Yesterday Career Edge Organization President & CEO Anne Lamont returned to Toronto after an exciting weekend in Halifax, attending the 2010 ALLIES Learning Exchange: Putting Ideas into Action.
ALLIES stands for “Assisting Local Leaders with Immigrant Employment Strategies” and is a project jointly funded by our friends at Maytree and The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation.
This project offers resources, networks and expertise to cities across Canada providing the support needed for local initiatives around finding suitable employment for skilled immigrants (a really informative backgrounder on ALLIES is available here through the Maytree website).
Anne Lamont was really impressed with project leader Peter Paul’s efforts at this year’s event, which brought together 150+ participants from more than 10 city regions including our partners from TRIEC (Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council) and their equivalents in other Canadian cities such as Edmonton and Calgary.
Anne Lamont and other guests were greeted with a warm welcome from Gordon Nixon, president and CEO of Career Bridge host employers Royal Bank of Canada.
Keynote addresses included:
• Don Drummond, TD Bank Financial Group – Changing Face of the Canadian Workplace
• Alan Broadbent, Maytree – Making your Immigrant Employment Council Work for your Community
• Will Kymlicka, Queen’s University – The Future of Multiculturalism in Canada
• Naomi Alboim, leading immigration expert – Immigrants and the Economic Recovery
And last (but not least) Ratna Omidvar, President of Maytree, provided closing remarks.
Other highlights included panel discussions on hiring practices, mentoring and engaging employers, in-depth workshops and a “marketplace” where Anne Lamont participated to provide information about our Career Bridge paid internship program for internationally qualified professionals.
As in previous years, we are happy to be ALLIES and participate in this wonderful event – it was a great opportunity for Anne to see familiar faces and meet new champions that stand alongside Career Bridge and Career Edge Organization to help launch careers and put talent to work!
We look forward to seeing what they have in store for 2011.