Steven Woods joined Google in 2008 and has since served as Google Canada’s Senior Engineering Director and site lead for Google’s primary Canadian engineering site in Kitchener-Waterloo. Steven is responsible for building and leading teams in consumer products & services and advertising while fostering a creative culture of innovation, engineering, and aggressive product delivery.

Steven is highly involved in advocacy, mentoring and support as part of the Canadian tech community and serves on the board of Communitech and several Canadian companies.

Earlier, Steven founded several startups in Silicon Valley including NeoEdge Networks – an in-game advertising company; Kinitos – a company dedicated to enabling creation of radically inexpensive and powerful consumer services; and Quack.com – an interactive voice portal service acquired by American Online/Time Warner in 2000. Steven was a Vice President, Technology at AOL/Netscape from 2000-2002.

Steven holds Ph.D and Masters degrees in Mathematics (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo and an undergraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan. In 2010 Steven was honoured to receive the University of Waterloo’s prestigious J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation.

Dr. Cori Lathan is a technology entrepreneur who has developed robots for kids with disabilities, virtual reality technology for the space station, and wearable sensors for training surgeons and soldiers. She is a global thought-leader in the relationship between technology and human performance and believes in a future of benevolent cyborgs.

Founder and CEO of AnthroTronix (est. 1999), Lathan has led projects from agencies such as DARPA, NASA, NIH, and NSF and recently developed one of the first FDA-cleared digital health platforms winning a prestigious Gold Edison Award. For this work, she was named a 2017 Woman to Watch by Disruptive Women in Health Care. Dr. Lathan has been featured in Forbes, Time, and the New Yorker magazines and her work has led to such distinctions as MIT Technology Review Magazine’s “Top 100 World Innovators,” and one of Fast Company's “Most Creative People in Business.”

Dr. Lathan is a social advocate and actively involved in STEM educational outreach programs that empower women and minorities in science and technology. She founded Keys to Empowering Youth (est. 1992) for junior high school girls, coached for the FIRST and VEX robotics program, and advised the Smithsonian Institute’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Dr. Lathan is on the Boards of the KID Museum Makerspace and Engineering World Health, which provides opportunities to college students to support the emergence of healthcare technology in the developing world. Cori is also the parent of two LGBT children and is passionate about LGBT issues and has written about her family’s experience for the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Blog.

Sreejata Chatterjee started LeadSift while working on her Masters degree at Dalhousie University. She spends her days strategizing about the product, managing customer satisfaction and working on data research. Apart from work, she is passionate about teaching code, with special attention to women and children and eating good food.

With a career spanning five geographic regions, Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia is an award-winning innovator and entrepreneur with over 20 years of global experience in the private, public, non-profit and academic sectors. Originally from Germany, she has held senior executive roles at prominent multinational high-tech corporations, SMEs, and start-ups and is currently the President and CEO of Digital Nova Scotia (DNS). In recognition of her unprecedented leadership with DNS and lifelong advocacy for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), Ulrike has received numerous awards and features, highlighting her as an inspiring role model for youth, women, immigrants, and under-represented groups in STEAM. Ulrike volunteers with multiple academic, non-profit and industry organizations, speaks six languages and moved from Israel to Nova Scotia in 2002. Ulrike is married with a son and daughter.

Travis Barlow has over 21 years of IT security experience developing technology security solutions for a variety of clients, including government, military, education, and fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining GoSecure, he worked as the Director of Advanced Threat Response for an IT security firm wherein he designed and established an incident response framework and was responsible for all incident response actions for a global base of clients. Travis has become a leader in his industry, and has been influential in raising IT security awareness and education. He is very active within his community in creating opportunities for fellow IT professionals to learn both from each other and leaders within the IT security industry. Always on the cusp of advancements in IT security, Travis has proven himself to be an innovative and forward-thinking leader.

Anthony English is a seasoned IT and Security professional with multiple certifications in both disciplines. Anthony has worked in health care, utilities, law enforcement, lottery and gaming, auditing, education and consulting and has more than 34 years of applied experience. Anthony volunteers on a Standards Council of Canada committee for IT Security, a Cloud Security Alliance committee for securing health care data in the cloud, as a member of the Disaster Recovery Institute of Canada’s Certification Committee and as a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals CIPP certification exam committee.

