With over 20 years of leadership experience across industries, Teanne von der Porten specializes in driving ESG, climate, and sustainability initiatives. At KPMG, she leads teams in helping clients navigate their ESG journeys, manage risks, and enhance reporting. Teanne also serve as an Executive in Residence at the Ivey Centre for Building Sustainable Value. Recognized for my expertise, I’m committed to fostering collaboration and driving positive change.

As chief communications and public affairs officer, Polly Tracey leads the organization’s public relations, internal communications, community investment, sustainability governance, events, influencer strategy, corporate communications and government relations functions.  

With experience across North America, Europe and Asia – spanning some of the world’s best-known brands including American Airlines, Sony Music and Honda – Polly is known for driving creativity and innovation, while guiding companies through periods of significant growth and change. As the founder and executive sponsor of the Best Buy Green Team and the Mentorship and Acceleration Program (MAP) for Black and Indigenous entrepreneurs, she catalyzes cross-functional groups to solve challenges with an enterprise mindset and collaborative approach. She was named Communicator of the Year by the Public Relations and Communications Association (Europe’s largest and most influential communications’ body) for 2013 – 2014, was a judge for PR Week’s Global Awards in 2019 and was named one Ragan/PR Daily’s Top Women in Communications in 2020.  

A strong believer in positivity breeding productivity, Polly embraces challenges and relishes building effective strategy to help brands stand out and to enhance employee and community sentiment.

Dynamic sales and marketing leader recognized for creativity, resourcefulness and sense of urgency while engaging with stakeholders and a track record of exceeding targets.

Rui Rodrigues, RCC Executive Advisor, Loss Prevention & Risk Management, has extensive leadership experience overseeing Loss Prevention, Risk Management, Security, Health & Safety and Audit functions with retailers such as ICI, Shoppers Drug Mart, Best Buy, Staples and Holt Renfrew. He has been actively involved with Retail Council of Canada and National Retail Federation for over 15 years helping to organize conferences, participating on LP Committees and as an active speaker / presenter at industry events. Rui has also served a 5 year term on the Peel Crime Stoppers Board with 2 of those years as Chairperson.

Rui’s role with the RCC is to support Loss Prevention, Asset Protection and Risk Management to enhance programs and services for members from coast to coast.

Corinne Kepper is the Senior Director, Corporate Giving and Voice of Employee at Aritzia.  Aritzia is an innovative design house delivering Everyday Luxury shopping experiences at aritzia.com and in 100+ boutiques throughout North America. 

Corinne built Aritzia’s corporate giving program to invest more than $40 million of Aritzia resources to empower women & girls and support mental wellness. She is a champion of employee engagement and leads programs to support delivering a high performing culture.  A seasoned communicator, she established Aritzia’s public relations department to support market entry in New York and Montreal and managed Aritzia’s 2016 IPO communications. 

Integrating her business skills and love of design, she successfully led teams at Identica Branding & Design, a division of Cossette Communications and Procter & Gamble.  Corinne is passionate about women’s advancement.  She frequently mentors young women and has served as a Board Director for Dress for Success Vancouver. Corinne earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree at Queen’s University. 

Mary is a Health, Safety, and Environmental professional with over 20 years of experience working in all provinces in Canada and the United States. Passionate about promoting an Internal Responsibility System and developing a strong safety culture in the organization. Dedicated to creating workplaces where no one gets hurt.

Andrew is a seasoned Technology Executive with a history of identifying and leading successful business transformation programs. His background includes leading teams at Bell Canada and The Source to deliver new business capabilities, enhanced sales and productivity, and world-class customer service.  Since leaving The Source, Andrew has set up shop as an Executive Consultant, serving Retail, Telco, Health Care and Alternative Energy sector executives with both Senior Advisory strategy services as well as hands on leadership. He is known as a listener, consensus builder, visionary and driver of technological innovation that enables his customers to thrive. His interests include anything tech and acting on climate change. 

As an award-winning sales, ecommerce, marketing and technology leader, Sean has over 20 years’ experience in high growth B2B, B2C and C2C industries.   
 
