Speakers Bureau

Megan Ogilvie writes about health for the Toronto Star, with a focus on healthy lifestyles, nutrition and medical stories that give readers a glimpse inside Toronto hospitals. Her favourite stories from 2017 include a short feature on the kind of music surgeons listen to in the OR, a portrait of an ICU nurse who makes beautiful murals out of medical waste and a story about how a team of Toronto surgeons made a new esophagus for a survivor of a brutal acid attack.

Nicholas Keung

Nicholas Keung is an award-winning journalist and worked at Sing Tao Daily, Canada's largest Chinese-language daily before joining the Star as a general assignment report and later as the paper's immigration reporter. He writes about immigration, refugee, border enforcement and diversity issues.

Richard Lautens

Richard Lautens has been a staff photojournalist at the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, for 30 years. In that time he has covered news and events all over the world including war zones and the Olympics.

In addition to photojournalism, Mr. Lautens writes regularly at the Star, trains other journalists, blogs, is an occasional assignment editor, shoots video and assembles multi-media stories for the web.

Mr. Lautens has a long pedigree of journalism in his family. Grandfather Joe was with the Canadian Press for 50 years. Uncle Trevor worked as a writer for various newspapers for over 50 years as well. Brother Stephen wrote a weekly column in the Sun chain for 15 years.

Of course the best known journalist in his family is his award winning father Gary Lautens who was a journalist, writer and broadcaster for more than 50 years. Gary Lautens was primarily known for his humour column in The Toronto Star but was also on a variety of television shows on the CBC including Front Page Challenge. He was also an author of note with 6 books published, winning 2 Leacock Awards for Humour in the process.

After graduating from the University of Toronto, Richard Lautens was a summer student at the Toronto Star and has stayed with them ever since. As a staff photographer, he has covered events all over the world including Olympics, World Series, a variety of playoffs for football, basketball, soccer among other sports. In addition to his sports assignments, he has photographed fashion all around the world, civil strife in Haiti, unexplored jungle in Guyana, substance abuse in the far north, the Royal Family in England and celebrities all over.

He has also worked for a number of commercial freelance clients. In addition, his work has appeared in a number of publications and on CD jackets, posters, books and magazines.

Mr. Lautens lectures regularly to a variety of clubs, schools, business groups and teaches photojournalism at 3 difference university and colleges in Toronto. In addition, he has judged photo contests and has curated several photography exhibits.

He has won local, national and international awards for his photography and he currently lives in downtown Toronto with his wife and two children.

Peter Howell

Peter Howell is the movie critic for the Toronto Star. He's also president and co-founder of the Toronto Film Critics Association (TFCA), which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2017. Howell contributes to thestar.com website and often discusses movies as a guest on local and national radio and TV shows. Prior to movies, he was the Star's pop music critic. He has been a member of the Star's Entertainment department since 1991. An ebook of Howell's reviews of his favorite films, titled Movies I Can't Live Without, has been published by the Toronto Star. Howell is also the author of the self-published pulp novel, Hot Pine, a tale of mystery and lust set in the dark forests of Algonquin Park.

Laurie Monsebraaten

Laurie Monsebraaten is the Star's Social Justice Reporter. She writes about poverty, inequality and social programs including welfare, child care, Children's Aid and disability rights. Other interests include affordable housing and the plight of low-wage, non-standard workers. A Star reporter for more than 30 years, Laurie's work has received numerous National Newspaper Award nominations and has garnered three citations of merit for the prestigious Michener Award for public service journalism.

Noor Javed

Noor Javed is an award winning reporter, who covers everything from suburban city politics, to human-interest stories, to features about the GTA's diverse communities.

In 2011, Noor won a National Newspaper Award for her analysis and reporting on Toronto’s booming condo market. Since then, Noor has focused her attention on covering municipal politics in the booming 905 Region, and has extensively covered school boards, city hall, and decisions that directly impact taxpayers.

When she's not chasing stories, Noor can be found on Twitter (@njaved) or trying to keep up with her two young children.

Theresa Boyle

Theresa writes about health care in Ontario. Areas of interest include system reform, transparency, appropriateness of care, equity, quality improvement, patient safety and cost containment.

Her coverage of the health beat has earned her some of Canada's top journalism honours. She is a winner of the National Newspaper Award, plus a two-time runner up. She is also a winner of the Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism.

