Kevin McNamara has had a long career as a senior civil servant in Nova Scotia. He was the province’s Deputy Minister of Health from 2010 until 2013, and oversaw a merger of the department in 2011 to become Health and Wellness. From 2010-2012, Kevin hosted the Provincial/Territorial Deputy Minister’s Council meetings, and co-hosted two of the P/T Meetings. In the past, Kevin has experience as a board member of the Canadian Mental Health Commission and the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Currently, he is a board member of the Atlantic Board of Nature Conservancy Canada and Health Association Nova Scotia. He is also an Adjunct Professor, School of Health Administration, Dalhousie University. He represented Nova Scotia at the Senate Committee on Science, Technology and Social Affairs to speak about the need for a new Health Accord in 2011.
After leaving her corporate career at Procter & Gamble in Switzerland and New York, Charlotte returned to Canada and launched a scuba dive expedition to mobilize local communities to clean up the underwater environment. Following this purpose-driven project across Canada, she co-founded her startup, PACTA in Halifax, which is where her startup journey began. She has been through the ups and downs of a startup and has participated in a number of accelerators Launch36 and Propel cohorts in 2014 and 2015, followed by Founderfuel accelerator in Montreal and Google in Mountainview, California. She has been in founder shoes, bootstrapping a startup, pitching investors in Canada and Silicon Valley ( Google… ), raising money and growing a team, as well as the unfortunate risk and reality of startup life - having to close down. She channels her passion for supporting founders and growing the community by combining her corporate and startup journeys into all walks of life. She is a strong advocate for purpose-driven companies, for thinking bigger, where positive impact and growth reaches beyond the bottom line.
Adrian Hoffman is a respected member of the new and serious music community of Nova Scotia for over 40 years. As a professional musician and composer in Boston and Nova Scotia, he co-founded InNOVAtions in Music (1970), founded the young artist touring program Debut Atlantic “One of Canada's longest-lived performing arts touring organizations”*, (1979) and through that was responsible for the discovery of such artists as Ben Heppner and Jon Kimura Parker. He was a producer and on air host of serious and new music at CBC Radio in Halifax for 28 years. Adrian is a recipient of the Queen’s Jubilee Medal and for 22 years was a part time lecturer of music at Dalhousie University as well as St. Mary’s University. He was on the founding committee for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Award, chaired the Jury Selection Committee and is the Past-Chair of The Nova Scotia Talent Trust. He is the current Chair of the Programming Advisory Committee of Symphony Nova Scotia. An independent music producer he is also a member of Vienna’s Schönberg Music Society.
Mark Has spent the majority of his career working as a production manager of live theatrical production for 35 years, both on Broadway and with tours around the world. During the course of this work he has managed productions employing between 40 and 120 people. After his retirement from theater he worked as a professor at Transylvania University in Lexington,Kentucky for 7 years, teaching a variety of courses in the Theater Arts Division. During this time Mark was able to work as a consultant for a variety of theatrical projects, as well as designing productions for theatrical touring.Now happily retired again, Mark devotes his energy to local causes on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. This includes serving on the Board of Directors for the Gerald Hardy Memorial Society, The Eastern Shore Cooperator the Sheet Harbour and Area Chamber of Commerce and Civic Affairs and the Sheet Harbour Radio Society. Perhaps the projects in which he takes the most pride is the establishment of the Sheet Harbour Radio Society and the creation of a Community Garden in Sheet Harbour.