Panels & speakers

Tim Redpath is an experienced executive leadership coach and facilitator, based in Ottawa. He works with senior leaders locally, across Canada and internationally.

Ellen Grove is an organizational change agent, keynote speaker, event designer, and facilitator. As a former board member and former Managing Director of Agile Alliance, she is a highly respected figure in the Agile community both here in Ottawa and around the world.

Annie Bellemare is a strategic and collaborative executive with more than 15 years of experience at the intersection of business, technology, and people. As Chief Information Officer at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Annie leads the Agency’s digital agenda, advancing its mandate and responding to emerging risks and opportunities.

Veronica Farmer is Chief Marketing Officer at Wesley Clover International and a long-standing champion of Canada’s technology and innovation ecosystem. She works closely with technology companies, entrepreneurs, investors and ecosystem partners as they navigate growth, changing markets and new opportunities in Canada and globally.

Shan Gu is the Founder and CEO of Foci Solutions, a boutique software and applied AI consultancy helping organizations in highly regulated sectors (including defense, healthcare, and government) build high-performing technology teams and sustainable software solutions. His approach to technology adoption is driven by pragmatism, summed up by one of his favourite phrases: solve for the boring.

Alyssa Daku is the Founder of Anicha Collective and a former senior public sector executive whose career has spanned health, innovation, data, digital transformation, and organizational change. Most recently, she served as Chief Data Officer and Director General at the Public Health Agency of Canada, and previously led innovation and growth initiatives supporting some of Canada’s highest-potential companies.

Carleen Hicks is an award-winning Integral Master Coach, leadership development facilitator and founder of Love Your Working Life. Drawing on more than 20 years as a leader and HR practitioner in Canada’s high-tech sector, she brings practical insight and warmth to her work with leaders and organizations.

Starting his career as an Agile Coach at the BBC in the early 2000s, Mike Lowery is a well-established Lean and Agile Coach who has worked with large-scale organizations across the UK, New Zealand, and Canada. He also spent many years overseeing speaker selection for the Agile Alliance’s annual conference.

Stephen Harrington is a Partner with Deloitte and a national leader for Workforce Strategy & Insights. Stephen has been a writer, speaker, and advisor on the future of work since 2011.

Rob Robinson is a senior executive and leader in digital transformation, enterprise agility, and modernization within the Government of Canada. With over 20 years of experience driving complex business and technology initiatives, he specializes in modernizing service delivery, adopting product-centric models, and building high-performing, adaptable teams.

Heather Cayouette is the Founder and CEO of Firefly Strategic Consulting. She has spent more than 20 years working in and alongside nonprofit organizations, leading teams across programs, governance, privacy, IT and operations.

Bringing exceptional energy and deep industry insight to the conversation, Amanda Holtstrom is a technology product leader, consultant, and author known for her collaborative approach and sharp focus on operational reality. As a moderator, she cuts through the hype to ask the tough, necessary questions about AI implementation, risk, and structural costs.

Carmelina Calarco is an accomplished professional with more than two decades of experience in strategic leadership, organizational change, and executive engagement. Known for her poise, executive polish, and strategic clarity, she brings structure and focus to complex, multi-faceted conversations.

Dr. Tracy Jenkin is an Associate Professor at Smith School of Business and a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Tracy brings a deeply analytical, research-backed perspective to the reality of moving past the AI pilot phase.

Martin Soukup is the CTO of Solink and a serial builder of teams, products, and companies across the globe, mainly in AI, Cybersecurity, and IoT. Martin brings a pragmatic, engineering-first lens to scaling artificial intelligence from proof-of-concept to massive production scale.

Chris Brown is the CTO of LogiSense, where he leads technology strategy and engineering with a focus on innovation, scalability, and operational excellence in enterprise SaaS and billing technology. Chris brings a product-focused, execution-driven perspective to operationalizing AI within enterprise software.

Neilda Pacquing Gagné began her career in UX in San Francisco before relocating to Ottawa. A startup founder and Ottawa Business Journal and Ottawa Board of Trade Forty Under 40 recipient, she holds a master’s degree in Integrated Design, Business, and Technology from the University of Southern California.