Prior to founding Engagement Agents, Sean was the Director of Sales & Marketing for Stitch It Clothing Alterations, North America’s largest alterations service provider with 85 locations in major shopping centres. While helping Stitch It  drive traffic & sales, he discovered a problem; every retailer pays significantly for digital and physical marketing opportunities each month through their leases; via gross rent, variable/percentage rent, CAM fees, marketing/promo/ad funds and merchant association fees. 
 
However, only 10% of retailers engage the benefits of these significant investments, collectively costing retailers hundreds of billions in sales every year! 
 
As a result, Sean developed Engagement Agents, www.EngagementAgents.com, a world-class solution to help retailers promptly reclaim significant amounts of lost traffic & sales by making it easy to engage their numerous already-paid-for shopping centers’ digital + physical retail media networks, paid for daily via the “hidden” marketing dollars in their leases.  
 
A number of the world’s most recognizable retailers rely on Engagement Agents’ award-winning solution, including Adidas, Levi’s, Lacoste, Sephora and Nespresso. 
 
Prior to joining Stitch It Sean founded Trend Trunk, Canada’s largest fashion marketplace, which was a finalist for three Canada Post Ecommerce Innovation Awards and Preferred One, one of the largest retailer gift card marketing companies in North America driving hundreds of millions of dollars to retailers.  In addition, Sean was recognized with “Guy Who Gets It” Award by Illuminessence Magazine for valiant contributions to gender equality, social justice and community development.

Channeling an irrepressible energy, passion and love of people, Rick is best known as the co-founder and long-time CEO of Urban Barn, one of the best furniture retailers in Canada. While there, he became known for finding smart and motivated leaders and advisors and empowering them in the business.  

Since leaving Urban Barn, Rick has used his experiences – from start up to exit – to help the next generation of entrepreneurs scale or ready-to-scale their ventures. He a strong interest in sustainability, health, and wellness,    

He had been particularly active in supporting the evolution of early-stage business in Canada.  Rick has been engaging top level executives and founders to develop a collective point of view and has adopted a leadership role in advocacy in several various ventures.   

In the spring of 2019, Rick joined DIG360 Consulting Ltd. as a Senior Advisor and recently has established his own advisory. The team and its clients alike have benefitted from his counsel and innovative ideas.  Rick supports these with leadership philosophy and advice on areas that fueled his successes to date: focusing deeply on customer and employee experiences and designing a scalable culture. 

John is an innovative and strategic leader with over two decades of experience in transforming retail environments through the integration of digital and physical design elements. He specializes in elevating in-store customer experiences by leveraging technology, design thinking, and cross-functional leadership. Proven track record in directing high-performing teams to achieve award-winning retail design and digital integration projects. Passionate about creating seamless, engaging customer journeys that drive brand loyalty and sales.

Brooke Ferguson, is a highly-accomplished, dynamic executive leader and visionary Chief Human Resources Officer with Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). Brooke has a unique background of skills and expertise with outstanding relationship-building and team leadership attributes. Having spent the past 30 years at HBC with time both in Canada and the U.S; and more than 25 years of that spent in varying roles in Human Resources with demonstrated achievements, adding value through talent development and implementation of innovative, cost-effective strategies, solutions and services that support the organization and maximizes the Human Resources function to increase productivity and stimulate business growth.

Conscious Leaders are incredibly aware of themselves, others, and the influence they have on situations, events, and people. I support people in being highly responsive verses reactive in the life that they lead to ensure they bring their full and authentic self to the world.

I am the Founder and CEO of Vicki Bradley & Company and WIL Empowered, a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Energy Leadership Index Assessment Master Practitioner (ELI-MP), Certified in Conversational Intelligence (CIQ), and Emotional Intelligence (EQi 2.0).

What stands me apart from most coaches is that I am a seasoned Executive with 25+ years’ experience in leading high performing teams in the retail industry across North America. I’ve held progressive roles with iconic retailers which include: President of the Bombay Furniture Company in Canada while simultaneously leading the store organization as VP Sales and Operations for Bombay US, SVP of Sales and Operations with Marks and Spencer’s, VP of Sales and Operations with luxury retailer Holt Renfrew (Hr2) and held progressive roles within the Woolworth Organization across North America. I sat on the Board of Directors for the Retail Council of Canada, Party Packagers, and OSI tile.

