Stephen Lewis is a Professor in Global Health in the Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University. He is Chair of the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation (www.stephenlewisfoundation.org), which is dedicated to turning the tide of HIV/AIDS in Africa. And he is Co-Director of AIDS-Free World in the United States.

Stephen Lewis’ work with the United Nations spanned more than two decades. He was the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from June 2001 until the end of 2006. From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Lewis was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF at the organization’s global headquarters in New York. From 1984 through 1988, Stephen Lewis was Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr. Lewis was an elected member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly from 1963 to 1978. In 1970, he became leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party, during which time he became leader of the Official Opposition.

Mr. Lewis is the author of the best-selling book, Race Against Time. He holds 30 honorary degrees from Canadian universities and is a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honour for lifetime achievement. He was awarded the Pearson Peace Medal in 2004 by the United Nations Association in Canada; the award celebrates outstanding achievement in the field of international service and understanding. In 2007, the Kingdom of Lesotho (a small mountainous country in Southern Africa) invested Mr. Lewis as Knight Commander of the Most Dignified Order of Moshoeshoe. The order is named for the founder of Lesotho; the knighthood is the country’s highest honour.

Mr. Manning served as a Member of the Canadian Parliament from 1993 to 2001. He founded two new political parties – the Reform Party of Canada and the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance – both of which became the official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament. Mr. Manning served as Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2000 and was also his party’s critic for Science and Technology. In 2007 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Since retirement from Parliament in 2002, Mr. Manning has released a book entitled Think Big, describing his use of the tools and institutions of democracy to change Canada’s national agenda. He has also served as a Senior Fellow of the Canada West Foundation and as a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Calgary and University of Toronto. He is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and is an Institute Certified Corporate Director. Mr. Manning is currently a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute and President and CEO of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

Mr. Manning continues to write, speak, and teach on a variety of subjects including the revitalization of democracy and Canadian conservatism, strengthening relations between the scientific and political communities, the application of market mechanisms to environmental conservation, and the management of the interface between faith and politics.

David Suzuki, Co-Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. He is renowned for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.

Dr. Suzuki is a geneticist. He graduated from Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1958 with an Honours BA in Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago. He held a research associateship in the Biology Division of Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Lab (1961 – 62), was an Assistant Professor in Genetics at the University of Alberta (1962 – 63), and since then has been a faculty member of the University of British Columbia. He is now Professor Emeritus of The University of British Columbia, Sustainable Development Research Institute.

In 1972, he was awarded the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship for the outstanding research scientist in Canada under the age of 35. He has won numerous academic awards and holds 24 honourary degrees in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. A member of the Royal Society of Canada and a Companion to the Order of Canada, Dr. Suzuki has written 47 books, including 17 for children. His 1976 textbook An Introduction to Genetic Analysis (with A.J.F. Griffiths), remains the most widely used genetics text book in the U.S. and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Indonesian, Arabic, French and German.

Dr. Suzuki has received consistently high acclaim for his thirty years of award-winning work in broadcasting. In 1974 he developed and hosted the long running popular science program Quirks and Quarks on CBC Radio. He has since presented two influential documentary CBC radio series on the environment, It’s a Matter of Survival and From Naked Ape to Superspecies. His television career began with CBC in 1971 when he wrote and hosted Suzuki on Science. He then created and hosted a number of television specials, and in 1979 became the host of the award-winning The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. He has won four Gemini Awards as best host of a Canadian television series for The Nature of Things, which he has been with for 30 of the 46 seasons they have been on air. His eight part television series, A Planet for the Taking, won an award from the United Nations. His eight part PBS series, The Secret of Life, was praised internationally, as was his five part series The Brain for the Discovery Channel. On June 10, 2002 he received the John Drainie Award for broadcasting excellence.

Dr. Suzuki is also recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology. He is the recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal and the Global 500. He is a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science.

More info: www.davidsuzuki.org