The Stuart Knight Show

A Powerful Conversation with Laura Beauparlant

In her 20 years as a designer and 14 years as an entrepreneur, Laura has learned that aligning purpose with brand design is the key to success in business. She prides herself in finding fun and creative solutions to help aspiring and established entrepreneurs become happy, confident and prosperous business owners.

Laura says her business is built on the solid relationships she has created and fostered with clients and suppliers. At the end of the day, she is a people person. She loves to create chemistry with the people in her life and the most important element in fostering those relationships is communication. She listens attentively, coaches directly, and understands profoundly.

Laura is also an award-winning public speaker, offering inspirational and passion-filled presentations on branding and design to small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Toronto is Laura's home, but the world is her inspiration.

A Powerful Conversation with Jamil Jivani

Jamil Jivani tackles some of the biggest challenges in the world as a lawyer, community organizer, and teacher. With research and teaching appointments at Yale Law School and Osgoode Hall Law School, Jamil focuses on issues that impact youth, immigrants, and low-income families. He is also the founder of the Citizen Empowerment Project, a public education organization leading initiatives related to policing, racial profiling, democratic participation, voter turnout and economic development.

Jamil’s change leadership is informed by his personal journey of empowerment from being a failing high school student and working as a dishwasher, to attending the most exclusive law school in the world. Coming from a single parent household, as a youth he nearly fell into many of the traps that send young men on a detour away from success. It is this experience that propelled him into activism, focusing on issues such as bridging the gap between police and communities, overcoming the radicalization of youth, and encouraging young people to achieve success. His TEDx Toronto talk, How Racial Profiling Hurts Everyone, Including the Police, has been viewed over 110,000 times.

Jamil is the director of law and policy at Our Ohio Renewal, a nonprofit organization founded to develop solutions to the issues raised in J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. He has also served as Vice Chair of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, and has volunteered with youth organizations in Kenya, Egypt, and Belgium.

Jamil’s work in disadvantaged neighborhoods in North America and Europe has led him to appear on BBC, CBC, CTV and TVO. His writing has been published by The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post and Huffington Post.

Jamil graduated from Yale Law School in 2013, and formerly served as President of the Yale Black Law Students Association. While at Yale, Jamil worked for Senator Cory Booker in New Jersey, as a Connecticut high school teacher, and as a Manhattan corporate lawyer. Since graduating, he has practiced corporate law in Toronto at Torys LLP, and was named the 2015 Young Lawyer of the Year by the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers. He was also a 2016 recipient of th eThompson Reuters’ Lexpert Zenith Award for Diversity and Inclusion.

Jamil’s first book, Why Young Men, was published in April, 2018.

A Powerful Conversation with Ruari Fairbairs

Ruari is an entrepreneur, Senior Oil Broker running the number 1 JET desk & co-founder of the OYNB movement. He gave up drinking in the face of incredible peer presure, thinking he would lose his edge as one of the Top brokers in the world. He soon realized it was quite the opposite. Spurred by this life changing experience he and Andy Ramage, another broker, have created the OYNB movement. 

Ruari speaks about improving all aspects of your life by changing your relationship with alcohol. After 2 years alcohol-free Ruari now drinks in total control. He is passionate about helping people change their relationship with alcohol using their 30, 90 & 365 day challenges.

A Powerful Conversation With Franziska Iseli

Franziska, winner of the prestigious award ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’, is a leading marketing strategist with an eagle eye for good marketing and a sixth sense for positioning and branding. She is a true visionary.  She brings the secrets and experience of the advertising and marketing industry to small business. No challenge is too big for her, she loves getting people to think bigger and aim higher.  Fun and Swiss quality (Franziska grew up in Switzerland) are a given when working with her. She has an amazing ability to forecast and execute strategies with precision results like a Swiss clock.  A sharp-witted humour and high levels of cheekiness that can bring anyone to tears (of laughter), the ability to speak five languages and a desire to have everything done yesterday ensures Basic Bananas is at the forefront of marketing worldwide.  Franziska is the co-author of ‘Bananas About Marketing – How to Attract a Whole Bunch of Clients’ and regular contributor to various business magazines.  Being a passionate social entrepreneur and philanthropist, Franziska loves contributing to different social causes. http://www.basicbananas.com  Twitter: @FranziskaIseli 

