Charles Sousa is Ontario’s Minister of Finance and the Member of Provincial Parliament for Mississauga South. As Minister of Finance, Charles has delivered multiple Budgets and Fall Economic Statements. He negotiated the formation of the Canadian Cooperative Securities Regulator and led Ontario’s negotiation with the federal government and other provinces to enhance the CPP.

In 2009, Charles unanimously passed a private member's resolution to include financial literacy education in elementary and secondary school curriculums. He also facilitated passage of the Payday Loans Act to protect Ontario consumers against predatory lending.

He possesses an extensive background in the financial sector – working at RBC Financial Group for more than 20 years in commercial banking. Prior to that, he owned and operated a financing company supporting small businesses. He also served as a member of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Toronto Board of Trade, and as a director of the American Chamber of Commerce.

Victor Dodig was named President and CEO of the CIBC group of companies, one of North America’s largest financial services institutions, in September 2014.

Under his tenure, Victor has helped usher in a new era for the bank, positioning CIBC as a strong, relationship-focused North American bank. Victor brings more than 20 years of extensive business and banking experience, having led CIBC’s Wealth Management, Asset Management, and Retail Banking businesses. He also led several businesses with UBS and Merrill Lynch in Canada and internationally, and was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company.

A member of CIBC's Board of Directors, Victor also serves on the board of the C.D. Howe Institute and ROM Board of Governors. He is a vocal advocate for gender diversity in the workplace, and actively supports the advancement of talented women to executive roles and on boards as Chair of the 30% Club Canada and Chair of the Catalyst Canada Advisory Board.

Victor is the recipient of the 2017 Catalyst Canada Honours Company Leader Champion, and past winner of Canada's Top 40 Under 40™ award. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School where he earned an MBA and was recognized as a Baker Scholar. Victor holds a Diploma from the Institut d'études politiques in Paris and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto (St. Michael’s College) in Commerce.

Victor resides in Toronto with his wife Maureen and their four teenage children. He is an active community member, most recently serving as Co-Chair of the St. Joseph’s Health Centre Foundation’s Promise Campaign.

Maureen Jensen is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), which administers and enforces securities law in the capital markets of the province of Ontario.

Prior to her appointment as Chair and CEO, Ms. Jensen was the Executive Director and Chief Administrative Officer of the OSC. As the senior member of staff, she was responsible for coordinating and managing the organization’s day-to-day operations, including its enforcement, market regulation and compliance functions. In addition, she provided leadership and direction on policy development and implementation, as well as strategic securities, regulatory and enforcement policy and program analysis. Ms. Jensen was also an executive sponsor of various regulatory policy initiatives.

Before joining the OSC, Ms. Jensen was Senior Vice-President, Surveillance and Compliance at the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), the national self-regulatory organization that oversees all investment dealers and trading activity on debt and equity marketplaces in Canada. At IIROC, she was responsible for all of its compliance and market surveillance functions, including market surveillance and prudential and business conduct regulation of all registered dealers and registrants.

Prior to the formation of IIROC in 2008, Ms. Jensen was President and CEO of Market Regulation Services Inc. (RS), the independent national market regulation services provider for Canadian equity markets. At RS, she was responsible for overseeing all of its corporate and regulatory functions and the development of strategic initiatives that promote market integrity. During her tenure, Ms. Jensen also held the positions of Vice President, Market Surveillance, and later Vice President, Market Regulation Eastern Region.

Ms. Jensen has also held senior positions in regulatory and business portfolios at the Toronto Stock Exchange and had a 20-year career in the mining business, holding both executive and technical management positions with several resource companies.

Ms. Jensen is a Registered Professional Geoscientist (P.Geo) and holds the ICD.D designation.

Ryan Barrows is the Head of Personal Investing, Europe for Vanguard. Earlier this year, Ryan’s team launched a direct investing service in the U.K. that allows investors to invest as little as £100 per month directly with Vanguard at a total cost of less than 0.4%. The team is aiming to help shift the U.K. towards low-cost, long-term investing.

