Franca Gucciardi

Executive Director & CEO of the Canadian Merit Scholarship Foundation

Franca Gucciardi is Executive Director & CEO of the Canadian Merit Scholarship Foundation in Toronto. CMSF gives the top undergraduate scholarships to the country’s most promising young leaders. Franca’s association with CMSF goes back to 1990 when she was selected in the first class of National Scholars. CMSF works to identify and support talented students who show promise of leadership and a strong commitment to service in the community.   Previously, Franca was the Director of the Millennium Excellence Award Program of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Franca designed and implemented the program in the fall of 1999.

Franca received her Honours B.A. from the University of Waterloo and her M.A. from Ottawa’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. She has written and presented extensively on merit scholarships in Canada, and is the author of Recognizing Excellence? Merit Scholarships in Canada, the first published Canadian paper on merit scholarships.

She has recently worked as a volunteer with Yonge Street Mission in helping them design a scholarship program for their youth and is the current Vice-Chair of Volunteer Canada’s Board of Directors.

Taylor Gunn
Chief Election Officer, Student Vote

Biography coming soon

Parker Mitchell 

Co-founder and CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada

Parker Mitchell is the co-founder and co-CEO of Engineers Without Borders Canada, one of Canada’s leading international development charities. In the past five years EWB has sent over 200 young Canadian engineers to work in developing countries for up to two years to build capacity in the rural technical sector. And within Canada EWB is transforming engineering, attracting over 20,000 members who strive to make Canada the most pro-development country in the world.

EWB has won a number of prominent national and international awards for our work, and has been featured in all of Canada’s major media outlets.

Parker graduated from the University of Waterloo as the gold medalist with a B.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts. He completed a Master's in Development Studies at Cambridge University and has worked with McKinsey & Company and Magna.

For his work with EWB, he has been named one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40 and was profiled in TIME Magazine as one of Canada's next generation of social leaders. He has also co-founded Canada25, an organization which seeks to engage Canadians active in public policy, and is the chair of the Board of the North York Community House.

Sevaun Palvetzian (Session Moderator)
Director, Youth and New Professionals Secretariat, Ontario Ministry of Government Services

After graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a B.A. Hons. and an M.A. in history, Sevaun moved to Washington, D.C. where she spent several years working in international relations – most recently, as a consultant for the World Bank Group, and prior to that, as the International Programming Director for Presidential Classroom, North America’s leading civic education organization. 

Sevaun returned “home” to Canada in 2002 and, after working at the University of Toronto in donor and community relations, joined the Ontario Public Service as Executive Assistant to Deputy Minister and Associate Secretary of Cabinet, Michelle DiEmanuele in May 2004.  Sevaun is currently Director of the Youth and New Professionals Secretariat – established in October 2005 within the Centre for Leadership and Learning, where she is leading the development of a strategy to attract, recruit and retain current and future generations of public servants.

Ben Peterson

Co-Founder and Executive Director, Journalists for Human Rights (JHR)

Ben Peterson, 29, is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), an NGO that harnesses the power of the media to combat human rights abuses in Africa and Canada. Within Africa, JHR trains local journalists in nine countries to reach 20 million people a week with human rights information. In Canada, JHR has established 22 Chapters (or clubs) at post-secondary institutions across the country, actively engaging over 20% of Canada's journalism students in human rights reporting.

Previous to JHR, Ben worked in Ghana's Ministry of Justice, leading Ghana's efforts to write reports to the United Nations on various international human rights treaties. Ben has also worked for the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, and in the offices of David Bonior, the former Democratic Whip in the United States House of Representatives.

Ben sits on the Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s youth advisory committee and is an Action Canada Fellow.

Ben has a BA in Economics and a BAH in Political Studies from Queen's University, and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics (LSE).