Our National Conference has hosted a high accomplished speaker lineup from all over the world. Our speakers have come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds including business, technology, entertainment and science. These speakers participate in a variety of stimulating events designed to enrich the delegates’ knowledge on entrepreneurship.
Past Keynote Speakers
Michael Lee-Chin
Chairman, Portland Holdings Inc.
Micheal is widely regarded as a visionary entrepreneur whose philosophy of "doing well and doing good" has resulted in phenomenal success and inspiring philanthropic initiatives.
Craig Kielburger
Founder, Free the Children
Craig is the creator of the world's largest network of children helping children through education. The organization has received many prestigious awards such as the World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child (also known as the Children's Nobel Prize) and the Human Rights Award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations.
Frank O’Dea
Founder, The Second Cup
Frank O'Dea has triumphed over adversity to become one of Canada's very successful and celebrated entrepreneurs. He is an Officer to the Order of Canada and has been involved in founding several ventures.
Harry Rosen
Executive Chairman, Harry Rosen Inc.
Harry Rosen is the man behind the name, the Executive Chairman of Harry Rosen Inc., which operates a chain of better menswear stores across Canada. Founded in 1954, Harry Rosen Inc. claims a 33% share of the market. Harry has won numerous marketing awards over the years, including the first Retail Marketer of the Year Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award, both from the Retail Council of Canada. His business has been featured as a case study in several marketing textbooks.
Kendra Todd
The Apprentice Winner
Donald Trump's Season 3 Apprentice.
Kendra is an ambitious and highly successful real estate entrepreneur. After completing her degree in linguistics from the University of Florida, Kendra went on to obtain her real estate license, and incorporated her media expertise into the development of My House Real Estate Inc. an innovative real estate marketing company specializing in condo conversions and land acquisitions. My House Real Estate Inc.'s marketing strategies are virtually unparalleled, and have generated involvement in some of Florida's most sought after real estate.
Gregory Brill
Chief Executive Officer, Infusion Development
Gregory Brill is the founder and CEO of Infusion Development Corporation, a technology training and consulting firm that specializes in architecting securities trading and analytic systems for several of the world’s largest investment banks.
Dave Howlett
Leader, Motivator, and Teacher
Dave Howlett is widely known as a leader, motivator and teacher. In a 25-year career that has included scuba-diving instructor, Canadian naval officer, pharmaceutical sales manager and corporate executive, Dave Howlett has trained and inspired thousands of people and is a role model for people who find it hard to set and meet goals (he has completed 14 marathons and is training for his 5th Ironman competition).
William Tatham
“Canada’s most innovative entrepreneur”
William Tatham was the founder, chairman and CEO of Janna Systems which he started in his basement in 1990 and sold 10 years later to Siebel Systems for a Canadian record $1.76 billion. Janna was the world leader in enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for financial services. Tatham was awarded the Ernst & Young 2001 Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Software and Information Systems, and received a special citation for Outstanding Business Strategy. He is now the CEO and Managing General Partner of NexJ Partners, Inc., which he started in 2001.
Ian Portsmouth
Editor, PROFIT Magazine
Ian Portsmouth is the editor of PROFIT: Your Guide to Business Success. Profit magazine has been serving Canada’s entrepreneurial business community for over 20 years and has earned a position of prominence with growth companies, the successful entrepreneurs who run them and the businesses eager to serve them. Portsmouth has won several awards for his business writing, including three National Magazine Award nominations. He is also the editor of Marketing Masters: The Best Ideas of Canada’s Savviest Marketers and is a frequent media commentator on the management issues and best practices of Canadian growth companies.
Dr. Brian Little
3M Teaching Fellow & Professor
Harvard University and Carleton University
He now holds joint appointments at Harvard University and at Carleton University where he holds the rank of Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus. He has published widely in the areas of human personality and flourishing. Dr. Little has won major awards for both his research and his teachings. He received the 3M Fellowship, referred to by MacLean’s magazine as the Nobel prize of University teaching. He was also the first recipient of the Royal Bank Faculty Fellowship in University Teaching at McGill University. For each of the past three years he has been voted by the graduating classes as one of the favorite professors at Harvard.
Albert Lai
Founder, Bubbleshare
Albert Lai is the Founder of BubbleShare, an online website to share photos and tell stories. Users can immediately create slideshows or albums without registration and narrate their photos with their own voice right inside their Web browser. He has been involved in founding and launching various start-up companies over his career in the field of educational software, electronic marketing, online publishing, e-commerce, peer-to-peer software, and commercialization of alien technologies.
Past Conference Speaker Biographies
Hari Panday
President and Chief Executive Officer, ICICI Bank Canada
Mr. Panday's career spans over 25 years including forming a greenfield Schedule II chartered bank in Canada, corporate and commercial banking, international trade, real estate finance, debt restructuring, credit and computer audit functions. Prior to that, he was involved with an international accounting firm.
