Panel Members

 

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Leslie woo

ceo, cIVIC aCTION

Leslie Woo CRE® is a respected city leader with over 25 years of experience building sustainable communities and shaping urban development in Canada’s fastest-growing urban region, greater Toronto. Leslie assumed the role of CEO at CivicAction in 2020. CivicAction is a premier civic engagement organization that convenes established and rising leaders from all sectors, backgrounds and experiences, CivicAction catalyzes actions and impactful solutions to address pressing challenges in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and beyond.

 Before joining CivicAction, Leslie was the Chief Planning and Development Officer at Metrolinx, for over a decade. Leslie is a tri-sector athlete with experience in the public, private and non-profit sectors as well she is a seasoned urban planner, architect and tireless community activator. She holds Board positions at Women’s College Hospital, Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, Waterfront Toronto and the Urban Land Institute’s Curtis Infrastructure Global Advisory Board.

An accomplished leader, Leslie was named a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in 2022, Bisnow’s 2019 Toronto Power Women in Commercial Real Estate, one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2017 by WXN, Spacing Toronto’s Transit Changemaker in 2016 and Canada’s Women’s Infrastructure Network’s 2015 Outstanding Leader. Founder of shebuildscities.org, Leslie uses her voice and platform to amplify and celebrate other women city builders.

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Angela Gibson

Chief, Strategy & Customer Office (Acting), Toronto Transit Commission

Angela joined the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in 2020 as Head, Strategy and Foresight responsible for ensuring that the third largest transit agency in North America is ready for change and disruption. Angela leads a challenging effort of integrating equity and inclusion in her diverse portfolio which includes fare policy, digital connectivity, innovation, accessibility and systems planning. Angela is a Registered Professional Planner with over 20 years of urban planning experience focused on creating complete and connected communities through facilitating the synergies between land use and transit planning.

Prior to joining the TTC, Angela worked for various municipal governments including York, Durham and the Town of Ajax in the capacity of leading intergovernmental relations, transportation planning, diversity and inclusion programs and strategic plans. As a city builder Angela has led a number of major regional initiatives including transportation planning for urban growth centres and universal accessibility programs.

Angela is a recent graduate of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Leadership program. Angela is an alumnus of the University of Toronto Urban Planning program where she has established a scholarship (named after her father, Thomas Panton) for visible minorities in the Urban Planning field at the University of Toronto to help support continued diversity within the planning profession. 

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Mei Cheong, P.Eng

Senior Technical Director and Project Leader, GHD

Mei has 20 years of international rail and transit experience, having worked in Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, the Middle-East and Far East. She graduated in 2001 with Bachelor of Civil Engineering with honours from Adelaide University in Australia, majoring in structural engineering. She was then awarded Master of Philosophy in geotechnical engineering from the University of Cambridge in England. Upon graduation, she started her career in the UK with Mott MacDonald and obtained Chartered Engineer status in 2007. Following that she moved to Arup where she was the station and tunnel coordinator on Crossrail project. In 2011, she moved to Canada and worked with Thurber Engineering on ECLRT and subsequently moved to Arup as geo-structural lead on the Finch West LRT in Toronto, the Edmonton Valley LRT bid, and the new Champlain Bridge and the Turcot Interchange projects in Montreal.

Mei is now Senior Technical Director and Project Leader for the Rail & Transit Group and the Geotechnics & Tunnelling Group at GHD. Mei is currently responsible for the construction management contract on the Advanced Tunnel Scarborough Subway Extension on behalf of the OneT+ Joint Venture team. She is a PEng in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia.

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Pavani Perera, EIT

Transportation Analyst at LEA Consulting and WTS Toronto Mentorship Committee Member

Pavani Is an Engineer-in-Training who has been working as a Transportation Analyst at LEA Consulting Ltd since 2020. She is passionate about making everyday travel safe and accessible to meet the evolving needs of communities in the GTHA and to support healthy community development with sustainable transportation. She completed her Bachelor of Applied Science in Civil Engineering with an Environmental Engineering Minor and an Engineering Business Certificate from the University of Toronto in 2020.

A significant part of her professional growth has been her involvement with the WTS Toronto Chapter Mentorship Program, where she has been a mentor and now a committee member.

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Racheal Saunders

Project Lead, City of Toronto and WTS Toronto Programs and DEI Committees Member

Racheal Saunders is currently a Project Lead in the City of Toronto's Transportation Services Division - working primarily with collision data that helps to shape infrastructure Torontonians interact with daily. Prior to that, fresh out of university and excited to start her career, she embarked on her journey in the consulting world at WSP. There she worked as a Designer EIT in the Transportation Planning Department, producing various transportation related studies most of which supported development applications. These roles allowed her to be placed in extremely talented teams in the private and public sector and gain an appreciation for how work is done in both realms.

She also grew to realize that doing work that ultimately resulted in something being built out, developed and implemented for the betterment of the community brought an indescribable kind of satisfaction, something she prides herself on and drives her to continue striving for excellence in this field. She also volunteers in her division's Confronting Anti-Black Racism working group as well as with WTS's Programs Committee and our Equity Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She believes that designing strong and safe communities not only requires good engineers with sound technical abilities but persons who are compassionate about improving the quality of life for everyone.

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Dana Nassif, P.Eng,M.Eng

Rail Systems Engineer, WSP and WTS Toronto DEI Committee Co-Chair

Dana Nassif is a rail systems engineer with WSP Canada and has been with the organization coming up to 6 years, and is specializing in tunnel ventilation systems and fire life safety. She has had the opportunity to work on megaprojects across Canada and globally and is constantly looking for opportunities to improve women's voices in her industry.

At the WTS Toronto Area Chapter, Dana is the Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee, a member of the Programs committee and a mentee with the Mentorship Committee. She is also a member of WTS International’s EDI Chapter Best Practices Sub-Committee.