Judges

Brian Peckford

Brian Peckford, is the former premier of Newfoundland, Canada’s easternmost province and currently the Chancellor of Sprott Shaw College. Peckford, a former teacher, provides academic leadership at Sprott-Shaw. When in politics, education was never far from his heart. Peckford created the first and only fine arts college in Newfoundland as well as a school for the hearing impaired. He established a new community college system and re-organized the high school curriculum. He also pushed forward the construction of a new campus for the Marine Institute, Canada's leading fisheries training and marine training centre. Peckford was a vigorous champion of the Meech Lake Accord and was a key supporter of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s Free Trade package in hopes it would aid Newfoundland's exports. He resigned as premier in 1989 and started his own consulting company. Today Peckford act as a spokesperson for Sprott-Shaw's vision, values, mission and goals.
sprottshaw.com

Craig Kielburger

Craig Kielburger is the co-founder of Free The Children, a unique international development and youth empowerment organization. Since its founding in 1995, Free The Children has become the world’s leading youth-driven charity, inspiring an entire generation to stand up and have their voices heard. Free The Children has built more than 500 schools throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, providing daily education to more than 50,000 children. Through its Adopt a Village development model, it has established more than 23,000 alternative income projects to assist women and their families in achieving sustainable incomes. Free The Children’s latest initiative is a joint project with Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network called O Ambassadors. It is an unprecedented program, designed to educate and inspire more than one million young people across North America to become socially. Kielburger, who has a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto, has been awarded many national and international awards for his work, including The Roosevelt Freedom Medal, The World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child (often called the Children’s Nobel Prize) and he is one of the youngest recipients of The Order of Canada.
www.freethechildren.com

Dianne Watts

Dianne Watts became the first woman elected Mayor in the City of Surrey. She was re-elected to a second term on November 15th, 2008. Watts has focused on bringing people together and building consensus for new and innovative approaches to the challenges facing Surrey. She believes that local government should be non-partisan, independent and focus not on where the idea comes from, but on what ideas work best for our community. Watts led the effort to develop Surrey’s new Crime Reduction Strategy, an innovative approach to dealing with crime based on best practices and successful strategies used in other cities and countries to reduce crime and make the streets safer. Under her leadership, Surrey became the first city in BC to establish a Homelessness and Housing Foundation to tackle homelessness head-on. Funded with $9.7 million, the Homelessness and Housing Foundation is aggressively seeking new approaches to solving challenges related to homelessness by working with senior levels of government and community partners.
www.surrey.ca

Darcy Rezac

Darcy Rezac is managing director and chief engagement officer of The Vancouver Board of Trade. Prior to that, he held executive positions with the federal government, Alcan and General Motors. He also writes, speaks and consults on public policy, social capital, leadership, networking and corporate engagement. Rezac is the author of the best seller, Work the Pond!, dubbed "The Connector’s Handbook" by Town & Country magazine. He did graduate work at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser and York universities and holds B.Sc. in psychology from McGill and MBA from the John Molson School of Business in Montreal’s Concordia University. He holds the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, the Canada 125 medal and the Canadian Forces Decoration (CD). Rezac has served as a volunteer for a number of academic organizations including the Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University and the British Columbia Institute of Technology Business Advisory Council. Rezac is an Ambassador for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympics.
www.boardoftrade.com

Harbinder Singh Sewak

Harbinder Singh Sewak is the president and CEO of the Vancouver-based New Market Multimedia Inc. which is a division of the Post Media Group, publishers of an award-winning stable of community newspapers in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Post Media Group publishes The Asian Pacific Post, The South Asian Post and The Filipino Post – weekly newspapers that cater to needs of Western Canada’s diverse and fast growing immigrant populations while serving the needs of advertisers and government. Sewak, a Malaysian-Canadian entrepreneur founded The Post media Group in 1993. Sewak’s newspaper stories on India’s abandoned brides, highlighting the scandal of non-resident Indians returning home to marry women for their dowries and leaving them to lives of misery and honor killings in India have triggered several international initiatives to stop the social scourges.
www.southasianpost.com

Wayne Moriarty

Wayne Moriarty, is the editor-in-chief of The Province newspaper in Vancouver, which has been a vital part of British Columbia since 1898. The Province is part of Canwest Global Communications Corp. which is Canada’s largest media company. In addition to owning the Global Television Network, Canwest is Canada’s largest publisher of English language daily newspapers. Moriarty heads a newspaper that has special responsibilities to the community and its people. The Province sponsors and supports many charitable, cultural, educational and sporting events throughout the year, and makes donations to a number of community causes. Moriarty, a graduate of the University of British Columbia, led teams to win the prestigious Michener Award for meritorious journalism and two National Newspaper Awards. He has published two books on food-related subjects, has an extensive public speaking background and currently oversees all aspects of the Province news operation, including editorial direction and labor issues.
www.theprovince.com