health Policy Research at Toronto Metropolitan University’s National Institute on Ageing.

A Rhodes Scholar, Samir is a highly regarded clinician and international expert in the care of older adults. In 2021, he was appointed to serve as a member of the Government of Canada’s National Seniors Council and recently led the successful development of Canada’s new National Long-Term Care Services Standard.

Michelle Wan is a mother of two teenage children. Her first-born daughter received life-saving surgery at birth and is a medically complex patient at the Hospital for Sick Children. Michelle is a member of the SickKids Family Advisory Network, serves on the Citizen Engagement Council for the CHILD-BRIGHT network and is a patient partner with SKIP (Solutions for Kids in Pain). Professionally, Michelle has worked in the non-profit arts and media industries as well as in medical education.

Caitlin Muhl is a PhD candidate in health quality at Queen’s University, the social prescribing advisor at the Vanier Social Pediatric Hub, a research assistant at the University of Toronto for a study on co-production and social prescribing, and the co-founder and co-lead of the Canadian Social Prescribing Student Collective.

Jennifer Johannesen was caregiver to her son Owen, who had multiple severe disabilities all his life. He died in 2010 at the age of 12. Jennifer now writes, lectures and consults on healthcare practice and policy related to patient-centred care, patient engagement and partnership in research, and critical thinking in clinical practice. Jennifer also co-hosts Matters of Engagement, a podcast about patient engagement and partnership. She holds a Master of Science in Bioethics degree from Clarkson University (Schenectady, NY) and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Christa is a trailblazer in family caregiver, patient and resident engagement and thrives when bringing together groups of people with a shared purpose to achieve a common goal. Her deep knowledge of co-design and engagement means that the voice of people with lived experience is embedded in everything she does.

As a senior leader and strategic advisor, Christa’s experience spans the health care, academic, consumer and community sectors. More recently, she’s been working on a variety of healthy aging initiatives with organizations such as the Aging and Seniors Unit at the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Ontario Association of Residents Councils and a long-term care company.

Christa has been a public voice in creating awareness of the role of family caregivers in our society. She is a passionate spokesperson for better identifying, recognizing, supporting and ultimately integrating caregivers as true partners with health and social care teams.

Christa also led the development of a made-in-Ontario Caregiver Identification initiative with caregivers and providers from across Ontario. The Caregiver ID is being used as a key tool to support and reintegrate caregivers into healthcare organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 30 hospitals, healthcare organizations, Ontario Health Teams and long-term care facilities have adapted this tool with more and more organizations adapting it each month.

Christa holds a Bachelor of Social Science from the University of Ottawa, a postgraduate Diploma in Corporate Communications from Seneca College and recently received her designation as an Executive Scholar in Non-Profit Management at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. Christa has won numerous awards and recognition for her strategic communication, branding, social media and patient and caregiver engagement work.

Dr. Duxbury teaches management and strategy and change management at Sprott School of Business, Carleton University.  She has published widely in both the academic and practitioner literatures around work-family conflict, change management, supportive work environments, employee wellbeing, the use and impact of office technology and managing the new workforce. She has also given over 500 plenary talks on these issues to public, private and not for profit sector audiences.

For the past two years Dr. Duxbury has been studying the impact of COVID-19 on employee wellbeing. She and her team have done weekly or biweekly interviews with 70 employed parents at nineteen different points in time which have allowed her team to track the impact of COVID-19 and the various government interventions on employee wellbeing over time.  In partnership with the Conference Board of Canada, she and her team have administered a survey (Employee Wellbeing in Times of COVID-19) in which over 33,000 Canadian employees from across Canada have participated.

Dr. Duxbury is the recipient of Carleton University Faculty Graduate Mentoring Award (2013 and 2022) and has been appointed as one of eight Carleton University’s Chancellor’s Professors.

Ella Tan is a registered social worker who has been working with care providers for more than a decade. She focuses on challenges and trauma related to migration, particularly in the Canadian Caregiver Program.

As the employment and family support worker at North York Community House, she supports the emotional well-being of care providers, particularly newcomer women and their children, and has built a network of support agencies that serve them. Ella also hosts a podcast for Filipino youth and their mothers titled Mom, Let’s Talk, which explores family reunification and building positive family relationships. She was a recipient of the Quincentennial Award from the Philippine Consular General.