Engineer Your Career Conference

Maryann Turcke holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from Queen’s University, a Master of Engineering from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Business Administration from Queen’s. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the National Football League (NFL), overseeing all facets of the operation including marketing, technology, NFL Films, NFL Network and NFL Digital Content and Operations. She also oversees the corporate functions including Human Resources, Public Relations, and Government Relations. Prior to her promotion to (COO) she was the President of the NFL Network.

Maryann Turcke was formerly President of Bell Media, Canada’s premier multimedia company with leading assets in television, radio, out of-home advertising, and digital media. Renowned for a wide breadth of executive leadership roles and team building skills, Ms. Turcke was previously Group President, Media Sales, Local TV and Radio, where she leveraged Bell Media properties and brands across all platforms to support its strong position in the competitive advertising marketplace.

Under her leadership, Bell Media built on its position as the country’s top multimedia company, with innovations in TV and on-demand content as well as continued investment to ensure Canadians have the very best choice in primetime programs and coverage of live events, news, and sports on TV, radio, and digital platforms.

Prior to joining Bell Media, Ms. Turcke was Executive Vice-President of Bell Field Operations, leading Bell’s team of 12,000 installation and service technicians in delivering Fiber TV, Internet, and other Bell residential and business services. Ms. Turcke joined
Bell in 2005 as VP, Customer Experience and Operations for Small and Medium Business. Recently, in 2018, she was named one of Adweek’s most Powerful Women in Sports. She has also been named one of Toronto Life’s 50 Most Influential People of 2016, a member
of the Women’s Executive Network Hall of Fame, and named the 2015 Woman of the Year by Women in Communications and Technology. Ms. Turcke serves on the advisory board of the Queen’s School of Business and on the capital campaign for Queen’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.

Ms. Turcke is a Director, SickKids Foundation. 

“When I graduated from mechanical engineering at Queen’s university, I could not have imagined the interesting, varied and rewarding career that lay ahead. I would love for today’s graduating students to know that they don’t need to have it all figured out – it will all work out!”

As an executive coach, Alexandra inspires leaders to reach their full potential and make a greater impact. Prior to founding her executive coaching practice, Alexandra was an executive with TD Bank Group. Her professional experience also includes a variety of roles at General Motors, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, and Algorithmic.

Alexandra has a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in mechanical engineering from Queen’s University and an MBA from Schulich School of Business. She is a certified coach and is a graduate of CTI’s leadership program. In addition to training in organizational coaching, Alexandra is in the process of being certified as a neuro-transformational coach.

As part of her commitment to developing the next generation of leaders, Alexandra is a mentor in the Transformational Leadership course in Richard Ivey School of Business MBA program, and is an advisor in the Queen’s University Technology, Engineering and Management (TEAM) program. She was previously an Executive-in-Residence at the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership (Ivey) and has written on Leader Character. Alexandra has taught derivative securities, in the MBA and Master of Finance programs at Schulich School of Business. Alexandra also delivers talks and workshops on leader impact, effective teams, career development and career transition.

“During my time at Queen’s, I got involved: I was a Frec; I participated on committees; I worked at Clark Hall Pub; and I fenced on the Queen’s varsity fencing team. I made lifelong friends and had a great time!”

My family spent a year in England when I was five and we travelled throughout Europe in a VW van. This began my love of travel and meeting people from around the world. It inspired my first job at an international telecommunication vendor where I travelled frequently for over 15 years working with customers, leading teams, and negotiating contracts. It also allowed me to establish a strong technical foundation in wireless and data communications to do what I love to do now: bridge technology, business, and leadership to grow products and teams for innovative-thinking companies. 

I live by the professional mantra of “Just Do It” and have a strong curiosity about everyone I meet. My strong sense of community inspires me to give back. At Queen’s, I was involved with the Engineering Society (87-88 Executive, QUESSI), the Board of Directors for the Queen’s Alumni Association (2014-2016) and more recently as a Reunion Coordinator and Queen’s Engineering Mentor. I have lived in Ottawa, Chicago, and now reside in Toronto and continue to travel whenever I get the chance.

Shahram Yousefi is passionate for technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, teaching, learning, sustainability, equity, and harmony.

He received his B.Sc. in electrical engineering from university of Tehran, Iran and worked in industry prior to joining the department of electrical and computer engineering of university of Waterloo in Canada, as an M.A.Sc. student in 1997 where he received his PhD in Sept. 2002. While still a Ph.D. student at Waterloo, he instructed undergraduate courses and received more than 20 research and teaching awards and scholarships.

Since 2002, he has held positions at Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering, University of Toronto, Canada, Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, Jilin University, China, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, and department of electrical and computer engineering of Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, where he is currently a tenured full professor with a portfolio on Student Success through professional experience, entre(intra)preneurship. At Queen's he has been a Senator, an associate head, and an acting department head and has received a number of awards including the Golden Apple teaching award as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Discovery Accelerator Supplement (NSERC DAS) award.

He is a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) with PEO of Canada and currently serves as an editor for the IEEE communications surveys and tutorials journal. Prof. Yousefi was appointed the editor-in-chief of the Canadian journal of electrical and computer engineering in Jan. 2013.

His research interests lie in communications, cloud systems, big data, networks, information theory, signal processing, control, and algorithms in which he holds a number of patents. He co-founded Canarmony Corp. (2014), MESH Scheduling Inc. (2018), and OPTT Inc. (2018) to apply algorithms to make life better and more harmonious. One of Shahram’s patents in the area of data storage has recently been licensed to Durabyte Inc. The underlying technology is to revolutionize a $500b solid state/cloud storage industry.

In his role as Associate Dean, Corporate Relations, Dr. Yousefi works with the Corporate Relations team to enhance the development of strategic work-integrated opportunities, analyze cross-industry data and trends, and to provide engineering-specific career supports.