Heather Clara Young, CPB, founded Young Associates in 1993 to provide bookkeeping, payroll, training, consulting and outsourced CFO services to not-for-profits and charities, specializing in the arts and culture sector. Heather teaches accounting and financial management in Humber College’s Arts Management program, and has taught for Humber’s Fundraising and Volunteer Management program and University of Toronto’s Arts Management program. Finance for the Arts in Canada (2005, 2024) is a unique self-study guide, reference source and textbook. The book has been praised for its straightforward approach to mastering nonprofit accounting and financial management skills.

Janis Kahentóktha Bomberry is Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River.  Janis is Executive Director and CEO of the Canadian Museums Association.  Prior to this Janis returned as the Executive Director of Woodland Cultural Centre, one of the largest First Nations- run cultural centres/museums in the country.  Previously, Janis was appointed the Director of Tourism and Cultural Initiatives for the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation. 

Janis attended the University of Western Ontario where she attained a Bachelor of Arts in History and received a Museum Studies diploma from Algonquin College.  Janis continues to volunteer in her community at Six Nations and in Brantford, and is a recipient of the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers designated by the Governor General of Canada.

Jeanne LeSage's 35 year career has spanned from a decade as a stage manager (including 6 seasons at the Banff Centre),  starting the first HR department at TIFF, international postings at the Kennedy Center (DC), Abu Dhabi Film Festival (UAE), Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman), FilmAid (Haiti); and then forming LeSage Arts Management to support arts organizations in areas such as strategic HR, leadership succession, organizational development, governance, and interim management.  

Jeanne has designed and delivered leadership training across Canada and abroad: Teatro Nacional (Portugal), NEOM Cultural Leadership (Saudi Arabia), Charles University / Prague Sounds (Czechia), DeVos Institute International Arts Management Fellows (DC); at schools such as NTS, Humber, TMU; and multiple sessions with ASO’s and conferences.   

Jeanne is the author of research reports such as: “Who will lead Canada’s Performing Arts Organizations?”,“Reporting and Investigating Mechanisms for Workplace Harassment in the Arts”, and “Future of Arts Work: Board Governance in the Arts”.  

Jeanne is the recipient of Work in Culture’s 2023 Bob Johnston award and a proud co-founder of the national COVID response initiative LEAN (Leadership Emergency Arts Network).

Tanner Reid is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and audio engineer with a deep love for music. Hailing from Cold Lake, Alberta, he began producing independent hip-hop at 15 years old, developing a hands-on understanding of the creative process. Tanner further refined his skills at MacEwan University in Edmonton, earning a Bachelor’s in Recording and Production. While there, he co-founded and played drums for the pop-punk band Misfortune Tellers, performing in countless successful local shows and two western-Canadian tours. He recorded artists across many genres, including folk, jazz, pop, hip-hop, alt-rock, and punk.

Now pursuing a Master’s in Sound Recording at McGill University in Montreal, Tanner has expanded his expertise through numerous classical and orchestral recordings, while continuing to apply his refined skills to new projects. He remains passionate about both the creative and technical sides of the recording arts, spending the first few months of 2025 producing and recording a folk-jazz album for artist Sophie Lane while creating his own sound design plugin. With a true dedication to capturing the “lightning in a bottle” that occurs in a recording session, Tanner is relentlessly motivated to breathe life into artists’ musical visions.

Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Simon Williams is an emerging pianist, composer, producer, and audio engineer.  Having graduated from Humber Polytechnic’s Bachelor of Music program (Toronto) in 2025, Simon is an exciting new voice on the Canadian music scene, having already performed and worked across the country.  Simon has performed interprovincially as a pianist, notably at the Winspear Centre, the Aga Khan Museum, Massey Hall, Koerner Hall, the Yardbird Suite, and Hermann’s Jazz club.  After participating in the 2023 Intercultural and Creative Music Fellowship, Simon developed a keen interest and passion for production and recording, beginning by working as an assistant engineer at teh Gordon Wragg Studios in Toronto.  There, he continued developing his skills as a recordist, becoming particularly interested in non-standard stereo recording techniques and applications.  Since then, he has studied audio recording and theory, contemporary production, aesthetics of recorded sound, and immersive audio production.  Simon is excited to continue studying at the Banff Centre and hopes to attain a graduate degree in recording. 

Jessie Gosling is a recording engineer and musician based in Toronto, Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Music from Humber Polytechnic, where she studied jazz and music production. Her coursework in recording techniques, mixing, and immersive audio has shaped her technical and artistic approach to sound. Jessie has recorded indie artists, jazz ensembles, and singer-songwriters in Toronto, working as both a Studio Assistant and a freelance engineer. With experience on both sides of the studio glass, she brings a deep understanding of musicality to her engineering work. 

As a performer, she has played at venues across Toronto and released music both as a solo artist and as part of Carmine, Humber’s 2023 Intercultural and Creative Music Fellowship band. Carmine’s EP, Something Is Awake, was released in 2023, and Jessie’s latest single, Slow Descent, came out in February 2024. Jessie is eager to expand her expertise in recording and collaborative studio work at the Banff Centre and is looking forward to working with experienced mentors and peers. With plans to further her studies in sound recording at McGill this fall, she is committed to refining her craft as an audio engineer and producer. 

I’m an Audio Engineer from Chicago, currently studying at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins. I feel most at home creating and recording experimental music. My time at Peabody has sharpened my ability to capture realistic, lifelike recordings, but much of my personal work is spent deconstructing this realism to craft unique atmospheres. I thrive on the challenges our artform presents and believe that it’s often in the limitations and disagreements where the most exciting innovation occurs. 

In addition to experimental music, I also enjoy recording and producing folk, jazz, and country music. Growing up in Chicago exposed me to a wide range of musical styles, and I’ve developed a deep appreciation for each of them. My work has also led me into the world of experimental film, where I explore the intersection of visual and auditory expression. 

Fulbright Scholar Basia Irland is an artist, author, and activist who creates international large-scale water projects featured in her books Water Library (University of New Mexico Press) and Reading the River: The Ecological Activist Art of Basia Irland (Museum De Domijnen, the Netherlands). A monograph, Basia Irland, Repositories: Portable Sculptures for Waterway Journeys, is authored by Patricia Watts. Texas A & M University Press published What Rivers Know: Listening to the Voices of Global Waterways in 2025 with 210 color images. Irland is professor emerita, Department of Art, University of New Mexico, where she founded the Art & Ecology Program. Her website, basiairland.com, contains extensive documentation, including collaborations with scientists, projects along the entire length of waterways, ephemeral Ice Book series, portable Repositories, waterborne disease scrolls, essays about global rivers, and images from her large museum retrospective in the Netherlands. Her art has been featured in over seventy international publications.

Director and Associate Professor in the School of Craft & Emerging Media at the Alberta University of the Arts. Mackenzie received his MFA in 2005 from Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University and his BFA in 1998 from Alberta College of Art & Design. His ongoing research focuses on collaboration with material that considers our co-evolution with plants and animals who provide the fibre we use to make cloth; and the communities and relationships required to sustain this activity. He has exhibited his work internationally, and participated in residencies at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós and the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland Oregon. His writing includes texts for Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture and VAV Magazine. Mackenzie lives in Mohkinstsis (Calgary), Canada with husband Kristofer and daughter Elizabeth.