Theresa has a Master of Science in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where she studied health-care reporting. She also has two undergraduate degrees — one in economics and politics and another in journalism.

Doug Smith

Doug Smith is Canada’s longest-serving NBA beat writer, having covered the Raptors and the league since the mid-1990s.

After spending the first two seasons covering the Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies for the Canadian Press, he has spent the last 23 years covering Raptors (every year since their inception) and handling NBA duties at the Toronto Star, building on newspaper work to add extensive Internet coverage to the package.

A married father of a 21-year-old son, Smith has also covered nine Olympics, the two World Series wins for the Toronto Blue Jays as well as three world basketball championships, major league baseball and the CFL.

Wendy Gillis

Wendy Gillis is the Star’s crime reporter, covering major events, crime trends, and policing and police oversight in Toronto and the GTA. On the crime and police beat, Wendy has been part of a team nominated for the Governor General's Michener Award for coverage of Ontario police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, and part of a group nominated for a Canadian Hillman prize for the Star's work on carding. She was the recipient of a Canadian Mental Health Association's media award for her work on the police-shooting death of Andrew Loku. She is also a French speaker and when she is not on the crime beat, she has been sent to cover breaking news in French speaking regions and countries, including the 2016 terrorist attack in Brussels and the 2017 mosque shooting in Quebec City. She was nominated for a National Newspaper Award (NNA) in 2013 for her coverage of the Lac-Mégantic train disaster. She also was part of a team that won a NNA for the breaking news coverage of the Toronto 2010 G20 Summit.

David Bruser

David Bruser is the acting deputy editor of the Star's investigations team. Since joining the team in 2007, he has reported on police who lie in court, bad charities, lead in toys, the pharmaceutical industry, murdered and missing indigenous women and the mercury poisoning of Grassy Narrows First Nation.

Kathy English

Kathy English has been public editor of the Star since 2007. Previous to this, she reported and edited for six Canadian daily newspapers including the Star, the Globe and Mail and the London Free Press. Kathy was a tenured faculty member with Ryerson School of Journalism from 1989-1999. After departing from Ryerson, she launched websites for two Canadian media companies: SunMedia (Lifewise.ca) and Transcontinental Media (Mochasofa.ca), and also directed the launch of the San Francisco-based parenting website, BabyCenter Canada. She holds a Masters of History degree from Western University and is the recipient of Western's 2018 Asper Teaching Fellowship. Kathy is an executive board member of the Canadian Journalism Foundation. As well, she is a member of the professional advisory boards of Ryerson School of Journalism and the Sheridan College journalism program. She serves on the board of the Gordon Sinclair Foundation and on the advisory board of Informed Opinions. In past, she served on the boards of the National Newspaper Awards and the Association of News Ombudsmen.

Deborah Dundas

Deborah Dundas became the Books Editor at the Toronto Star after reviewing books for the paper for more than 15 years. She has worked in the media for more than 25 years – including stints as a books editor, but also in business, lifestyle, and national and city politics. She's worked at CTV and TVO, both as an editor/producer and reporting, interviewing or producing shows on emerging artists, popular writers and literary powerhouses. She's also lived and worked in Northern Ireland and feels that the books beat is the perfect marriage of her diverse experience and interests.

Kevin Donovan

Kevin Donovan is an investigative reporter and editor at the Toronto Star. He has won three National Newspaper Awards, two Michener Awards and three Canadian Association of Journalists Awards. He is the author of The Dead Times, a mystery novel, co-author with Nick Pron of Crime Story and author of ORNGE: The Star Investigation That Broke the Story.

Peter Edwards

Peter Edwards has reported on organized crime for the Toronto Star for 30 years. He is the author of 13 non-fiction books, seven of which are on organized crime, and most of which were national bestsellers.

Several of his books have also been published in Europe, including Unrepentant: the Strange and (Sometimes) Terrible Life of Lorne Campbell, Satan’s Choice and Hells Angels biker and The Bandido Massacre: A True Story of Bikers, Brotherhood and Betrayal.

Edwards co-wrote The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime with Michel Auger and an updated edition remains in print, 12 years after its original publication. One Dead Indian: The Premier, the Police and the Ipperwash Crisis was made into a movie for CTV and aptn and was nominated for seven Gemini Awards, winning three.

