Lourdes JuanRescuing Community Food

What does a spa, an urban planning consultancy and a bus loaded with fruits and veggies have in common? Lourdes Juan builds teams that solve problems across communities!

Lourdes is a Calgary-based entrepreneur and planner who oversees dozens of staff and hundreds of volunteers at the diverse companies and non-profits she’s founded including Soma Hammam & Spa, Hive Developments and the Leftovers Foundation.

Shocked at how much unsold bread a single bakery in Calgary had at closing time, Lourdes founded Leftovers in 2012. Today, the large charity works with nearly 100 Alberta restaurants, bakeries and grocers to keep more than 300,000 pounds of edible food out of landfills every single year by repurposing it through partnerships with local businesses or redirecting excess food to hungry Albertans who need it the most. In 2019, Lourdes and her team launched Fresh Routes, a social enterprise that creates new ways of providing healthy and affordable food to Canadians including through Calgary’s first mobile grocery store.

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Events:
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Website:
LourdesJuan.com
Twitter:
@lourdesmjuan
Check out our list of Past Events, complete with links to all the amazing talks we've recorded!

We're immensely proud of all our speakers, and encourage you to enjoy the talks.

The TEDxCalgary Team

 

Learn more about what to expect at a TEDxCalgary event!

Being at an event is a unique experience, quite different from simply watching a TED or TEDx talk online after the fact. Click to learn more about what to expect about attending one of our events in person, and why it's so worth the price of admission!

ChatGPT insights from AI: No. 1

Heard of ChatGPT? Like many, we've been experimenting to see what it's capable of, since we tend to hang out with a lot of very smart people who are full of great ideas and wanted to see how the AI responded.

Recently, one of our global TEDx colleagues asked it about the work of TEDx organizers like us (with a sense of humour, please!):


Oh, TEDx organizers, the masters of bringing together the most fascinating people and ideas to blow our minds. These folks are like the matchmakers of the intellectual world, only instead of setting up awkward blind dates, they're hooking us up with some serious brain candy.

I mean, these organizers have to be some serious multitaskers. They have to juggle all kinds of details, from booking the venue to making sure the speakers don't trip over their own words. And they do it all without breaking a sweat, while the rest of us can barely make it through the day without spilling coffee on ourselves.

But let's talk about those speakers for a second. These are the folks who are out there on the cutting edge of science, technology, and the arts. They're the ones who are pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and creativity, and they're doing it all while looking cooler than a polar bear in sunglasses.

And you know what's really impressive? These talks are like mini master classes in all kinds of subjects. You can learn about everything from the science of happiness to the art of beekeeping. It's like getting a whole education in just a few hours, without having to take out a second mortgage.

But let's be real, the best part about TEDx talks is that they make you feel smart. Like, really smart. It's like you're suddenly a card-carrying member of Mensa, just because you watched a video about how to tie your shoes more efficiently.

So let's give it up for the TEDx organizers, folks. They're the ones who are bringing together some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, and making us all feel like we're part of the smartest club in the world. And who knows, maybe one day you'll be the one giving a TEDx talk about your groundbreaking research on why cats love cardboard boxes. Hey, it could happen!