Before moving to London, Ryan worked in Vanguard’s Corporate Strategy Group. Before joining Vanguard, he worked at Bain & Company for seven years in San Francisco, Chicago and Stockholm. Ryan has a BA in Economics from Yale University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Michael Katchen is the CEO and Co-founder of Wealthsimple, a leading online investing service operating in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. In under three years, it has grown to manage over $1 billion for more than 35,000 people. Prior to founding Wealthsimple, Michael led product and marketing at 1000memories, a Y Combinator startup that was acquired by Ancestry.com in 2012. He has been called an Industry Mover by the Financial Post, a Change Agent by Canadian Business magazine and one of Toronto’s 50 most influential people by Toronto Life. He won Entrepreneur of the Year at the Canadian Startup Awards in 2017, is a winner of an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award and was named one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40™.

Sheila Murray is President and General Counsel of CI Financial Corp. She plays a key role in directing the operations and setting corporate strategy for CI Financial and its operating companies, including CI Investments Inc. and Assante Wealth Management. As General Counsel, she provides strategic, securities regulatory and governance advice to the company and its Board of Directors. Her activities include leading CI’s mentoring program, which fosters the advancement of high-potential female employees.

Sheila joined CI as Executive Vice-President, General Counsel and Secretary in 2008, and was appointed President in 2016. Prior to CI, Sheila had a distinguished 25-year career at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, where she practised securities law with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and corporate reorganizations.

She is Chair of the Dean’s Council at Queen’s University Law School, has been an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and has taught Securities Regulation and Corporate Finance at University of Toronto’s Global Professional LLM in Business Law Program for several years.

Sheila is a member of the Board of Directors of the Aequitas NEO Exchange, a member of the Board of Directors of the SickKids Foundation, a trustee of the Toronto Symphony Foundation and has been a director of a number of private and public companies.

Sheila is a member of the Business Law Advisory Council, which advises the Ontario government on the reform of corporate and commercial statutes. She was also a member of the Business Law Agenda Stakeholder Panel, an expert group whose recommendations led to the creation of the council in 2016. She was also a member of the Securities Advisory Committee to the Ontario Securities Commission and was part of a team of Blakes’ partners who advised the Canadian securities regulators on the reformulation of securities regulation. In 2016, she was the recipient of the Canadian General Counsel Award for Business Achievement.

Sheila received her B.Comm. and LLB degrees from Queen’s University.

Ermanno Pascutto has had a 35-year career as a senior securities regulator and legal practitioner. His practice has been focused on Canadian and Hong Kong securities matters involving the regulation of public companies and financial intermediaries.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto in 1977, Mr. Pascutto practised with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt. He was seconded to the TSE in 1981 where he was appointed Director of Market Policy. In 1983 he was recruited to be Legal and Policy Advisor to the Chair of the Ontario Securities Commission and a year later was appointed Executive Director and head of staff of the OSC. In 1989, he was recruited to be Vice-Chairman and Executive Director (Corporate Finance Division) of the new Hong Kong Securities & Futures Commission.

He returned to private practice in 1994 as managing partner of the Hong Kong office of Goodman Phillips & Vineberg. After returning to Canada in 1999 he practiced with Stikeman Elliot and the international firm of Troutman Sanders.

Ermanno is the chair of the Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR Canada), an independent investor rights organization, and was its initial Executive Director from 2004-2008.

Ermanno has acted as an expert witness and consulted to stock exchanges and securities commissions in Hong Kong, the Middle East and the Caribbean. He has served as a director of listed companies and regulatory bodies.

Kelly Peters is the CEO and Co-founder of BEworks. She is passionate about bringing scientific thinking to business strategy, marketing and operations.

