Imagine Mississauga: our next Strategic Plan

Fenton Jagdeo Jr. believes the new rule for being successful is that there are no rules. The most important factor to becoming the type of dynamic worker that will define this era is the ability to be curious. Radically curious. And then activate and execute that curiosity into innovation. It’s this approach that’s ensured Fenton has optimized his curiosity and leveraged his experiences into dynamic career opportunities.

He’s an entrepreneur and problem solver based on an ideology of creating better for the ecosystems he operates in, which impacts everyone positively. Fenton does this through a passion for action, by inspiring others and by investing in those also building for better.

He’s been named to Bay Street Bull’s Top 30×30, showcasing incredible individuals who are redefining the way we do business, championing their communities and cultivating entirely new industries. Fenton is passionate about:

• Innovation
• The importance of youth leadership
• Resiliency in the face of adversity
• Diversity as a competitive advantage
• The future of mobility
• GenZ and how consumer companies can court them
• Building startups and navigating the venture ecosystem

An Ivey HBA graduate, he was previously a board member of the world’s largest neighbourhood library system, the Toronto Public Library, where he was responsible for leading the strategic planning committee and developing the library’s five-year strategy. He was also a management consultant at Deloitte, Monitor and Doblin, where he helped advise private and public sector leaders. He now consults independently to senior government and business leaders across the world, helping them think through the toughest innovation and business challenges with a design thinking and leadership mindset.

Recently, he advised Saudi Arabia on transit and a hotelier in Lebanon. In addition, Fenton ran a PPE operation out of Sudan and was a second strategy hire at Freshii, working closely with the CEO on new initiatives designed to push industry boundaries.

Currently, he’s the youngest person ever on the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) board of directors and the founding entrepreneur for venture-backed company, Faculty, a cosmetics brand for men. His company raised $3 million in seed funding led by The Esteé Lauder Cos., making Fenton one of the very few Black Canadians to raise capital for a venture. In 2023, the brand was acquired by Estée Lauder Companies.

Dr. Mili Roy, a Mississauga resident, is a practising physician and surgeon also involved in medical research and teaching. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine, and Section Editor/Board member at the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology.

She serves as Ontario Regional Co-Chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) and holds Climate Reality Corps Leader certification. She is also a founding co-chair of the Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign, an environmental democracy organization open to all Ontarians. She is committed to ongoing learning including completion of a Harvard Medicine Climate Health Organizing Fellowship.

As a mother and physician, she has been passionate about the environment for decades while working everyday to further human health. As the need to act has become more urgent, these spaces have increasingly merged in her work at the intersection of environmental health and human health.

Her advocacy work today includes educational activities, organizing and participating in public events and rallies, and media work such as doing interviews and writing Op Eds.

She is also engaged in policy work at municipal, provincial and federal levels. Her special areas of interest include planetary health implications of energy systems and land use, as well as the role of democracy as a lever for climate action and health.

She had the opportunity to join the Canadian delegation at the United Nations Conference of the Parties COP29 as a UN Observer in Azerbaijan last year, and hopes to attend COP30 this year.

Speaker Jesse Wente’s presence reflects the pathways he’s carved through Canada’s media and cultural landscape over two decades. As CBC Radio’s longtime culture critic and author of the national bestseller “Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance,” Jesse Wente brings authentic Indigenous perspective to organizations seeking meaningful change.

His approach to “right relations” helps audiences understand that genuine reconciliation requires examining the stories we tell ourselves about diversity, inclusion, and Indigenous partnerships, and being willing to rewrite them.

“The most important things to preserve are the human things: how we communicate, how we live, how we understand the world, how we dance and share with one another.”

Jay Pitter leads an award-winning, binational practice focused on how design, policy and social attitudes shape who gets to experience public joy, and where.

Highlights of Jay Pitter placemaking’s diverse practice portfolio include:

• Acting as the Infrastructure and Equity Lead for the Canada Healthy Communities Initiative, a $31-million national granting program
• Being retained by UN Women to provide gender-based mobility equity training to their teams across 35+ countries
• Leading the (RE)IMAGINING Cheapside Confederate monument placemaking process in Lexington
• Applying a gender-responsive design lens to the redevelopment of Granville Bridge in Vancouver
• Developing the Little Jamaica Cultural District Plan for the City of Toronto

Jay Pitter shapes urgent urbanism discourse through numerous keynotes and media platforms such as the BBC, Los Angeles Times and Canadian Architect.

She is also an Adjunct Urban Planning Professor and Lecturer who has engaged students at Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Princeton University and numerous other post-secondary institutions.

Ms. Pitter’s accolades include:

• Her selection as the John Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning at the University of Toronto (2019-2020)
• Being a Knight Foundation Public Space Fellows Award Finalist (2019)
• Being shortlisted for the Margolese National Design for Living Prize
• Being voted one of the “100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present” by Planetizen (2020)

Her two forthcoming books will be published by McClelland & Stewart and Penguin Random House Canada.