Speakers
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An Officer of the Order of Canada, Marnie McBean holds three gold medals and a bronze medal from Olympic rowing competitions and is Canada’s most successful Summer Olympic athlete. A renowned motivational speaker, she has been a Specialist, Athlete Preparation and Mentoring with the Canadian Olympic Committee. The author of The Power of More: How Small Steps Can Help You Achieve Big Goals in which she shares strategies for realizing your ambitions, big or small, has been critically acclaimed and is an empowering read. She has a degree in Honors Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario as well as three honorary doctorates. She is a member of Canada’s Sport Hall of Fame and an ambassador for Right to Play, Fast and Female, and Plan Canada’s Because I am a Girl initiative. She resides in Toronto with her wife Deanah. Read and learn more about Marnie McBean on her website.
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A new addition to The 519 team, Kristina Flynn has a background in the Sport and Public Relation industries and a passion for social good. In her new role as Senior Consultant, Project Administration, she is responsible for managing the Sport & Recreation project including: site procurement, contract management, communications & branding, stakeholder relations and systems planning. As a former Varsity basketball player for the University of Guelph, Kristina evolved from an athlete who loves sport for the competition, to someone who loves and values sport as a business and agent of social change in communities. She formerly worked as Manager, Community & Player Engagement for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd., managing the development and growth of new and existing community and corporate responsibility programs as well as team and personal charitable initiatives of the Raptors and Toronto FC. During her time with MLSE she also managed Brian Burke’s personal LGBT initiatives, organized the company’s first employee-driven pride march, assisted with the organization’s You Can Play partnership and initiated the Raptors “Proud To Play” platform. In her spare time she volunteers for Egale Canada as co-chair of their gala committee. |
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Yanick Landry, OUTSPORT TORONTO's Director of Membership and Member Services, is the current president of the long-running Toronto Gay Ski and Snowboarding Club, and of the newly formed Toronto Gay Sailing Club. Under his direction, both organizations joined OUTSPORT TORONTO , which afforded him greater insights into the needs of the LGBTQ Sport’s Community. While “coming out” late to the sport world, Yanick has been a longtime activist of LGBTQ rights, a founder and first director of the McGill Gay and Lesbian Legal Information Clinic, a first in North America, while a second year law student, convincing the faculty to grant graduating students credits for volunteer hours. He acquired his LL.B and BCL from McGill University where he joined the diving team, before studying for a Masters in Copyrights and Intellectual Property at Université Paris XI. While his childhood memories of organized sports remain of the bullying type, he took to individual sports: swimming, windsurfing, biking, rollerblading and x-country running in the summer; downhill and x-country skiing in the winter. He also added snowboarding to his winter activities and has recently become an avid fly-fisher in the summer to spend more time with his Dad. Balancing his career as a talent agent and partner at Newton Landry Management - one of Canada’s foremost talent agencies - with his family life with husband of twenty years Tommy and their adopted greyhound daughters Muddy and Stella, Yanick has previously dedicated his volunteer hours as president of the Talent Agents and Managers Association of Canada (TAMAC) and Greyhounds in Need of Adoption (GiNA), of which he is currently vice-president. |
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Shawn Sheridan has been involved in sport in various capacities for more than 25 years. He spent over 15 years actively involved in aquatics as an instructor, lifeguard, swimmer, and examiner for the National Lifeguard Service, over ten years as an avid rock climber, seven years as a horseman, picked up cross-country skiing a couple of years ago, is a sailor, and has dabbled in running, squash, and other sports activities. As the representative of Crag Crux Climbers (the former LGBT climbing group), he was involved in the formation of OUTSPORT TORONTO as a member of the governance committee, and was appointed its Chair in June of 2010. Outside of sport, Shawn has held a number of executive-level information technology positions with national and international financial services firms, and has worked as well in consumer packaged goods, retail, insurance, and consulting industries, and runs his own web delivery and information technology company. He is a graduate of the University of Waterloo with a B.Math in Computer Science. |