Lisa Abe
Senior Partner, Fasken Martineau
Lisa Abe is one of Canada's leading technology law experts and a senior partner in Fasken Martineau's Technology and Intellectual Property practice group in the Toronto office. Lisa's practice involves almost all aspects of law involved in IT businesses.
Robert Herjavec
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Herjavec Group
Robert Herjavec is not only an accomplished entrepreneur, having amassed a personal fortune reportedly in excess of $100 million, but he is fast becoming one of the most recognizable faces of business in Canada. Mr. Herjavec has impressed hundreds of thousands of fans with his business acumen on CBC's popular reality show, Dragons' Den. His passion for philanthropy leads him to sponsor numerous charitable causes. Having appeared in every major newspaper in Canada— from The National Post, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, HELLO Magazine, etc.—as well as several major television networks, Mr. Herjavec will soon make an appearance on not only the Food Network but also the Discovery Channel – the latter in a worldwide special profiling the world's most successful entrepreneurs.
Barry Bisson
President, Shad International
Barry’s impressive education background involves undergrad and masters degrees in engineering, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has extensive teaching experience as a professor at the University of New Brunswick, joining the Faculty of Engineering at UNB in 1983 and became the Chair of the Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (TME) Program in 1994. Prior to joining UNB, he has amassed invaluable experience in management consulting by advising a multitude of corporations and government agencies. Barry is no stranger to Shad, having been involved in the Shad Valley program at UNB since its launch there in 1985.
John Rocchetta
Founder and President, Beat Goes On
John Rocchetta is the Founder and President of the Beat Goes On store chain. As a 14-store chain, his company sells and exchanges used CDs, DVDs and games. While studying in school, John held a part-time position at a local music store. After learning that the local music store went bankrupt, John decided to begin his own venture. Even though John worked 12 hour days, he estimated that he earned $0.35 to $0.75 an hour for his labour. However, once John decided to begin selling used CDs, his fortunes turned around. Now, his stores attract thousands of customers and generate millions in revenue.
Sylvia Chrominska
Executive Vice President, Scotiabank
Sylvia Chrominska is the Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Public, Corporate and Government Affairs with global responsibility for human resources, corporate communications, government relations, public policy and corporate social responsibility of the Scotiabank Group. Recognized in 2003 and 2004 as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network and the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business, Sylvia has shared her power through the establishment of leadership development programs for women at Scotiabank. At the top of her game in a highly competitive field, Sylvia has the vision and is a torch-bearer for making gender equity a priority of corporate Canada.
Kasi Rao
Consultant and Senior Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies
Kasi Rao is a professional consultant who provides strategic guidance to broaden the awareness of public and private sector organizations on matters pertaining to government relations, higher education, corporate relations and policy issues. His particular area of focus is on India. Most recently, he was the Executive Director of the Beacon Project at the University Of Ontario Institute Of Technology, an institution driven by a dynamic, student-centered vision for the 21st century. Before that, Kasi served as the Director, Office of the President and CEO of the Bank of Montreal Financial Group.
George Roter
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Engineers Without Borders
George became interested in international development while completing his Bachelor's degree in engineering at the University of Waterloo. He quickly learned that technology could drive extraordinary change in the lives the poorest people in the world, and that the engineering community had not been tapped into as a resource. Together with Parker Mitchell, he co-founded Engineers Without Borders.
Paul Doherty
Associate Director, CBET
Paul Doherty is the Associate Director of Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (CBET) at the University of Waterloo. His areas of specialization include; business ethics and strategy, environmental science, energy and energy management, innovation and entrepreneurship. Paul has an MSc in Corrosion Science and Engineering from the University Of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), a PhD in environmental science from UMIST and a MBA from the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Sunjay Nath
Professional Speaker & Entrepreneur
Sunjay Nath travels North America sharing the 10-80-10 principle, a concept that helps individuals and teams operate at a dynamic level. Sunjay’s myriad of experiences includes being a founding Vice President of a multimillion-dollar e-learning company, a leadership camp director and professional speaking to half a million North Americans. He has served as President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers Toronto Chapter and President of his Engineering Discipline. He is a magician, a comedian, a professional actor, he can juggle and has been recognized as one of Canada's top debaters.
Gaurav Oberoi
Co-Founder, BillMonk
Gaurav Oberoi is the chief architect of BillMonk's system design and data model. He shares his responsibilities with co-founder Chuck Groom for the operations, marketing and business development functions at BillMonk. Gaurav has extensive experience in software engineering and distributed computing from his work at Amazon where he was responsible for the design and implementation of the Browse for categorizing items on the website. Since founding BillMonk, Gaurav has been an active speaker, presenting at Entrepreneur 27, the RainMakers conference (hosted by the National University of Singapore Entrepreneur Association) and Google.
Dr. Sanjeev Sharma
President, Wellpoint Health Services
Dr. Sharma has over 10 years of experience in health care at Wellpoint and is an Emergency Physician at William Osler Health Centre. Dr. Sharma spent 5 years working with key Canadian healthcare stakeholders to develop policies on improvement of healthcare delivery and the strategic utilization of information technology.