On the Edge of Health and Design

Today we’re re-welcoming Demi Yoo, a marketing professional with a passion for health and wellness. Demi returns to update us on her health and wellness journey, and her latest passion project, The Spiritual Self Company. To paraphrase Demi, “this is our first time living this life, so we’re all just figuring this out!”. If you relate to this episode, please leave us a comment and rating on your favourite podcast platform. You can find and follow The Spiritual Self Company on Instagram. ResourcesInstagram @thespiritualself.co

To kick of 2026, we spoke with Kiki (Kajal) Kamdar, a health and wellness advocate who shared her past experience as a caregiver for a partner experiencing mental illness. Kiki turned to hiking as a way to combat stress, connect with nature and develop her community. Through hiking, Kiki learned to "live a bipolar life" on her own terms, with self compassion. If this episode resonates with you or someone you know struggling with mental illness, please pass it along! ResourcesKiki's instagram is kiki_pura_vida or you can reach her by email at kajal.kamdar@gmail.comNAMI - National Alliiance on Mental Illnesshttps://www.nami.org/

In this summer recap episode, your cohost, Nita shares her personal reflections following her recent Heritage Journey to Kenya, Africa. Nita revisits the concept of Designing your Life and shares how her own Indian, African and Canadian heritage shapes her current quest to find communities of belonging. Are you looking for your community? Feel free to reach out to us with comments, questions and reflections of your own. ResourcesEpisode 30: Design your Life with Demi YooEpisode 31: Breathe into Balance with Manjit Hansra Book: Breath by James NesterDesign concept: Iterative Inquiry

This month, we chatted with Demi Yoo, a marketing professional who is also a self-described health and wellness junkie. Demi discovered meditation during a dark period in her life and found that this helped her mental health. Demi shared her most challenging meditation experience to-date, a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat that had her meditating for a total of 100 hours! In Demi’s words, this experience changed her life! She’s happy to share the details of how to register for this in Ontario, Canada (see our Resources below). Finally, Demi created her personal virtuous cycle of positive reinforcement that has helped her redesign her life. How might you do this yourself? Listen to our episode to find out!ResourcesVipassana sign up: https://torana.dhamma.org/Email: demi.sae.yoo@gmail.comDesigning your Life (book) Bill Burnett & Dave Evans Think like a Monk (book) Jay Shetty - host of On Purpose podcast Manifest: 7 Steps to Living your Best Life by Roxi Nafousi

This month, we spoke with Ju Eun Lee, a geriatric psychiatrist based in Toronto, Canada. Ju Eun is a passionate advocate against ageism.She highlighted the World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of ageism, which refers to stereotypes around how we think, feel and act towards older adults. Globally, one in two of us are ageist! Ageism is associated with poor health, social and economic impacts. The WHO identified three types of ageism - self-directed, interpersonal and institutional. These provide key opportunities to leverage when designing ways to combat ageism. Ju Eun’s key takeaways included recognizing that we all age and making efforts to understand different generations. Ju Eun invites our listeners to join her as a volunteer with the Canadian Coalition Against Ageism, a social change movement to end ageism. ResourcesCanadian Coalition Against Ageism - https://ccaageism.ca/World Health Organization’s global report on ageism - https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/demographic-change-and-healthy-ageing/combatting-ageism/global-report-on-ageism

In our first video format episode, we welcome Dr. Cory Goldberg a Canadian plastic surgeon with experience in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery. Cory highlighted several challenges facing the Canadian healthcare system using the analogy of the Titanic ship sinking. Key opportunities for health system change include providing wellness services outside of our public healthcare system. Towards this end, Cory cofounded HealthSpan Digital, a B2B longevity technology company. Digital tools curated by HealthSpan Digital include those that monitor and enhance our health and can be incorporated into our homes and communities. Watch our interview to reveal Cory's key takeaway which challenges our concepts of aging and longevity.What will you do with all your extra time?! Resourceshealthspan.digitalbeautyspan.comCory Goldberg on Instagram @drcorygoldbergmd