Edwards has lectured on journalism and organized crime for community groups, police intelligence officers and university students. He has been interviewed widely on bikers and organized crime in general for major television networks, including the BBC, CBC, CTV and History Television. His book Delusion (published in Europe as The Infiltrator) is on the CIA’s recommended reading list for staff and agents.

Awards include an Eagle Feather from the Union of Ontario Indians, a National Newspaper Award for team reporting, a Hamilton Literary Awards first prize, a gold medal from the Centre for Human Rights and a place on the Alumni Wall of Distinction for the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University.

Edwards has a biography of outlaw biker Bernie Guindon and a young adult novel slated for publication in 2017

Tanya Talaga

Tanya Talaga is a journalist at the Star focusing on Indigenous issues and investigative reporting. She has been nominated five times for the Michener Award for public service journalism and she has been parts of two teams that have won Project of the Year, National Newspaper Awards. She is also the author of Seven Fallen Feathers, a non-fiction book released in 2017 on the deaths of seven Indigenous students in Thunder Bay. She is the 2017-2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy.

Bob Hepburn

Bob Hepburn is an award-winning journalist who has worked as the Star’s bureau chief in Ottawa, Washington and the Middle East. He has reported from more than 30 countries for the Star and has also served as the Star’s editorial page editor, assistant managing editor, national editor and foreign editor.

Martin Regg Cohn

Martin Regg Cohn writes the Ontario politics column for the Toronto Star. A foreign correspondent for 11 years, he was chief of the Middle East and Asia bureaus, then Foreign Editor, and a world affairs columnist. He has reported from more than 40 countries, from Afghanistan to Yemen, and been nominated five times for the National Newspaper Award. He previously covered national politics from Ottawa. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University's Faculty of Arts.

David Olive

David Olive is a business and current events columnist at The Toronto Star. A 30-year veteran of business journalism, Olive has worked as an editor and staff writer at The Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, the National Post and Canadian Business magazine. He was for six years editor-in-chief of the the Globe's Report on Business Magazine. Olive is author of 11 books, including No Guts, No Glory: How Canada's Greatest CEOs Built Their Empires, and An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama, a Primer by David Olive.

Robert Benzie

Robert Benzie is Queen's Park Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star. He is responsible for coordinating the provincial political coverage for Canada's largest circulation newspaper.

Before joining the Star in 2003, he covered Queen's Park and Toronto City Hall for the National Post, a paper he helped launch as its Deputy Toronto Editor in 1998.

Prior to that, he worked for the Toronto Sun for four years, covering Parliament Hill, City Hall, and general news.

He began his career at the Ottawa Sun, where he was nominated for a National Newspaper Award and covered stories as disparate as famine relief efforts in Somalia and the 50th anniversary of D-day in Normandy. In 1993, he interviewed James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, in a Nashville prison.

Benzie has covered five federal elections, five provincial elections, two municipal elections, and 12 provincial and federal leadership contests.

Most recently, he covered U.S. President Barack Obama's final days on the campaign trail and reported from Chicago on Election Night.

In 2010, Benzie received the Mary Deanne Shears Award as the Toronto Star's reporter of the year. In 2016, he was part of the Star's Michener Award-nominated team that investigated police secrecy.

He lives in Toronto with his wife and two children.

Doug Cudmore

Doug Cudmore is a senior editor at the Star, specializing in business, economics, crime and courts coverage. Prior to that, he served as the Star's business editor, deputy city editor, and entertainment editor.

Shree Paradkar

Shree Paradkar writes about discrimination and identity issues for the Toronto Star, focussing on intersections of race, ethnicity and gender. Her writing aims to shine an uncomfortable spotlight on how unequally we treat those who live in our societies, even as we we claim lofty egalitarianism. Shree is a seasoned international journalist who has worked in leading newsrooms in Bangalore, Mumbai, Singapore and Toronto.

Robert Cribb

Robert Cribb is an award-winning investigative reporter at the Toronto Star. He has received national reporting awards and citations for investigations into offshore tax evasion, child exploitation, human trafficking, dangerous doctors and public-health threats. Since 2012, has been recipient of the Massey Journalism Fellowship, the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy Reporting and the Michener¬ Deacon Fellowship. His investigative work has been nominated for the prestigious Michener Awards for Meritorious Public Service Journalism six times. Cribb is past president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, the first international board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, current president of Canadian journalism charity Veritas - Advancing Journalism in the Public Interest and is co¬-author of Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research Guide (Oxford University Press). He teaches investigative reporting at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism and the University of Toronto.

