Speaker Profiles - Big Picture Seminar
Here are the profiles of some of the speakers who generously volunteer their time and effort to make the Big Picture Seminar a success.
John Yun
Dr. Yun was born in 1964 in Seoul, Korea and immigrated to Canada at the age of 13. He graduated from Medical School in 1988, followed by post graduate medical training including Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. Over the past 10 years, he has worked as Medical Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician in the Richmond Hospital. His profession focus is care of cancer patients at all stages, from diagnosis to follow up and palliative care. Some of his past duties include Head of Medicine in Richmond Hospital, Chief Resident in BCCA and St. Paul’s Hospital.
He is married, with five children, aged 2 to 7. He is one of the founding lecturers of the Big Picture Seminar in Vancouver and was instrumental in the founding of the Pacific Institute of Family Education (www.pife.ca). He also gives lectures for other physicians and for volunteers, including Hospice.
Greg Dumas
Mr. Dumas is married and the father of 11 children. With regards to employment, he is a Company Director; he owns and operates businesses in the Lower Mainland and Victoria that employ a total of 200 people.
Sidney Chan
Mr. Chan, Chairman and CEO of ALR Technologies Inc., has assisted since 1997 the Company's financing and its evolution into a public company. He has also directed the Company's product development and established the Company's contract manufacturing relationships in China.
Sidney Chan began his career in finance in 1975 with Pemberton Securities as a mining analyst and later joined RBC Dominion Securities where he gained a broad range of experience in all aspects of investment and finance.
In 1986, Mr. Chan formed Knight's Financial Limited, which provided, in partnership with Goldman Sachs & Co., financing for exploration and development of Canadian mineral and oil and gas reserves. Knight's also managed the corporate reorganization and restructuring of public companies including directing the initial public offering of several companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The Knight's Group has been active in providing advice and assistance in the affairs of private corporate clients including Nippon Kokan and a consortium of the nine Japanese steel companies in the financial reorganization of the Quintette Coal Mine in northeast B.C.
Mr. Chan obtained his Bachelor of Engineering (Mining) degree with honours in Mineral Economics from McGill University in 1973.
John Higgins
Mr. Higgins is an architect in a multidisciplinary Vancouver consulting firm, where he works on health care and laboratory buildings. Having finished architecture school in Dublin, Ireland, he arrived in Canada, completed a Master's degree in architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, in 1979, and came to Vancouver from Edmonton in 1988. He enjoys music, reading and travel.
Peter Nation
Mr. Nation has been a teacher for over 20 years. He is the Head of the Religion Department at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in North Vancouver and teaches Religion 11 and 12 as well as Law 12. He is currently completing a Master's degree in Religious Education. He is married and has one daughter. His hobbies are long distance running and intellectual and cultural history.
Mario Jardon
Mr. Jardon completed undergraduate and Master’s Degrees in Chemical Engineering in Laval University (Quebec City, 1998 and 2000, respectively), after which he worked as a quality engineer for Shire Biologics, a biopharmaceutical company, today ID Biomedical, in the Quebec City production facility of influenza vaccine.
In 2004, he moved to Vancouver, in order to start a Ph.D. program in Chemical and Biological Engineering, at the Michael Smith Laboratories in UBC, applying this experience on accelerating the development of bioprocesses for pharmaceutical applications.
He enjoys literature, sports (especially ball hockey, badminton and squash) and music (mainly choral music and piano, which he has practiced for several years).