Dr Tamara Franz-Odendaal is a developmental biologist at Mount Saint Vincent University. She has held the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering Position (Atlantic) since 2011. Her program, WISEatlantic, aims to shift gendered STEM stereotypes. WISEatlantic empowers girls to consider STEM-based careers by raising their awareness of the diversity of jobs within these fields, and enabling them to visualize themselves working in these fields. She received the Mount’s Research Excellence Award (2015) for her outstanding contributions to the research community at the Mount, and the Crystal Award from the Diversity Journal as a Women Worth Watching in STEM (2017).

Co-Founder of the not-for-profit Atlantic Canada group i-Valley, Barry Gander is also Vice President of the national organization i-Canada, and EVP of Canada’s largest high-tech organization, the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATAAlliance). Barry has been helping Canada re-establish its former leadership in communications policy and technology, with a career that involved him in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. Contributor to the Commonwealth Advantage, Barry also seeks to broaden Canada’s trade horizons by reprising the trade dominance of the Commonwealth block.

Vernon Joseph is an accomplished cyber security specialist in incident response, threat risk assessment, and security auditing. Adept at training and educating users along with IT staff on relevant cyber security procedures and preventative measures, he has deep expertise in security architecture, infrastructure security, cyber security operations and regulatory compliance. Vernon brings more than ten years of experience in driving complex global security programs. Vernon is one of the few certified assessor globally and the only one in Canada, for the motion picture association and content delivery association through the Trusted Partner Network (TPN).

Stan Matwin is the Director of the Institute for Big Data Analytics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he is a Professor and Canada Research Chair. He is also a Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. His main research results are in big data, in text mining, in machine learning, and in data privacy. He was the General Chair of KDD 2017 in Halifax, Canada.

Kevin McCann is a Partner at NATIONAL Public Relations where he focuses on strategy, narrative, transformation, and advocacy. He helps organizations rise to meet their greatest digital opportunities, and to overcome their greatest digital challenges. He and colleagues counsel companies who have faced digital and cyber threats, both real and potential. He also leads Analytics and Insights in NATIONAL’s Atlantic offices, helping clients to find clarity in the abundance of digital data at their fingertips. Kevin started his career as a programmer in Washington D.C. with a focus on online grassroots campaigns, then moved into digital strategy and advocacy, reputation management, and overall strategic communications. He is based in Halifax and is a sought-after colleague across the country and with NATIONAL’s sister agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.

John B Munro is a Partner in the EY Advisory Practice and is responsible for technology advisory services across Atlantic Canada. John leads EY’s Canadian Delivery Center (located in Halifax) for digital services including robotics automation, analytics, and IT risk. John has led large IT projects including systems development, cloud based services, IT infrastructure, contact center, data center deployments, and transformation programs for government, communications and financial sector clients.

John is passionate about driving growth in the technology sector by encouraging Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs to dream bigger.

Matt Saunders is an experienced lawyer and a Certified Information Privacy Professional/Canada (CIPP/C) through the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). Working out of Cox & Palmer’s Halifax office, Matt has a diverse background in complex commercial litigation, data privacy, emergency management, and security consulting. Matt has demonstrated successes in both the Nova Scotia and Ontario legal markets. Skilled in oral advocacy, privacy-related matters, and resolving commercial disputes, Matt has appeared before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia and all levels of court in Ontario. In addition, Matt’s academic experience includes common and civil law degrees from McGill University and an LL.M in international criminal law from the University of Sussex.

Michael Shepherd is a Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. He is also the founder and CEO of the Centre for Data Analytics and Business Insights at the MYRA School of Business, Mysuru, India. He has served on the boards of a number of not-for-profit industry organizations including Digital Nova Scotia, the Big Data Alliance of Nova Scotia and the World Confederation for Productivity Science. He chaired the Big Data Congesses held in Halifax in 2015 and 2017, and is chair of the STEMFest 2018 Industry Day.

His research area is Information Retrieval, and this has morphed into a keen interest in Smart Cities, in particular sustainable smart cities. He served recently as a member of the Halifax Smart City Challenge Advisory Committee.

Maryam Vahedi is a Manager in the EY Advisory practice and leads the Robotic Automation team at the Canadian Service Delivery Center in Halifax. Maryam comes from a Software Engineering and Computer Science background and is Passionate about Machine Learning and AI. Maryam has many years of experience in Software (Web/Mobile/Server side) development and has led many Agile Software Development teams.