For our final episode of 2024, we interviewed Anita Simon, a Canadian healthcare designer with diverse experiences ranging from academia, industry, non-profit and patient advocacy. Anita emphasized the need to shift our healthcare systems from industrial practices focused on improving cost and efficiency outcome measures towards measuring outcomes that truly matter to patients and families. Anita described her family’s challenges with seeking compassionate care for their daughter when she was experiencing mental illness. Her personal experience led Anita to co-found Calgary Silver Linings Foundation, providing support and resources for eating disorder recovery. We also discussed the role of The Patient Revolution (a global movement towards kind and compassionate healthcare) and the concept of “Boards that Care”. There is no better time like the present for our healthcare systems to work towards improving access to timely, individualized and compassionate care for all. ResourcesAnita Simon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anita-simon-9a71849/Calgary Silver Linings Foundation: https://www.silverliningsfoundation.ca/

In season 3 of our podcast, we’re getting back into interviewing people working and playing On the Edge of healthcare and design! In this month's episode, we welcome Jean-Francois Couture from Applications MD. Applications MD is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving care in medical resuscitation. As the Director of Operations for Applications MD, Jean-Francois oversees the strategic planning, marketing, and implementation of their flagship product, EZResus, an application that guides health care professionals through the first hour of emergency and critical care situations.In our conversation, Jean-Francois describes his professional journey from emergency physician to digital health entrepreneur. He shares his experience with developing the resuscitation application, EzResus and lessons learned along the way. We hope our conversation inspires you in your innovation journey, whether you want to reinvent yourself personally and/or professionally! We welcome any comments or feedback on this episode!Resources from our guest:www.ezresus.comLinkedInjean-francois.couture@ezresus.com“Please feel free to email me or connect on LinkedIn. I would love to hear your entrepreneurship stories, ideas, and if you have comments or ideas about EZResus!”

In this month's episode, we continue with our Learning On the Edge series, this time experimenting with an audio/video format!We introduce a Design for Social Innovation Tool - the Impact Gaps Canvas. This tool allows users to take a systems leadership approach to innovation in their careers and/or initiatives/projects. Our video includes an image of the tool (see Resources below for link) and a brief interview-style discussion around how we used the tool to explore a problem in mental health. We hope this helps you consider using this tool to create Impact in your lives! ResourcesImpact Gaps Canvashttps://systems-ledleadership.com/impact-gaps-canvas/

Welcome to Season 2 of our podcast, On the Edge with SIC! This season, we'll experiment with some shorter length, learning oriented episodes. In this episode, we review responses to our most important question from Season 1 - What does On the Edge mean to you? We've compiled 6 responses to this question from our Season 1 interviewees around the theme of knowledge and learning. As well, we share our personal insights and professional experiences on this theme. We hope you learn something from this episode that you could apply to your work, school or play in the fields of healthcare, design and the intersection between the two. ResourcesClips included from Season 1 acknowledging our amazing guests - full episodes available here: https://www.sichealth.ca/podcast1. Episode 14: Taking Care of Dying Children with Dr. Natasha Datoo2. Episode 13: Health Services Design with Liliana Rodriguez3. Episode 12: Systems Leadership with Peter Jones4. Episode 9: Empathy in Drug Design with Morẹ́nikẹ́ Ẹniọlá Ọláòṣebìkan5. Episode 7: Diversity and Inclusion with Firefly Creative Writing 6. Episode 6: Spanning the Boundaries of Impact and Evaluation with Julie Gilbert

In this month's episode, your cohosts interview Julie Gilbert, an independent consultant and coach at Julie Gilbert Consulting and founder of the Impact Institute. Julie has over 25 years of experience working with public sector and nonprofit organizations, including the Movember Foundation. Julie is a self-described "boundary spanner". She brings her expertise from multiple domains together to evaluate the impact that organizations have at local, community and societal levels. Our conversation explores impact and evaluation through a design thinking lens, including discussing the use of Impact Narratives, Community Journey Mapping and Trauma Informed Evaluation, all of which organizations could consider towards growing their impact. Resources Julie's website: https://juliegilbertconsulting.com/ Impact Institute: https://juliegilbertconsulting.com/impact-institute Stepping Stones to Impact (course launch May 18, 2023): https://juliegilbertconsulting.com/stepping-stones-to-impact Innoweave: https://innoweave.ca/