Deborah Yedlin

President & CEO, Calgary Chamber

Deborah Yedlin currently serves as the President and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, a position she has held since July 2021. Under her leadership, the Chamber has focused on Calgary’s economic diversification, small business resilience, innovation, and inclusive growth. She has worked to elevate the Chamber’s voice in policy conversations at all levels of government and position Calgary as a globally competitive business hub. Her cross-sector experience, including finance, journalism, consulting and academia has helped bridge private sector interests with public policy and community priorities, reinforcing the Chamber’s role in shaping Calgary’s future economy.

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Nathan Klassen

Director, Lead to Cash
Trimac Transportation

Nathan Klassen has 15 years of continuous improvement and transformation-related leadership experience across multiple sectors, including construction, trucking, rail, and sport technology. His passion for making innovation real and measurable has permeated these roles, always with a double-bottom line: achieving organizational outcomes while also improving the quality of work for those involved - particularly front-line managers and workers.

Nathan’s studies and experience in Slavic languages and linguistics, combined with a natural bent for systems thinking, has led to a multi-lingual approach to translating between various departmental ‘languages’ spoken in the organizations he’s served. Achieving collective results in complex environments.

Title of presentation: Revenue Operations – bridging departmental dialects to win at revenue capture.

Javier Lozano

Vice President, Information Services and Technology, and Chief Information Officer
Alberta Pensions Services Corporation

Javier Lozano is Vice President, Information Services and Technology at Alberta Pensions Services Corporation. He leads the organization’s approach to AI enablement as part of broader enterprise technology and digital capability, with a focus on how AI is introduced, governed, and applied in a regulated environment.

His background includes technology development and commercialization, along with more than 30 years of experience across financial services and critical infrastructure. This shapes a practical perspective on AI, grounded in how technologies move from concept to real use and where value is actually realized. His work is centered on helping organizations use AI in meaningful ways while addressing the operational, cultural, and risk considerations that come with it.

Javier is known for bringing a disciplined lens to AI adoption, focusing on judgment, decision making, and long-term outcomes rather than automation for its own sake. He works closely with leadership teams to navigate where AI can improve performance, and where it requires greater care as organizations integrate it into core business processes.

Title of presentation: AI Is Not Your Guru

Dr. Nicolas Lamp

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law
Queen’s University

Nicolas Lamp is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University in Canada. He is also the Director of the Queen’s Annual Institute on Trade Policy, a professional training course for Canadian trade officials. Prior to joining Queen’s, Dr. Lamp worked as a Dispute Settlement Lawyer at the World Trade Organization. His current research focuses on competing narratives about the winners and losers from economic globalization and their implications for trade law and policy. He is the co-author (with Anthea Roberts) of “Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters”, which was selected as one of the best books of 2021 by the Financial Times and Fortune Magazine.

Title of presentation: Trading in Disorder: Making Sense of the New World Economy

Dr. Kelly Williams-Whitt

Dean, Bissett School of Business, Mount Royal University

Dr. Kelly Williams-Whitt is the Dean of the Faculty of Business, Communication Studies and Aviation at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. A Full Professor of Human Resources and Labour Relations and former registered nurse, she holds an MBA and a PhD from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.

Throughout her career bridging healthcare, workplace management, and employment law, Dr. Williams-Whitt spent nearly two decades at the University of Lethbridge as a Professor of HRM and Labour Relations, and was appointed Associate Dean (Academic) for the Dhillon School of Business in 2019, before becoming Dean at MRU in 2021. She has taught extensively in occupational health and safety, labour relations, employment law, human resource management, and workplace diversity. Her research involves global collaborations on managing workplace health, illness, and injury, and she has served on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation and the College of Reviewers for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Widely published in scientific journals, she has co-authored all five editions of the textbook Employment Law for Business and Human Resources Professionals: Alberta and British Columbia. In addition to her academic leadership, she is a sought-after speaker and maintains an active practice as a labour mediator and arbitrator resolving workplace disputes.

Peter Bishop

Partner & Chief Innovation Officer, ZGM Modern Marketing Partners

Peter Bishop has been in tech and marketing long enough to remember when "digital transformation" was the buzzword everyone was sick of. Now it's AI. As the CIO at ZGM, he's positioning the agency as one of Alberta's leaders in AI-augmented marketing and helping organizations figure out what any of this means for their organization. Beyond client work, Peter consults with local universities on emerging technology curriculum, hosts the Artificial Breakdown podcast exploring AI's impact on marketing and business, and serves as a technology advisor on multiple boards.