Kelly has overseen the launch of several new business ventures that capitalized on insights into consumer behavior. Her interest in behavioral science stems back to the late 1990s when working on behavioral scoring models in credit risk and online distribution models, evolved through behavioral finance, and finally culminated in 2008 when she embraced behavioral economics as the most reliable approach to executing strategy.

She launched what might be the world’s first commercial application of behavioral field experiments while at RBC to help drive adoption of online service channels. Among the first to see the commercial potential of the web in 1993, Kelly spent several years in the dot-com industry before focusing on financial services, where she spent 12 years leading complex innovation projects providing her with a rich background in innovation, technology and human behavior.

Kelly is a Faculty Lecturer of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and regularly lectures at Cornell, Harvard and other academies. She is a sought-after keynote speaker, has conducted three TEDx talks and has been featured in the New York Times & Forbes.

After studying philosophy and technology, Kelly earned an MBA from Dalhousie University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers.

Stephanie Avakian is the Co-Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement, which has nearly 1,700 people throughout the country focused on enforcing and supporting enforcement of the federal securities laws. From June 2014 to January 2017, she served as Deputy Director of the Division of Enforcement. In January 2017, she was named Acting Director of the Division of Enforcement and served in that role until she was named Co-Director of the Division in June 2017.

Prior to her appointment as Deputy Director, Ms. Avakian was a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where she served as a vice chair of the firm’s securities department. Ms. Avakian represented public companies, financial institutions, boards, and individuals in a broad range of investigations and other matters before the SEC and other agencies.

Ms. Avakian previously worked in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement as a branch chief in the New York Regional Office and as counsel to former SEC Commissioner Paul Carey.

Matt Cardillo, Senior Director of Application Development, has managed software delivery and sustainment within FINRA’s Technology Department since 2007. He has a passion for creating impactful yet simple user-facing products and solutions that exceed expectations. Quick to embrace new challenges, Matt applies his formidable technical leadership skills to design and develop transformative and innovative software solutions. He manages multiple teams through high profile development initiatives ranging from transactional, highly integrated systems to self-service user analytic solutions. Between 2014 and 2016, he played an instrumental role in a bold transformational migration of FINRA’s core market regulation technology to the cloud.

Prior to FINRA, software engineering was the cornerstone of Matt’s focus, working in several industries which included Defense, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical and Music. He has over 24 years of professional engineering and information technology experience. He is known as an expert at leadership and change management for both new development and turnaround projects.

Matt earned his master’s degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and his bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Drexel University. Matt is a Certified Scrum Master & Product Owner and a Project Management Professional (PMP).

Jeff Kehoe is Director of Enforcement at the Ontario Securities Commission. Prior to joining the OSC, he was Managing Partner and General Counsel at Difference Capital Inc. He has more than a decade of experience overseeing the Canadian capital markets as Director and Vice-President of Enforcement at the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC). Prior to IIROC, he served as a Crown Attorney and Department of Justice Crown Counsel.

Mr. Kehoe has a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Windsor, a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Detroit Mercy, a Master of Laws degree specializing in securities law from Osgoode Hall Law School, a Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional certificate from Wharton University of Pennsylvania, has completed the Rotman Institute of Corporate Directors Program and has received securities regulation training from Harvard. He currently serves on both private and public boards including charitable non-profit organizations.

Gillian Tan is the Executive Director of the Enforcement Department at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The department is responsible for investigating and enforcing serious conduct-related breaches under the laws administered by MAS, which include the Financial Advisers Act, the Banking Act and the Insurance Act. It also enforces anti-money laundering regulations that govern all financial institutions and has responsibility for the surveillance and investigation of market misconduct offences under Part XII of the Securities and Futures Act.

Gillian previously worked in the Supreme Court of Singapore as a Justices’ Law Clerk to the Chief Justice and a number of other Court of Appeal and High Court Judges. She then served as an Assistant Registrar and Magistrate in the Supreme Court. She was subsequently appointed as a District Judge and Deputy Registrar of the State Courts of Singapore, hearing both civil and criminal cases.