My passion has always been with supporting and stretching individuals beyond what they believe themselves capable of, creating environments that are co-creative for learning, and supporting others to see their greatness. I became a coach so that I could have an impact on more individuals in this world but especially women.

Are you ready to step into your greatness?

Miriam has spent more than 30 years in Human Resources, including 17 years in Learning & Development. She has 10 years’ experience as a high performing HR Executive, and her HR experience encompasses wide-ranging experience in HR business partner roles, Learning & Development, Talent & Career Development, Employee Communications, Employee Relations, and Labour Relations, with a focus on strategic inclusion & diversity.  Known as an innovative and inspiring leader/coach skilled in strategy and execution, Miriam is committed to building a talented, inclusive workforce and culture that delivers on business strategy. A strong relationship builder, Miriam focuses on designing and delivering HR and Learning solutions having broad organizational impact. Her current Leadership Development Solutions role enables her to bring her deep and diverse experience to projects that help to build strong leaders at The Home Depot Canada.

David is the Founder and CEO of The Poirier Group, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategy execution, operational efficiency and sustainable business transformations for clients across the retail, private equity, manufacturing and healthcare sectors in North America. He provides oversight and perspective acquired from 25+ years of successful C-Suite experience across major National and International organizations. David works with leaders to create and translate strategic roadmaps into actionable goals, helping organizations achieve their full potential. He thrives at running multiple global divisions in complex and everchanging business environments and effecting positive cultural shifts that impact bottom line performance.

Meriyem Kaf is an international retail expert who has over 15 years of experience across 3 different continents; working for leading global retailers such as Walmart, Carrefour, Sobeys and Home Hardware.  Meriyem’s extensive merchandising experience, has given her the opportunity to hold various positions such as Category Management, Cost Analytics and Global Sourcing. Currently, Meriyem is the Director of Merchandise Strategy & Execution, at Home Hardware Stores Limited ; where she leads Category Management, Private Brands and Global Sourcing.

Meriyem holds a BBA from the University of Quebec (Montreal, Canada) and an MBA from ESG (Paris, France).

Sari Deckelbaum is a well rounded business & digital executive whose 20 year career has been characterized by the sustained and impactful digital business transformations of the North American retail businesses with whom she has collaborated over that period. A digital veteran since late Web 1.0, her experience through all phases of the digital revolution has equipped her with a deep and broad understanding of evolving business, digital, marketing, & e-commerce trends, while bringing a growth and agile mind-set and fresh new innovative strategic perspective to large retail organizations seeking to unlock business value, drive profitable growth and increase market share.

She currently serves as the Senior Vice-President of e-commerce at Sleep Country Canada where she inspires and leads teams to adopt sustainable, omni-business models, while using digital technology, strong digital experience and proven marketing performance strategies to drive innovation, growth, a robust online presence, and to digitally transform. Under her leadership she has led significant new business wins and has delivered strong business growth.

Her career spans multiple senior e-commerce and digital & marketing roles across the North American retail landscape. As a business transformation leader Sari uses her platform to drive thought leadership for the encouragement of digital transformation across business sectors, and also to inspire organizations to leverage data and insights to empower better marketing, & enterprise decision making leveraging a customer first approach.

Sari aspires to share her drive and wealth of knowledge with talented global teams and fellow business, digital, technology, & marketing leaders, while encouraging and championing innovation and change.

Lori Bailey is a passionate retail industry leader with broad sales, marketing and operations expertise.She is known for spearheading unique strategies, which have proven to expand retailers target audiences, by building brand centric experiences, focusing on all five senses.

Prior to launching her own company, Just4Women Group, Lori served as Chief Customer Experience Officer and Senior Vice President of Retail Operations for Sears Canada, overseeing 140 retail stores and more than 500 dealer and agent locations.  Lori has held a range of executive positions at well-known retail fashion chains throughout her career including Head of Gap Canada, Advisor to Nine West, Vice-President of Jones New York and Laura Canada, as well as consulting on several projects, including the conception and launch of Tweed Retail for Canopy Growth.  She has an unprecedented track record for growing revenue and profit at every company she has worked for.

