From Agents to Agency: AI Talks for People Who Build
Forget the hype — join us for a night of real AI talks during the Toronto Tech Week 🚀
Most leaders know AI matters. Few know where to start or how to get the gains. Join us for an evening dedicated to AI — 2 talks led by practitioners who work with AI every day.
Dr. Deitra Sawh will walk you through real-world AI workflows, the traps that catch most companies off guard, and 3 key questions that protect your productivity — plus, why women stand to gain the most from defining the direction of AI development.
Then Jason Leung's talk "Anatomy of an Agent Harness: Loop, Tools, and Memory" pulls back the curtain on the loop, tools, and memory that put AI to work inside one of the oldest industries.
Come ready to learn and leave with tools you can put to work right away!
Your ticket includes
Event access, workshop sessions, refreshments, and time to debate who your favourite coding agent is 🤖
Agenda
6:00 – 6:30 PM: Arrival & Networking
6:30 – 7:00 PM: Dr. Deitra Sawh - AI Workflows, Traps & the 3 Questions That Protect Your Productivity
7:00 – 7:30 PM: Jason Leung - Anatomy of an Agent Harness: Loop, Tools, and Memory
7:30 – 8:00 PM: Q&A & Closing Remarks
🎤 Speakers
Dr. Deitra Sawh | AI Expert, Finance Professional & Educator With 25 years of experience spanning AI, finance, and education, Dr. Sawh is passionate about making AI accessible to everyone. She specializes in AI's impact on human behaviour and industry, and builds risk management frameworks for AI adoption. A professor, speaker, and mediator, Deitra brings both technical depth and a genuine love of teaching to every room she enters. She'll be leading our AI workshop — expect to walk away with something you can actually use.
Jason Leung | Behind every AI agent that actually works is a harness: a quiet architecture of prompts, tools, memory, and guardrails that holds it all together. Jason Leung, lead data engineer at Zensurance, builds them for a living, bringing modern AI into one of the oldest industries there is. Over the next 30 minutes, he opens one up.
About Women in Big Data Toronto
Women in Big Data Toronto is the first Canadian chapter of the Global Women in Big Data Initiative with over 50 chapters in 6 continents. Our goal is to build an inclusive community that promotes opportunities to members who want to build a meaningful career in technology related fields. We focus on building authentic connections between our members, speakers, and partners by offering curated workshops, mentorship, and networking events in an inclusive environment Our mandate is all-encompassing. We are committed to advancing diversity and inclusion at all levels regardless of race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, economic status and other diverse backgrounds.
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Disclaimer This event is not hosted by or sponsored by the Toronto Public Library.
Toronto Tech Week is a citywide celebration of the people building what’s next. From May 25–29, 2026, founders, investors, and builders come together for hundreds of community-led events across Toronto, connecting tens of thousands of people around Canadian tech. Torontotechweek.com.