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.

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.

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

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

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

Jim Pascual

Transformation Leader, RLG International

Jim Pascual is a transformation leader and management consultant with more than 25 years of experience helping organizations turn strategy into measurable results. As a Team Leader with RLG International, Jim works with executives and frontline leaders to improve organizational performance and deliver sustainable change.

His experience spans energy, refining, petrochemicals, manufacturing, engineering and technology, with a focus on business transformation, operational excellence and organizational effectiveness. Jim has led complex transformation initiatives across Canada, the United States and internationally.

A Professional Engineer with an MBA from McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, Jim is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and holds a coaching and mentoring certification from the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. He combines systems thinking, practical implementation and leadership coaching to help organizations bridge the gap between strategy and execution.

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.

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

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

Tina Arabian

Assistant Professor, Supply Chain Management, Mount Royal University

Dr. Tina Arabian is an Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Bissett School of Business, Mount Royal University. She earned her PhD in Operations and Supply Chain Management from the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University.She teaches courses in procurement, quality management, inventory management, and warehouse management.Her research focuses on sustainable operations and supply chain management, with particular interests in business model innovation and circular economy strategies, including servicizing, remanufacturing, and product upgradability. Through analytical modeling, her work explores how organizations can improve productivity, balance profitability with environmental sustainability, and create long-term value.

Dr. Rajbir Singh Bhatti

Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at Mount Royal University.

Dr. Rajbir S. Bhatti is a former Board Member of the Canadian Supply Chain Sector Council and co-founder and CEO of two applied AI ventures serving transportation and logistics. He builds the tools he teaches: an AI-powered digital twin for the trucking sector, a machine learning capstone that turns business students with no coding background into model builders, and a pending U.S. patent in commercial vehicle compliance. He is a 2026 ASTech finalist in Advanced Manufacturing and Smart Cities. Dr. Bhatti advises government and industry on supply chain & inland port policy, has published widely on AI and logistics optimization, and is a media voice on trade for CBC, CTV and Global News.