Lori has received multiple sales achievement awards from leading Canadian and international retailers.  With 25 years of executive experience, she has intimate knowledge of the Canadian retail landscape and has developed a massive network of talent with core skills in customer engagement, networking, and clientele building. 

When the pandemic hit in 2020, many of the women in her network found themselves unemployed for the first time in their careers, just like 500,000 other women in Canada whose jobs were impacted by Covid 19.  That’s when she and the women in her group took control and launched their own brand, J4W HOME & Gifts, because there’s always a reason to give a gift.  Lori’s vision for Just4Women Group is to provide every woman with the options made simple and the means to style it her way.

17 years into her second career, Christine continues to be passionate about organizational and workplace learning.   Through transitioning from healthcare to learning, she learned the value of volunteering  and seeking opportunities outside of traditional organizations to gain the skills and experience necessary to make big changes.   A learning nerd both professionally and personally, her most recent certifications are Mental Health First Aid and Workplace Mental Health Leadership™ and HHA Death Doula.  She is also enjoying learning more about restorative justice as she volunteers with the Youth Justice Committee in Durham Region.​

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Christine’s experience in facilitation, instructional design, and learning strategy make her an innovative and creative team member who aims to meet the needs of the business, the customer, and the learner.

Dionisia Lita is the Director – IT Delivery, Business Applications at The Source. She leads her IT team to deliver business applications in the areas of  POS, ERP, WMS, and Finance systems.  She was previously responsible for The Source eCommerce site, and Parts & Repair systems. Dionisia was employed with RadioShack USA, RadioShack Canada, The Source By Circuit City, and now The Source. She led The Source IT team during the transition to Bell, and was the Canada IT Lead for the Circuit City business transformation project. Previously, a member of the team who implemented POS  in Belgium for InterTAN European stores, and the BatteryPlus  acquisition in Canada. She was once a panelist of the International Women’s Day at The Source. 

Ted is Co-Founder and CEO of Stream Commerce. Stream Commerce is the fastest growing Shopify Plus e-commerce agency in North America. Stream Commerce serves high growth, high volume Shopify Plus merchants with expert e-commerce consulting, site design & development, site optimization and digital performance marketing.

Lawyer by training, Ted is an e-commerce executive and entrepreneur. Ted started selling online in 1996 – over 25 years of e-commerce experience. Ted built and scaled the QVC of Canada, The Shopping Channel, first taking the business from scratch to over $125m in annual online sales and later as President of The Shopping Channel, building out its multi-channel offering to over $350m in DTC sales.

As an executive operator and agency entrepreneur, Ted has a unique perspective, with a combination of client side, agency side, start-up, public company, private company and private equity backed e-commerce experience. A frequent speaker at retail industry events, Ted loves to share his experience as a digital retail and consumer product innovator.

Hassan Chaudhry is responsible for leading the strategic planning and implementation of store development, store design, construction and engineering for the national retail portfolio at Staples Canada. He provides leadership to the construction, fixturing, design and project management teams.

David Thorpe is a high energy, results driven, customer-obsessed marketing professional who loves working for retail challenger brands. Over the course of 20+ years, he’s held senior marketing leadership roles with Ashley Homestore Canada, London Drugs Limited, one of British Columbia’s most loved brands, and national discount leader, Giant Tiger Stores Limited, where he was responsible for all marketing communications activities to build brand, drive traffic and support growth to over 200 franchised stores across Canada. 

David has also worked as General Manager of a digital marketing agency and served on a number of industry advisory boards including the RAC in Toronto, CRMC(Chicago), GRMA (FL) and the CMO council of the National Retail Federation. ( Washington, DC). He also served on the board of Capture Photography Festival in Vancouver, BC. 

David is an avid cyclist, sailor and photographer. He presently lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario as a Retail Marketing Consultant and teaches Retail Management and Marketing as a professor in the School of Business at. Algonquin College.

David Ian Gray is a recognized expert on retail and shopper trends, consistently producing high-impact knowledge for over 25 years. With his team, David provides fresh counsel across Canada to Founders, CEOs and other executives on defining customer-relevance, rethinking customer experience and tailoring roadmaps for evolving their retail and DTC concepts. He is widely sought for insight by business media.

