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CEO Speakers

 

C-Suite or C-Level executives are among our most highly requested speakers. Our CEO speakers provide answers to some of the most essential questions in business: how to rise to the top; how to inspire and lead; and how to run an innovative and flourishing company.

 
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Wes Hall

Founder of Kingsdale Advisors | Co-Star of CBC’s Dragons’ Den

The newest judge on the cult classic show Dragons’ Den, Wes Hall is both a corporate juggernaut and a champion for Black leaders. Despite being dubbed one of North America’s “most influential power brokers” (The Globe and Mail), Hall comes from humble beginnings: Growing up in a tin shack in rural Jamaica with 13 siblings, he quickly learned the value of hard work, perseverance, and dreaming big. Today, whether he’s orchestrating billion-dollar deals, or helping organizations tackle anti-Black systemic barriers, Hall offers inspiring and actionable business guidance for the post-pandemic future we’re building. 
Ellen Bennett

Founder and CEO of Hedley & Bennett | Author of Dream First, Details Later

At 25 years old Ellen Bennett was a cook at a 2-Michelin-Star restaurant in Los Angeles; yet she was still tying on the same $5 apron found in every diner and pub along Hollywood Boulevard. So she took her modest $300 savings and turned it into the largest gourmet apron manufacturer in the world. Now the founder and CEO at Hedley & Bennett—a brand beloved by the likes of Martha Stewart and Momofuku’s David Chang—this culinary entrepreneur explains how you, too, can jumpstart your own idea with charisma and heart.
David Cote

Leadership Keynote Speaker | Former Chairman & CEO of Honeywell | Author of Winning Now, Winning Later

When it comes to manufacturing, David Cote stands in a league of his own. The most successful leader of a Fortune 100 industrial conglomerate of his era, Cote joined Honeywell after a 25-year-career at GE. Under his leadership, Honeywell’s market capitalization climbed about an astonishing 100 billion dollars. In talks, he shows how leaders can sustain long-term investment, even when pressures to deliver in the present are at their most intense.
Adam Bryant

Decade-Long Author of The Corner Office Column in The New York Times | Managing Director, The ExCo Group

What happens if you interview over 500 of the world’s top CEOs, and instead of asking them about their companies (about share prices or bottom lines), you ask them expansive questions about how they lead, motivate, and hire employees? You get Adam Bryant’s decade-long “Corner Office” column in The New York Times. 
 
Maureen Chiquet

Former Global CEO of Chanel | Former President of Banana Republic

As Global CEO of Chanel—and, earlier, as President of Banana Republic—Maureen Chiquet steered global brands through a decade of disruption, and she did so with traditionally ‘feminine’ skills of empathy and communication. Now, she speaks on the value of having women in top leadership positions—and what we can all learn from injecting more compassion and collaboration into the workplace.
 
Jeremy Gutsche

CEO of Trend Hunter | New York Times Bestselling Author of Create the Future

Jeremy Gutsche is “an intellectual can of Red Bull” (Association Week), a New York Times bestseller and a management consultant to brands, billionaires, and CEOs. He’s also the founder of Trendhunter.com: the world’s #1 trend-spotting site. With contagious enthusiasm, he shows us how to use methodical innovation to generate ideas and kickstart creativity in times of rapid change.  
Manjit Minhas

Founder of the 10th Largest Brewery in the World | Co-Star of CBC’s Dragons’ Den

A formidable speaker, Manjit Minhas is an entrepreneur and judge on Dragons’ Den who shares business lessons with equal parts force and finesse. Minhas runs a $187 million brewery—the 10th largest worldwide—that she and her brother built from scratch. Her unprecedented success demolished stereotypes, surprised her competitors, and cleared a path for entrepreneurs of every age and gender. 
Ajay Agrawal

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning Expert | Founder of the Creative Destruction Lab | Co-Author of Prediction Machines

Co-author of the definitive AI book Prediction Machines and founder of the Creative Destruction Lab, Ajay Agrawal’s talks illuminate the incoming realities of AI: how machine prediction presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to optimize the way we do business, run governments, and provide healthcare—leaving us the space to be human where it really counts, in judgment and decision-making. It’s win-win. 

 

 
Nina Tandon

CEO and Co-Founder of EpiBone | TED Senior Fellow

Nina Tandon is at the cutting edge of science where sci-fi meets reality. She works on growing artificial hearts and bones that can be put into the body, and studies the new frontier of biotech: homes, textiles, and videogames made of cells.
 
Michael Katchen

Founder and CEO of Wealthsimple

If Toronto is the Silicon Valley of the North – a thriving international hub of technological innovation – then Michael Katchen is one of its leading figures. “We’re primed for a historic revolution in innovation,” he says. “We just don’t know it yet.” Katchen is the founder and CEO of Wealthsimple, whose easy-to-use service has redefined investing for a young generation, and whose massive success has disrupted the financial services industry. 
 
Shabnam Mogharabi

CEO and Executive Producer of SoulPancake | New York Times Bestselling Author

In a world of political propaganda, online extremists, and social media clickbait, SoulPancake stands apart. A platform recognized for its positive, uplifting media—Fast Company dubbed it one of the most Innovative Companies in Video—it aims to celebrate humanity and explore life’s big questions. As its CEO and Executive Producer, alongside The Office’s Rainn Wilson, Shabnam Mogharabi is responsible for inspiring and growing an online community of over 10 million fans. Her riveting talks explore everything from fostering creativity and finding your authentic voice, to why purpose is the most powerful asset a business can have.
Bonnie Brooks

CEO of Chico's FAS | Former CEO of Hudson’s Bay Company

“Leadership is about finding ways to get things done,” says Bonnie Brooks, the first female President and CEO of Hudson’s Bay Company, who, with sweeping, institutional changes, brought North America’s oldest company back from the brink of failure. Brooks’ impactful talks instruct on anticipating customers’ needs and desires—never following them.   
Joe Jackman

Founder and CEO of Jackman | Author of The Reinventionist Mindset

Traditional retail is under siege—and if your company can’t adapt, you disappear. That’s why iconic brands are turning to Joe Jackman. This retail veteran works with major companies to reinvent success from the inside out. From design to culture, customer experience to market share, Jackman helps brands rediscover value and bounce back—and shape billions in sales.
 
Yancey Strickler

Co-founder & Former CEO of Kickstarter | Author of This Could Be Our Future (Oct. 29)

Our current society is trapped by three assumptions, says writer and Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler: that the point of life is to maximize self-interest and wealth; that we’re individuals trapped in an adversarial world; and that this is natural. Strickler urges us to discard these three  assumptions, his electric keynotes showing us how we got here and—more importantly—how we can turn this ship around. 
 
Joe Mimran

Founder, Joe Fresh | Co-Founder and Chairman of Gibralter & Company

Joe Mimran is a true innovator—of retail, design, business, manufacturing—he disrupted the fashion industry before people even had a word for it. In his keynotes he details the methods he used to grow Joe Fresh, Club Monaco, and Alfred Sung—some of the industry’s best-known brands, into global successes.  
Randall Lane

Chief Content Officer of Forbes Magazine

Randall Lane is the chief content officer of Forbes Magazine, where he has helped it reach its highest-ever U.S. readership (6.7 million) with new emphases on young innovators and disruptors. These are people reimagining the rules for business and rethinking the potential for entrepreneurs to solve the world’s most intractable problems, whether through their business missions or philanthropy.