Jeremiah Shamess leads the private capital investment group which specializes in exclusive representation of building and development land owners in the Greater Toronto and Greater Golden Horseshoe. Jeremiah’s focus is on development land, retail, office and apartment buildings. A seasoned investment sales veteran with creative and consistent execution, Jeremiah’s team has sold over $1 Billion of buildings and land in the past 36 months.

Jason Thorne joined the City of Hamilton as General Manager of Planning and Economic Development in 2014. As General Manager, Jason leads a department of approximately 800 staff that has responsibility for a wide range of City services including planning, building, growth management, economic development, tourism, arts, culture, by-law services, and transportation planning.

Born and raised in Hamilton, Jason has been working in planning and community development his entire career. While working for the Province of Ontario, Jason was one of the key architects of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe as well as the Metrolinx regional transportation plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Jason also worked as a planning consultant for communities across Canada and in Africa and Latin America as a Principal with the Toronto-based planning, architecture and design firm PlanningAlliance. Jason began his career working for a wide range of environmental non-governmental organizations including the Bay Area Restoration Council, Bruce Trail Association and Coalition on the Niagara Escarpment.

Jennifer Keesmaat is an urban planner named one of the “most powerful people in Canada” by Macleans, one of the “most influential” by Toronto Life, and one of the top Women of Influence in Canada. She spent half a decade as Toronto’s Chief City Planner, where she was celebrated for her forward thinking and collaborative approach to city-building. Keesmaat is President and CEO of Collecdev-Markee, developing new communities across the GTA as sustainable, liveable places that prioritize access to high quality, affordable housing. A Distinguished Visitor in Residence Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Keesmaat continues to share her vision for cities of the future, through her WEBBY Award-winning podcast, Invisible City. Keesmaat is the Chief Architect of the 2020 Declaration for Resilience in Canadian Cities, which is a blueprint for adapting cities post Covid19 that has been adopted by cities around the world. Keesmaat is on the Advisory Board of the Urban Land Institute, Toronto, and is appointed to the International Panel of Experts, Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority. Jennifer is on the Board of Directors for May Mobility and is on the President’s Planning and Growth Advisory Board and Design Review Panel for Ohio State University. Jennifer is recognized as one of the 100 most influential urbanists of all time, by Planetizen Magazine.

Shonda Wang is a Principal at SvN with over thirty years of experience in community development and large-scale urban regeneration projects. Shonda specializes in developing connections between the public realm, the built environment, and urban infrastructure— most notably, transportation infrastructure. Her work has won several awards for urban design, and she has served as a trusted strategic advisor to prominent clients in both the private and public sector. Currently, she is the Lead Technical Advisor to Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario for Transit-Oriented Communities along the Ontario Line, which will see more than 12 million square feet of mixed-use, multi-phase development across the 15.6-km subway line. Since joining SvN in 2012, her leadership has seen the firm expand its cross-disciplinary practice in Ontario, British Columbia, and Mexico.

Sandy McIntosh has an architecture career spanning more than two decades. He has worked in new construction, adaptive reuse, and renewal across multiple sectors, including healthcare, education, science and technology, and sports and recreation. He has also built civic and community centres, commercial, multi-unit residential, and custom residential design projects. Sandy is known for his honest and thoughtful approach, always considerate of the community context that surrounds and impacts a particular project. Since joining SvN in 2021, his portfolio has included several design and feasibility studies throughout the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) as well as residential and mixed-use development design and master planning related to the Transit-Oriented Communities along the Ontario Line.