David presents regularly on emerging retail trends, the role of retail in a sustainable future, the need for strategic adaptation and management of innovation, and other topics. David is in Rethink Retail’s Top 100. He cofounded and co-hosted the pandemic podcast The Business of Retail and has taught senior executives with the prestigious London Business School and the next generation of talent at Canadian business schools.

James has been part of the Canadian retail landscape for over 25 years with three iconic Canadian companies; previously Shoppers Drug Mart and Petro-Canada, and currently with Parkland.   In his role with Parkland, James is leading the Canadian Category Management team for Chevron, Fas Gas, UltraMar and Pioneer stores and car washes. 

Ask Marissa Andersson why she works in learning, talent and leadership development and there is only one answer ‘Learning Changes Lives’. Marissa creates learning and talent development experiences that reignite the passion that we all innately have to explore, learn, and grow. Through these experiences, people become better at whatever they pursue, and lives can be changed for the better.

Marissa’s has lived this mission in her learning career through progressive roles across industries and learning focussed organizations. Marissa has practiced what she preaches throughout and continually invests in her own development, most recently completing her Masters in Adult Education and Leadership. Currently, Marissa supports Talent Management, Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership Development at the Home Depot Canada where she leads teams who develop others across The Home Depot store network and Store Support Centre (head office).

When asked to describe herself with three words Rosa Magrone would say, resourceful, enthusiastic and courageous. Rosa’s passion for learning comes from a lifelong obsession for reading. From a young age Rosa devoured books by the dozen. Rosa made fast friends with her elementary school librarian Mrs. Desouza and could be found in the school library every day after school and looking for the next great story to read. As an adult Rosa fueled this passion into her purpose and is why she chose to spend the better part of her career in Human Resources and Learning and Development.

As a  Human Resources leader, Rosa is known for strong leaderships, unwavering integrity, and the ability to influence ideas and relationships.  Rosa also has extensive leadership in resource planning, change management and developing leadership development programs while partnering with leadership teams to collaboratively move the organization forward. In her current role as the Manager, Leadership Development & Solution Rosa is responsible for designing and facilitating the Home Depot Leadership Curriculum for people leaders across Canada.

Gary’s established international reputation for rapid business performance transformation and executing supply chain designs, consistently builds market prominence, shareholder value and consumer trust.

Gary helps Boards and Business Leaders to navigate disruption and reinvigorate supply chain performance across the “make-move-sell” flow of Manufacturing, 3^rd Party Logistics, Wholesaling, Retailing & The Last Mile.  

When it comes to diagnosing and resolving mission critical issues, armed with multiple operational turnarounds and strategic transformations completed, Gary deploys the RAPID Transformation Roadmap to align processes, systems, architecture, culture and metrics to deliver enduring competitive advantage. 

Gary is a sought after thought leader, speaker, podcaster and trainer in “RAPID Transformation of Disrupted Supply Chain Performance” by many professional bodies. Recently awarded Supply Chain Canada’s “Top 40 Immigrants impacting on Supply Chains”, recognised for his creative thinking via CITT’s “2020 Innovator Award”, Gary has also been recognised as one of “Rethink Retail’s Top 100 Global Retail Influencers”.  

Gary has an MBA and an MSc (Supply Chain Management & Logistics) from Cranfield University, UK and is recently CCLP, CSCMP, PMP, LSSBB and Retail Management certified. 

Kevin Graff is the President of Graff Retail, based in Toronto, Ontario.  Since 1988, Graff Retail has specialized in working with retailers around the globe to increase their revenue through improved staff performance. 

Kevin is widely respected as one of North America’s best retail speakers and trainers and was recently chosen as one of the Top 50 Retail Influencers.  His principle belief is that retailers are losing too many sales each day in their stores that they should be capturing.   Kevin’s approach to store operations and his intense focus on real, bottom-line issues continually produce outstanding results. 

Kevin is also the creator of Graff Retail TV, the retail community’s leading source of online sales and management training.  Since being launched in 2008, Graff Retail TV has provided thousands of sales associates and store management teams with the skills they need to succeed.