Ahead of DisruptHR Toronto next month, we got a chance to chat with one of the amazing speakers, Hamoon Ekhtiari.
Hamoon is the Founder & CEO of Audacious Futures, a global innovation engine for re-imagining the future at the intersection of technology, humanity, and philosophy. Previously, he was the Director of Strategy and Innovation for the Executive Vice President at TELUS.
Prior to that, Hamoon was the Founding Director of Studio [Y], a leadership and innovation academy at MaRS, Canada’s largest innovation hub. He has also founded a social enterprise which raised $1M in its first year, helped build Deloitte’s consulting business in the Caribbean, and taught as adjunct faculty. Hamoon is a member of the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference, an AdR Fellow at University of Cambridge, a recipient of University of Waterloo’s Alumni Achievement Medal, and a Canada Millennium Scholar. He is passionate about unlocking the potential of people, organizations, and societies to re-imagine and build the future.
Here’s what Hamoon had to say..
Tell us about yourself – your career history and how you came to be in your current role
I a mathematician trying to solve human equations. I started my career at Deloitte as a management consultant – in North American then the Caribbean, built a social enterprise, worked at MaRS, and then led strategy and innovation for the CHRO at TELUS, before taking the entrepreneurial plunge to build a start-up in Audacious Futures.
What does an average work week look like for you?
Let me tell you about my yesterday – started the day meeting with the Chief Economist at a Fortune 50 company around future of work & learning, then had a mentoring chat with a new grad exploring the question of “what does your soul yearn for?”, got interviewed by a media outlet on our start-up, followed by pitching a University of the Future idea we are working on, attended a launch event for a company that does respeaking to make content more accessible for the deaf, and finished with helping an entrepreneur open a new studio
What motivated you pursue a speaking opportunity at DisruptHR Toronto?
We do a lot of work around Future of HR and I just love what the team at DisruptHR has concocted – an amazing combination of ideas that matter and an environment that energizes
What will you be speaking about at DisruptHR Toronto and what inspired you to choose this topic?
Why the Future of HR isn’t about HR. I am an accountant who’s come to see the light and believes that HR is critical to success of organizations. I have also interacted with HR from every angle (consultant, client, employee, partner) and believe it needs to fundamentally reimagine, rethink, and reinvent itself
What impact are you hoping to have with the audience and the greater HR & Talent community?
To inspire them to think about questions, ideas, and possibilities they might not have before and to motivate them to be more audacious in the change they pursue
Are you attending/speaking at any other HR-related events in the next 6-12 months? If so which ones and why?
I will be speaking at HRPA National Conference in January 2018