Laura Lynch is a television and radio journalist for CBC News best known as a frequent guest host of CBC radio‘s daily morning news program The Current. After studying law at the University of Victoria and journalism at Carleton University, Laura began her career with the CBC as a legal affairs reporter covering stories in the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court of Canada. She won the Law Society of British Columbia’s award for Excellence in Legal Journalism, and was nominated for a Jack Webster Award, for her reporting on the Supreme Court case R v O’Connor. She received the Martin Wise Goodman Nieman Fellowship the same year, and spent a year studying human rights at Harvard University.

She was subsequently a foreign correspondent based in Washington, D.C. and London, as well as travelling to report from various international locations including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria, before returning to Canada as a national affairs reporter in Vancouver. Laura was based in Washington, D.C., when the Sept. 11 , 2001 attacks happened and covered the aftermath. While posted in London as CBC’s Europe correspondent, she reported on the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. That same year, Laura went undercover to report on the Zimbabwe election when Western journalists were barred from entering the country.

It is from this wealth of experience that Laura will bring her remarks as our most welcomed keynote speaker.