Gillian also served as a Deputy Public Prosecutor and Deputy Senior State Counsel in the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) for a number of years, and was a Director of the Financial and Securities Offences Directorate of the Financial and Technology Crimes Division of AGC before she joined the MAS in 2015.

A Singapore President’s Scholar, Gillian graduated from Cambridge University with a Double First Class Honours in law. She also holds a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School.

Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker, author and researcher. He wows audiences with keynote speeches on the impact of exponential technologies including: The Future of AI integrated with Life and Business; Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality; Work Productivity; The Sharing Economy; Autonomous Transportation; Smart Cities; Education; and Predictions for humanity from 2017 to 2030, and beyond.

Nikolas regularly appears on BBC, CBC, CTV, Global News, and VICE, and writes for Techcrunch, Huffington Post, Forbes, Venturebeat, Betakit, TechVibes, Business.com and other media.

Janet Bannister is passionate about helping entrepreneurs and their businesses reach their full potential. Her background is a combination of founding and building successful entrepreneurial ventures and making an impact at leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Co. and eBay.

Janet is a General Partner at Real Ventures, Canada’s largest and most active early-stage venture capital firm. Janet has led investments in a dozen companies and works actively with Real’s portfolio companies to help them accelerate growth and create meaningful impact. Janet launched Kijiji.ca and grew it to become one of the most visited websites in Canada. Subsequently, she led the Kijiji Global business, accelerating growth in North America, Europe and Asia.

Prior to launching Kijiji, Janet was at eBay in Silicon Valley where she led multiple “non-collectibles” categories and helped transform eBay from a collectibles to a mainstream marketplace.

She also founded and built a successful consulting business and was CEO at a Toronto-based start-up in the online content and commerce space.

Eli Fathi is the CEO of MindBridge Analytics, a data analytics company that uses AI and ML technologies to uncover material irregularities in data. Eli is a serial entrepreneur with several successful exits in launching innovative technology companies in North America that serve a global customer base. He has founded or co-founded companies that currently employ over 400 people and have generated over $500 million in salaries and net benefits to the economy. Eli has been recognized with a number of awards including being named as Startup Canada Senior Entrepreneur Award for Canada in October 2016.

Eli has been involved with the community in general, and the high-tech community in particular, by serving on a number of diverse not-for-profit boards. He was appointed to the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) Board in 2016 and serves on the Ottawa Community Foundation (OCF) since 2012. Eli joined the Startup Canada board in 2017 and also serves on the Board of C-Com, a publicly-traded company.

Erin Kelly is President and CEO of Advanced Symbolics Inc. (ASI), a company that uses Artificial Intelligence to accurately assess public opinion and predict future outcomes.

ASI develops customized Artificial Intelligence (AI) that produces randomized, controlled samples on social media for market research and public opinion research the way traditional market researchers create samples for telephone polls and other traditional research technologies.

Erin is a regular guest on CBC radio and television commenting on political events and public opinion research. She is also regularly featured in national print media including The Globe and Mail as well as in American business magazines Forbes and Entrepreneurship.

Advanced Symbolics was one of only 16 research companies in the world to accurately predict the BREXIT vote and the Trump election. In 2015, ASI published a Trudeau victory a full month before the election was held, when every other pollster in the country was still predicting a Harper majority government.

Advanced Symbolics holds two U.S. patents on population sampling for online media and works with major companies including Disney, Cadillac Fairview, Bell, Rogers, Cogeco and of course, the Canadian Federal Government.

Doug Steiner is a leader in the field of financial services infrastructure and the design and use of economic and business models pertaining to information transfer.

He founded the Equity Derivatives group at RBC Capital in 1986. He designed and deployed the first fully electronic securities trading and options market-making platform in North America in 1989.

