Theresa Brown, PhD, RN is author of the forthcoming Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient. She also wrote the New York Times bestseller The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and writes for CNN.com and the American Journal of Nursing. She has been interviewed on the NPR program “Fresh Air,” and appeared on “Hardball,” and MSNBC live. Her first book, Critical Care chronicles her first year in nursing. She has a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and inspired by her kids, left academia to become a nurse.

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Dr. Ira Byock is a palliative care physician, author, and public advocate for improving care for people through the end of life. He is active emeritus professor at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine. Dr. Byock is founder of the Institute for Human Caring at Providence, a multistate U.S. healthcare system. The Institute’s Hear Me Now podcast explores critical social, ethical and clinical issues related to health and healthcare. Dr. Byock’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal and he has been interviewed on CBS 60 Minutes, PBS News Hour, and National Public Radio. His books include Dying Well, The Four Things That Matter Most: A Book About Living, and The Best Care Possible.

Eric FIAT is a professor at the Gustave Eiffel University where he teaches philosophy and applied medical ethics.
Born in Château-Thierry (02), he taught for a few years in high school after the Agrégation of philosophy (1991). After a PhD (2002) he became a lecturer at the University of Paris-Est. After a HDR (2011), he was appointed University Professor.
He is in charge of the Master of Medical and Hospital Ethics applied to the UGE, and is also a member of the ethics commission of the SFH (French Society of Hematology) and of the INCA (National Cancer Institute).
He is also a cellist in the Château-Thierry Instrumental Ensemble.
Working in the field of philosophical anthropology, he devotes his research to human fragility in its bodily dimensions. Latest publications: Ode to fatigue, Ed. de l'observatoire 2018; The future of interiority in the age of new technologies, Le bord de l'eau 2018; La pudeur, with Adèle Van Reeth, Plon 2016; Corps et âme, Cécile Defaut 2015; La couleur du matin profond, Dialogue with Pierre Magnard, Les petits platons 2015; Petit traité de dignité, Larousse 2012.

Dr. Gallagher is a Clinical Professor in the Division of Palliative Care at the University of BC doing teaching and academic writing. She was the founding director of the Division of Palliative Care at the University of BC from 1997 to 2003. During her tenure, Dr. Gallagher established the first public forum on death and dying which ran for 5 years and was replicated by others in North America and Europe.

Romayne Gallagher retired from clinical practice in 2018 after 34 years of working in multiple healthcare sectors. She spent 12 years as a family physician doing palliative care consultations before leaving her practice to do full time palliative care in hospitals, long term care and the community. She has been Physician Program Director of Providence Health Care’s Hospice Palliative Care program as well as Physician Program Director for the Palliative Care and Residential Care Programs at Providence Health Care. She has over 25 years of experience as a consultant in palliative care. Through her work with the Doctors of BC, Dr. Gallagher helped establish the BC Palliative Care Benefits Program. Dr. Gallagher’s other area of clinical and academic interest is chronic pain in older adults. She continues to teach and write about this issue.

Dr. Gallagher is a board member of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians.

Dr. Nathan Goldstein is a Professor in the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and holds the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Chair in Palliative Care. He is the Site-Chair for Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine for Mount Sinai Downtown and the Vice-Chair for Population Health for the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine. He is the president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Dr. Goldstein is a clinician investigator whose work examines patient-physician communication in patients with advanced heart failure as well as novel models to deliver palliative care at home for people with advanced illness – work that has been funded by multiple foundation grants as well as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Institute on Aging. His areas of clinical expertise include pain in older adults, palliative care, and the use of advanced technologies for patients with heart failure near the end of life. He has been spotlighted on television programs such as NBC Nightly News and CNN Headline News, and has been quoted in the Washington Post. He was named one of Castle-Connolly’s Top Doctors and Crain’s New York Notables in Healthcare in 2021.

MARY ELLEN MACDONALD, PhD, is a medical anthropologist with doctoral training in Indigenous health and postdoctoral training in palliative care. She is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Dentistry, an Associate Member of the Institute of Health Sciences Education, Chair of the McGill Qualitative Health Research Group (www.mcgill.ca/mqhrg/), and Program Head of Pediatric Palliative Care Research at the McGill University Health Centre (Montreal, Quebec). Her current research program focuses on the health of vulnerable populations in Canada, looking across three main domains: oral health, indigenous health, and end-of-life care. She works mainly with qualitative (especially ethnographic) and participatory methodologies. A central focus of her research program is on the various ways the social, the cultural and the political intersect to both produce and respond to particular forms of vulnerability within Canadian society.