ZGM is a full-service marketing agency born, raised and thriving in Western Canada. Incorporated in Calgary in 2001, the company has grown at a measured pace to become Western Canada’s largest independent full-service agency.

Title of presentation: Chaos to Clarity: The Adoption Framework for AI-Ready Teams

Sean Simoes

Assistant Professor, Supply Chain Management
Mount Royal University

Dr. Sean Simoes is an Assistant Professor at the Bissett School of Business, Mount Royal University. He earned a PhD in  Management from the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, an MBA from Purdue University, USA and a BEng from the University of Mumbai.

Sean has substantial and diverse leadership experience, having led operations and a new-product introduction program in multinational enterprises (MNEs), worked as a lean manufacturing consultant, and served as a board member of MNE subsidiaries in India. His research focuses on how large industrial MNEs adapt to changes in stakeholder expectations and new technology.

Title of presentation: Strategic Adaptation

Vered Levant

Founder & Chief Executive Officer
VIMY HR

VIMY HR is an Alberta-based fractional HR operations firm that helps scaling businesses build the people infrastructure needed for sustainable growth. For more than a decade, the firm has partnered with organizations across industries to solve complex people challenges with practical, business-focused solutions.

Vered Levant, Founder and CEO, launched VIMY HR after recognizing a gap in HR support for growing businesses. She brings over 20 years of HR leadership experience across energy, engineering, professional services, and government, and holds BA, CPHR, and SHRM-SCP credentials.Rebecca Lee, VP, Growth & Innovation, partners with founder CEOs and leadership teams on talent, culture, and people strategy. She holds a CPHR, a Bachelor of Management Sciences, and an executive certification in diversity coaching.

Title of presentation: From Busy to Built: How Companies Turn People Strategy into Operational Leverage

Rebecca Lee

VP Growth & Innovation
VIMY HR

Rebecca Lee is Vice President of Growth + Innovation at VIMY HR Consulting and an accomplished people and culture leader with expertise in organizational effectiveness, leadership development, and change management. A Chartered Professional in Human Resources (CPHR), she is certified in PROSCI Change Management, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Step II, and holds an Executive Certification in Diversity Coaching from Howard University School of Business. Rebecca has held leadership roles across consulting and technology and is also an executive coach. She is passionate about helping organizations build high-performing teams, strengthen workplace culture, and translate bold ideas into meaningful, lasting business results.

Wade Walker

CEO, Strategic Data Advisor & Fractional Chief Data Officer
Intelligent Data Management Ltd

Wade Walker is a Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP) and Certified Data Professional (CDP) with nearly 30 years leading international systems, data and analytics transformations that deliver measurable business impact. During a one-year fixed term as founding Chief Data Officer at SAIT he identified over $12 million in indirect data monetization opportunities. At University of Calgary, he initiated and led a significant data, systems and infrastructure transformation in support of a $1.3 billion initiative.

While living in Switzerland, Wade architected  and built global data platforms for organizations across 11 countries on four continents, including MerckSerono, UNHCR, Credit Suisse and Philip Morris International. He advises CIOs and executive teams on practical approaches to data governance, analytics strategy, pragmatic AI implementation and managing data as a business asset, balancing innovation with operational discipline.

Title of presentation: Data Monetization for Executives - Unlocking Measurable Value Beyond ROI

Denise Chenger

Founding Partner PeakLevel Consulting, and Associate Professor Supply Chain Management and Operations 

Denise has over 25 years of experience in operations and strategic planning as both a consultant and senior leader across multiple industries in Canada and in the US at a Fortune 100. Her work has included business turnarounds, organizational design, project cold-eye reviews, M&A integration, business readiness, and integrated operations, with a focus on improving productivity and business results.

She has a long-standing connection to Mount Royal University as both an alumna and faculty member. She returned to MRU in 2009 as an instructor and is currently an Associate Professor in Supply Chain Management and Operations. Her research explores strategic decision-making and its impact on organizations and the broader systems in which they operate.

Title of presentation: Unlocking Hidden Value: How Baseline Assessments Reveal Opportunities