In 1992, he founded VERSUS Technologies Inc., a direct market access brokerage firm. In 1996 VERSUS licensed the rights to the E*TRADE service mark and technology for Canada. VERSUS/ E*TRADE Canada went public in 1999 and was sold to E*TRADE Group in 2000.

In 2002 Doug started the first private equity fund in Canada dedicated to financial services infrastructure. The fund reorganized into an operating company, Perimeter Financial in 2005. Perimeter developed and operated transparent securities trading and investment management infrastructure for institutional and retail clients. The firm was sold to CI Financial in April 2009.

Since 2004, Doug has been a writer and featured columnist in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine, Canada’s leading business publication. He comments on industry trends, economic analysis and investor psychologies.

Doug is currently CEO of Evree Corp, www.evree.ca, a financial software firm based in Toronto. He is also a former partner in BEworks Inc, a consumer-focused behavioural economics consulting practice.

Jake Tyler has been working on Finn.ai for two and a half years, in Spain and now Canada. He previously spent three years helping to build London (U.K.) based start-up Brook Intelligence as first employee and Director. In between start-ups, Jake worked as a Strategy Consultant in the Mergers & Acquisitions team at PMSI Consulting (also in London). Originally from Australia, he has worked and lived in five countries in the last decade and holds an MBA from IE Business School.

Michelle Edkins is a Managing Director at BlackRock and Global Head of its Investment Stewardship team of over 30 specialists internationally. Michelle is responsible for the team’s engagement and proxy voting activities in relation to the companies in which BlackRock invests on behalf of clients.

She currently serves on a number of industry initiatives to enhance governance and sustainable business practices, including the U.S. chapter of the 30% Club, a market initiative to increase the number of women on boards and in senior management, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Investor Advisory Group and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). An economist by training, Michelle has also worked in the U.K. in a number of investment stewardship-related roles and in government roles in her native New Zealand.

Mark Machin was appointed President & CEO in June 2016, where he is responsible for leading the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and its investment activities.

Mark joined CPPIB in 2012 as CPPIB’s first President for Asia. In November 2013, he became Head of International where he was responsible for the organization’s international investment activities, managing global advisory relationships and leading the organization internationally.

Prior to joining CPPIB, Mark had a 20-year career at Goldman Sachs, where he was most recently Vice Chairman of Asia ex-Japan. Mark has been based in Asia for more than 20 years where, among other roles, he ran the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs in Asia ex-Japan for six years. Mark was a member of Goldman Sachs’ Asia Management Committee and the Firmwide Capital Committee.

Mark studied undergraduate and graduate medicine and holds a BA in Physiological Sciences from Oriel College, Oxford University and BM BChir from Downing College, Cambridge University. He qualified as medical doctor in 1990. After practising medicine in the U.K., in 1991 he joined Goldman Sachs in London in European Corporate Finance.

Joe Oliver is a former federal Minister of Finance, Minister of Natural Resources and Minister Responsible for the GTA. He presented a budget that was balanced fiscally and socially. Mr. Oliver represented Canada at G7, G20, IMF and World Bank meetings of Finance Ministers and Governors of Central Banks. He co-chaired the G20 committee responsible for generating and overseeing country plans to increase global growth by $2 trillion.

Previously, Joe Oliver served as President and CEO of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada, founding President of the Mutual Fund Dealers Association and Executive Director of the Ontario Securities Commission. Over two decades, he held senior positions running the investment banking operations at major investment dealers.

Mr. Oliver is Chairman of Echelon Wealth Partners, Director of Firm Capital Mortgage Investment Corporation and High Arctic Resource Services, Chair of the Independent Review Committee of RP Strategic Income Plus Fund, Member of the Board of the Manning Centre and Governor of the Mackenzie Institute. He writes articles for publication, appears on television and radio and gives speeches across the country.

Barbara Zvan provides liability and risk expertise focused on long-term Total Fund investment strategy, risk management and the governance framework. Ms. Zvan is also charged with ensuring the Plan is sustainable, and that the funding risk is aligned to the Board’s Risk Appetite Statement.