Dr. Moorhouse is interim head of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and co-founder of the Palliative and Therapeutic Harmonization Program (PATH), which is a multi award winning program dedicated to helping patients and their caregivers make health care decisions that reflect individual values and quality of life. This geriatrician and professor of medicine is an accomplished clinician researcher who joined the Division of Geriatric Medicine in 2007.

Dr. Christian Ntizimira is Founder/Executive Director of the African Center for Research on End-of-Life Care (ACREOL), a non-profit organization to bring socio-cultural equality through “Ubuntu in End-of-life Care” in Africa. He is a Fulbright Alumni and graduated from Harvard Medical School, department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

Dr. Ntizimira is the winner of the prestigious Tällberg-Stervos Niarcos Foundation-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize 2021, for his passionate advocacy for palliative care in Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa, based on his deeply held belief that dignified end-of-life care is a human right. He pioneered integration of palliative care and end of life care into health services rendered to Rwandan cancer patients and in the community settings. Through his program (2008-2013), more than 1500 health care providers and community health workers have learned the principles of cancer prevention control & palliative care leading to a five-fold increase in prescription of morphine, an essential pain medication. In 2016 he has been awarded as a young cancer leader and world cancer Regional, lead in 2018 for his outstanding contributions in cancer control in Rwanda and in Africa.

In 2018 he became the first advocacy/policy champion among extraordinary individuals are making a significant contribution to developing palliative care in low- and middle-income countries for World Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA). From 2010–13, he was the director of Kibagabaga Hospital in Kigali. He has advised several governments on national palliative care policy, including Burundi, Rwanda and Senegal, on access to palliative care services. He was a member of the scientific Advisory Committee for the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Control. Ntizimira graduated in medicine from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Rwanda in 2008. In 2011, he received a scholarship to study palliative care education and practice in the United States of America at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Palliative Care. He also trained as an African Pain Policy Expert at the University of Wisconsin. Ntizimira was named Young Cancer Leader by the Union for International Cancer Control in 2016 and Distinguished Young Leader by the Harvard Global Health Catalyst in 2017.

An Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, Jaime teaches an undergraduate nursing course in Supportive and Palliative Care and an interdisciplinary and intergenerational course in Family Caregiving Across the Lifespan. Jamie’s research is focused on engaging communities and family caregivers to co-design supportive interventions to improve the experience of family caregivers and promote their health and wellbeing. She is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence and the International Palliative Care Family-Carer Research Collaboration.

Dr. José Pereira is a palliative care physician and is co-founder and Scientific Officer of Pallium Canada. He leads the development of the Learning Essential Approaches to Palliative Care (LEAP) courseware and resources such as the Pallium Palliative Pocketbook, and research related to the impact of the program.

Dr. Seow is the Canada Research Chair in Palliative Care and Health System Innovation and an Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology, McMaster University. He publishes health care and policy research focused on improving care for patients with serious illness.

Hélène Viennet, psychologist and psychoanalyst based in Paris, is a member of the Association pour le Maintien du Lien psychique en réanimation, AML, and the Société Psychanalytique de Freudienne, SPF. For many years her questioning has been oriented around the links between psychoanalysis and medicine. She has worked in palliative care services in hospitals, intervenes in the homes of patients and families with serious illnesses as part of a palliative care network and regularly leads discussion groups for caregivers and volunteers. She has always been very sensitive to the suffering of caregivers and, through her listening skills, allows for the emergence of discoveries and riches that can soothe the caregiver's ideal and give new impetus when the sky seems too low and heavy. She has been involved in the DU palliative care program at the Sorbonne University Medical School, the DU in health and care ethics at the Paris Saclay Medical School, and the DIU in respite care at the University of Lyon since it was first established. In her book A l'écoute des proches aidants, du répit à la rêverie (Listening to family caregivers, from respite to daydreaming), she felt it was essential to give thanks to family caregivers by testifying to the complexity of the situations and affects experienced when illness, disability or dementia invite themselves into the home without having been invited. It seemed essential to him to make the words and thoughts of the sick, the relatives and the caregivers heard, of which each one can be ashamed; as well as the dreaded feelings, which dare not be said or shared, but also the richness of the accompaniments.