G. Joseph Hall

Joseph Hall is a feature writer at the Star, specializing in medical and science stories. In his three decades with the paper he has also covered sports and transportation beats.

Brendan Kennedy

Brendan Kennedy is an investigative reporter at the Toronto Star, where he has worked since 2009. Before joining the investigations team in 2017, he spent five seasons covering the Toronto Blue Jays, including their back-to-back playoff runs in 2015 and 2016. Prior to joining the Star he worked at the Ottawa Citizen and the Kingston Whig-Standard. Born and raised in Toronto, Brendan is a graduate of Queen's University.

Bruce Campion-Smith

Bruce Campion-Smith is the Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star, reporting from Parliament Hill on federal politics and policy. He joined the Star in 1988 and has held a variety of positions in the newsroom, including transportation beat reporter, assistant city editor and editorial writer. He joined the Ottawa bureau in 2003. He has covered four federal elections and twice travelled to Afghanistan to cover Canada’s military mission.

Jennifer Pagliaro

Jennifer Pagliaro is a city hall reporter who has written extensively on transit politics, public housing and development issues. She was named one of Canada's best young journalists in 2013

Diana Zlomislic

Diana Zlomislic is an investigative reporter, specializing in data-driven projects. Her work has exposed the critical failures of cancer care systems in Ontario hospitals, federal loopholes in drug safety, and the tragic mistreatment of teenage inmate Ashley Smith in Canadian prisons. Zlomislic joined the Star in 2002. She spent the early part of her career as an editor and manager. As editor of the Saturday Star, she oversaw editorial production of the country's largest newspaper.

Jesse McLean

Jesse McLean has been named Canada's best young newspaper journalist in 2012, receiving the 21st annual Edward Goff Penny Memorial award. He has received two National Newspaper Awards for his investigative work with the Star.

Kristin Rushowy

Kristin Rushowy is a reporter in the Queen's Park bureau, covering Ontario politics. Prior to that, she spent 15 years on the education beat, with a particular focus on early years, full-day kindergarten and issues at the Toronto school boards. She was part of the Star's 2011 National Newspaper Award-winning team for breaking news coverage of the G20 summit, and worked on the Star's Autism Project, which was nominated for a National Newspaper Award as well as a Michener Award for public service journalism.

Jim Rankin

Jim Rankin is a reporter-photographer at the Toronto Star. He specializes in investigations, data journalism and features. His work has been nominated for ten National Newspaper Awards, many of them for group efforts on social justice issues. In 2002 he led a Michener Award-winning investigative series into race, policing and crime in Toronto, which led to repeated investigations into the police practice of carding. He has also worked on investigations into shady international adoption practices, the social and financial costs of tough-on-crime Canadian penal policy, and how school suspensions and expulsions can lead to increased involvement with the criminal justice system. Jim covered the Arab Spring, reporting from Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. Other recent stories he’s worked on revealed racial disparities in Ontario’s child protection system, jail populations and school suspensions. He was also part of a team that produced a 2015 series on murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. Born in North Bay, Jim has degrees in biology (University of Western Ontario) and journalism (University of King’s College, Halifax). Before joining the Star in 1994, he worked at the North Bay Nugget, London Free Press and New Brunswick Telegraph Journal.

Michele Henry

Michele Henry is an award-winning reporter on the Star's investigations team. Throughout my 12 year career at the Star I've covered a diverse array of issues. But I have spent most of my time covering food in the Star's test kitchen and doing in depth investigations. I've authored an ebook about eating seal and the seal hunt, uncovered sexual harassment in the restaurant industry and exposed lawyers who exploit their clients.

Kenyon Wallace

Kenyon Wallace is an Investigative reporter with the Toronto Star. He has reported on numerous public interest issues, including secret mistakes made by health care providers, unscrupulous driving schools, lawyers who steal from their clients, delays in Ontario’s program to detect rare genetic diseases in newborns, and the number of undocumented homeless individuals dying on GTA streets. Kenyon holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from UBC and a Master of Journalism from Carleton University.

Ed Cassavoy

Ed manages the Torstar Syndication Services, including King Features, Getty Images and editorial rights and licensing. As well, as part of the Content Strategy & Partnership team, he develops new editorial content partnerships and products (both print and digital) for all Torstar media properties including The Toronto Star.

