CYBF Sponsors SEWF Youth Session

Victoria Lennox is the co-founder and CEO of Startup Canada, Canada's first-ever, entrepreneur-led, national movement to enhance the nation's competitiveness and prospertity by supporting and celebrating Canadian entrepreneurship.

Victoria is the first Canadian and one of the youngest recipients of a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion on the recommendation of the British Prime Minister. Victoria won the award for having pioneered a grassroots youth entrepreneurship movement both in the UK and globally that has taken on a momentum of its own with a membership of more than 45,000 enterprising students across over 80 universities within 12 months. As the Founder and Chair of the National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs (NACUE), Co-founder and Chair of ICUE, Co-founder of Enterprise Alliance UK, Entrepreneur in Residence at London Metropolitan Business School and former President of Oxford Entrepreneurs, Victoria has built enterprise networks, stimulated public discourse and developed meaningful political and policy inroads to further the entrepreneurship agenda.

On the global stage, Victoria supports and mentors the development of youth enterprise organisations in more than 20 countries; provides advisory support to international organisations in the areas of entrepreneurship networks, education and policy development; and supports colleges and universities in enhancing their entrepreneurial activities.

In 2009 Victoria was awarded the SFEDI ‘Enterprise Support Network Builder Award’ and ‘Overall Enterprise Champion of the Year Award’, was recognized as a ‘Champion of Entrepreneurial Britain’ and ‘Top 30 Under 30’by Real Business Magazine and was noted as ‘One to Watch’ by Spectator Business. 

Victoria moved back to Ottawa in January 2010 where, after having spent a year with Industry Canada’s Small Business Policy Group, she is now working on fostering a more entrepreneurial and prosperous Canada through Startup Canada. 

Jack Graham is the Founder and CEO of London-based social enterprise startup, Year Here, a new type of 'gap year' that challenges bright young people to a year of tackling social issues in their own backyard. He previously worked at the Young Foundation, one of the UK's leading centres for social innovation, where he invested in and supported various education social enterprises and co-authored Growing Social Ventures, a report on the growing field of 'social venture intermediaries'.

He is a 2013 Clore Social Leadership Fellow and is currently writing a report into how frontline service experiences, like Teach for America and AmeriCorps – develop US social and political leaders.

Abdullah Saleh is a General Surgery resident at the University of Alberta. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Director of ICChange. Born in Iraq, he lived in France and Malaysia before moving to Canada in 2000. He obtained a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from the University of Calgary. Abdullah spent time in Ecuador working in hospitals, investigating human and sex trafficking in South America.

He also co-founded the Kenya Ceramic Project in the summer of 2007. Abdullah is currently working in collaboration with various faculty members to develop a multidisciplinary multi-faculty Global Citizenship curriculum at the University of Alberta which will act as a liaison tool among universities in the Global North and South.

His interests include development technology and its implementation, human rights and development of access to medical services and surgery in remote settings. 

Bari Saltman is a senior at Harvard College studying Sociology and Psychology. Committed to empowering undergraduates to become agents of change, Bari is the President of the Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative (SIC), a student organization that brings together members of the Harvard community interested in pursuing innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Bari served as Chair of SIC’s 2012 Igniting Innovation Summit on Social Entrepreneurship, and was a lead organizer of the 2013 Growing the Impact Economy Summit at Harvard Law School, an invitation-only gathering of social impact leaders. Beyond Harvard, Bari has been involved with a range of operational and direct service work targeting youth and economically disadvantaged populations, and is currently a project consultant for AbekaM, which creates corporate-community partnerships to support local models of social change.