Ms. Zvan joined Ontario Teachers’ in 1995 as an assistant portfolio manager and has risen to positions of increasing authority. As Chief Risk & Strategy Officer, she leads the Strategy & Risk team in supporting the Plan Sponsors in plan design decisions and the Board in determining the appropriate benchmarks and risk appetite. Ms. Zvan and her team provide input and risk insights to the Investing teams and create an effective risk management framework to underpin it. In addition, Ms. Zvan drives the responsible investing and climate change risk management and strategy for the Fund and directs the Enterprise and Operational Risk Management approach for the organization.

Ms. Zvan is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and holds a Master of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo.

Ms. Zvan serves as the Chair of the International Centre of Pension Management (ICPM). Barbara also serves on the boards of Cadillac Fairview, Global Risk Institute and the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance.

She was honoured as one of Canada’s 2008 Top 40 Under 40 ™.

“The views, opinions and commentary expressed by the presenter and in the presentation materials are not necessarily intended to reflect those of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. © Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, 2017. All rights reserved.”

John Mountain is Director of Investment Funds & Structured Products at the Ontario Securities Commission. His team is responsible for regulating investment products that offer securities for sale to the public in Ontario, including mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, structured products and scholarship plans. John rejoined the OSC in early 2016; between 1989 and 1996, he was Senior Legal Counsel and Deputy Director, Registration in the Capital Markets Branch at the OSC.

Prior to rejoining the OSC, John was an executive at Canada’s largest retail asset manager of socially responsible assets. In addition to his roles at the OSC, John has engaged in the private practice of law and headed the government relations and regulatory affairs function at the Investment Funds Institute of Canada. John is currently also a special lecturer in securities regulation at the University of Windsor Law School and sits on the Board of Directors of the Pleiades Theatre and Raising the Roof.

In his prior role, John accepted the Canadian General Counsel Award for Social Responsibility in 2015, and in 2016 was awarded the Leaders To Be Proud Of Professional Leadership Award.

Kent Thomson is the Head of the Litigation group at Davies where he practises complex, high-stakes litigation across a wide range of areas. He appears regularly at every level of court throughout Canada and has acted as lead counsel in a number of precedent-setting cases, including Supreme Court of Canada cases that have been decided in favour of his clients.

He also acts before a number of tribunals in Canada, including the Ontario Securities Commission and the Competition Tribunal, and represents parties in complex domestic and international arbitrations.

A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, Kent is regarded as one of Canada’s leading litigation counsel. He was recently recognized as one of the world’s top 30 litigators in Expert Guides’ Best of the Best and by Benchmark Canada as one of the top 50 trial lawyers in Canada.

Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker, author and researcher. He wows audiences with keynote speeches on the impact of exponential technologies including: The Future of AI integrated with Life and Business; Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality; Work Productivity; The Sharing Economy; Autonomous Transportation; Smart Cities; Education; and Predictions for humanity from 2017 to 2030, and beyond.

Nikolas regularly appears on BBC, CBC, CTV, Global News, and VICE, and writes for Techcrunch, Huffington Post, Forbes, Venturebeat, Betakit, TechVibes, Business.com and other media.

Huston Loke is Director of Corporate Finance at the Ontario Securities Commission. The branch regulates corporate issuers and leads issuer-related policy initiatives. The branch also monitors compliance through ongoing reviews and establishes the regulatory framework for securities offerings in the public and exempt markets. Policy development and supervision activities for insider reporting and credit rating agencies are also covered by the branch.

Huston serves as a member of one of the Workstreams of the Financial Stability Board, the international body that monitors and makes recommendations regarding the global financial system.

Prior to joining the OSC, Huston was an Advisor to the Chief Risk Officer of a major financial institution. Before taking on that role, Huston was President of a credit rating agency.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts and Science and a Master of Business Administration (Accounting and Finance), and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.