A Powerful Conversation With Susan Stewart

Susan is a comedian, author, and speaker who offers a unique combination of humour and inspiration aimed at helping people see the lighter side of life. To learn more about Susan, visit www.susanstewart.ca  Twitter: @SusanIStewart 

 

 

A Powerful Conversation With Asad Mecci

Master Hypnotist Asad Mecci has been involved in the art and science of hypnosis, visualization, and meditation for over 10 years. His comedic performances have appeared on Entertainment Tonight, MTV, HGTV,  Maxim Online, Much Music, YTV, and ATN. From a consulting perspective, Mecci has collaborated with legendary figure skating coach Brian Orser to produce a visualization figure skating app, which would eventually help Yuzuru Hanyu win the gold medal in the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2014 International Skating Union world championship. As a mental strength coach, Asad teaches athletes to use visualization and mental imagery to enhance their abilities on and off the ice. In 2000 he helped Roberto Verri, the host of Talk Television, lose 40 pounds in two months. It was documented on Talk Television and aired live across Canada. Asad has been hired by major corporations to serve as an expert consultant in the areas of motivation, communication and stress management.

 

To book Asad now goto: www.entrancingentertainment.com

Mediation made easy, to purchase the Muse Brain Sensing device go to: http://bit.ly/1E6136f

A Powerful Conversation With David Thorn

As a proud New Zealand and Canadian blend, David immigrated to Australia as an adventurous teen.  After studying business in Australia, and Sustainability in Copenhagen, David joined the Economics & Strategy consulting practice at the Global Advisory Firm - KPMG. On a diverse career path across Australia, Papua New Guinea and the international finance hub of Hong Kong, David thrived off advising early stage start-ups to large multinational companies across a range of industries. 

In January 2015 he joined an expedition to Antarctica with 120 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business leaders focused on smart, sustainable and purposeful business disruption. David is now working with passionate and inspiring founders in building revolutionary businesses that re-invent traditional models and promote positive industry development. Constantly exploring people, places and wonders around us every day - David is a true connector - so reach out at dthorn@mail.com, link up on Instagram @dthorn_ or read more at about.me/dthorn

A Powerful Conversation With Heather Tay

Many years ago, Heather decided she would have a life of playful adventure and has never looked back.  Since then she’s called five countries her home, swam with sharks, danced on a volcano, rode a Ducati named Princess, and has generally said yes a whole lot more than she’s said no.  She started out her adult life as an engineer, quickly realized she had a greater fascination with business, trekked to the land of the start-up (San Francisco) where she led an extraordinary sales team providing business intelligence for mobile operators and content providers. 

 

Now having returned to Toronto, Heather’s committed to bringing beauty to our world through the creative design of the spaces we live in. She’s currently running a business accelerator for design-led companies and creative entrepreneurs at OCAD University.  She continues as a board member for the SF based dance company ODC/Dance and sits on a committee for Toronto based creative spacemaker Artscape.  When she’s not working or volunteering she’s either wandering the wooded paths around Evergreen Brickworks, zipping around town on her Vespa, exploring another country or planning for the next stamp in her passport.

A Powerful Conversation With Mark Manson

Mark Manson is an author, blogger and entrepreneur. He writes about unconventional life advice and offers self-help for people who hate self-help.  He believes in finding happiness through struggle, conquering fear through surrender and having more by owning less. Some people say he's an idiot. Other people say he saved their life. All I know is that he’s been one of my favourite conversations in a very long time!

A Powerful Conversation with Philip Levy

Phil Levy is definitely someone who asks the question, “What should I do with my life?”.  Instead of taking the suggested path of most young bright Canadians, Phil chose to carve one that lead him to the experiences he always yearned for.  After visiting London, England and falling in love with the culture, the beer and of course the football, Phil convinced his boss to explore the opportunity of opening a British arm to their current Canadian operations.  And obviously, Phil was the right man to oversee that expansion.  It wasn’t long until Phil had developed a thriving business for his company in the UK, but a trip to Brazil would set his sites on new adventures.  After visiting Sao Paulo, Phil was instantly enchanted by the vibe of the city and the way that South Americans interacted with each other.  Clearly, it was time to convince his boss of expanding once again.  Today, six years later, Phil speaks fluent Portuguese and is running the South American division of the same company he started working at many years ago in Canada.  Along the way, he’s learned lessons that go well beyond what it takes to be successful in business and during this powerful conversation, he shares his thoughts on everything from aliens to self actualization.