In his 17 years at the Star, he has had various Editorial roles from online to night news to travel. Prior to that, Ed ran a selection of specialty digital magazines for Rogers Publishing. At Thomson Newspapers, he was an editorial consultant responsible for 55 North American newspapers. He’s also held a variety of newspaper roles from managing editor to sports reporter.

He grew up in Texas, earning a journalism degree from Texas A&M University.

Bruce DeMara

Bruce DeMara is an entertainment reporter at the Toronto Star. A graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism, he has spent almost 30 years covering various beats at the Star, including general assignment news, city hall bureau, a stint on the editorial board and for the past 11 years in the entertainment department where he writes daily news and features, with a focus on movie coverage. As a regular movie reviewer, he is a member of the Toronto Film Critics Association.

Rick Madonik

Madonik has been at The Star since 1991, coming on staff in 1999. Madonik has covered numerous news, sports, feature and special projects over the years. War (Afghanistan, Libya, Israel), famine (Ethiopia), federal politics (1994-98), Vancouver Olympics 2010, Pan Am 2015, Sports (Raptors, Leafs, TFC, Argos, Blue Jays), Virginia Tech shooting, etc, etc.

A journeyman photographer, mostly self taught, with a passion for News and Sports.

Edward Keenan

Edward Keenan is a city columnist for the Toronto Star who has lived in the city all his life. His book Some Great Idea: Good Neighbourhoods, Crazy Politics, and the Invention of Toronto explores Toronto's history and identity crisis in the years since amalgamation, and he is also the author of the children's book The Art of the Possible: An Everyday Guide to Politics.

Amy Dempsey

Amy Dempsey is an award-winning feature writer and news reporter whose stories often focus on crime and justice. She has written extensively about the not criminally responsible verdict and what happens in the rare event that people with mental illness commit crimes. Her reporting has taken her to a city decimated by a typhoon in the Philippines, an animal sanctuary in California that is home to the elephants formerly of the Toronto Zoo and a village in Colombia where an extended family’s rare genetic mutation could lead to a treatment that would prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Nadine Chevolleau

Nadine Chevolleau heads up the Toronto Star Classroom Connection division where she oversees the publishing of educational resources for youth and educators. She has worked with educators to develop resources on a variety of topics including financial literacy, social justice, media literacy, Black History and STEM education. Her award-winning programs have been used by students, educators and parents across Canada.

Nadine is a contributing blogger for International News Media Association (INMA), Satisfying Audiences blog. She’s also the author of a popular children’s book titled Stop Kissing Me, Mommy!

Sara Mojtehedzadeh

Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the changing workplace, including precarious work, labour issues, inequality, and workplace health and safety. Previously, she worked for the BBC World Service. Her work at the Star has been recognized by the Hillman Foundation prize for social-justice oriented investigative journalism. She received the JHR/Canadian Association of Journalists Award for human rights reporting in 2017.

Scott Colby

Scott Colby is the Toronto Star's Opinions page editor and is available to speak about how he works with freelance writers and choses op-ed articles.

Kate Allen

Kate Allen writes about science and technology for the Toronto Star. Her beat has taken her aboard a Japanese jellyfish research cruise, inside a blue whale carcass, and to the telescopes at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. She was part of the team behind The Autism Project, a series that was nominated for the Michener Award, the Canadian governor-general’s prize for public service journalism. Before coming to the science beat in 2012, she covered news and features for the Star’s city desk. She has a Masters of Journalism from the University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of King’s College.

Katie Daubs

Katie Daubs is a reporter with the Star's features team, where she often writes about Toronto history. In 2014, she and photographer Richard Lautens walked across the western front for two months, with daily dispatches about the First World War. In 2012, she lived in Toronto's underground PATH network for two weeks, helping to produce a graphic story for the Star.

Rob Ferguson

Rob Ferguson came to the Toronto Star in 1997 as a business reporter covering the media, mutual funds, banking and the stock market before transferring back to Queen's Park in 2004, where he had worked previously for The Canadian Press covering the Rae ?and Harris governments. Rob is president of the Queen's Park Press Gallery and has served as a judge and board member of the Ontario Newspaper Awards since 2014.

Marco Chown Oved

Marco Chown Oved is an investigative reporter who works on financial stories involving corruption, money laundering and tax havens. He has also written extensively on foreign aid and mining. Before joining the Star, Oved was a foreign correspondent with the Associated Press in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Radio France Internationale in Paris.