Speakers 2023

BK Sethi, President of BK Sethi Marketing Ltd. with over 35 years of experience in importing, distributing and marketing authentic ethnic food products from around the world, offers his experience as a consultant to many multinationals, trade consulates, exporters and merchants, providing planning, execution, channel selection and communication strategies in the growing Canadian ethnic market.

His practical, hands-on experience is key to short and long term business growth plans for progressive companies who want to enter and grow their business in the Canadian market, a gateway to North America.

Dana McCauley is a value proposition driven innovator who has successfully launched numerous food products and programs in collaboration with national and international food companies and entrepreneurs.

Beyond her corporate experience in marketing, product development and creative services, Dana brings expertise in the nonprofit and academic arenas to her role. She was the founding Executive Director of Food Starter, a Toronto-based food business incubator and gas pedal, which received the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in Agri-Food Innovation. As Director of New Venture Development at the University of Guelph, Dana has enabled agri-food innovators to turn their inventions into innovations that grow the economy and enhance Canada’s international reputation.

Dana has been a food media personality and keynote speaker. She is the chair of the SIAL Canada Innovation Awards jury. In 2017, Dana was recognized by WXN as one of Canada’s most powerful women in the category of Trailblazer and Trendsetter.

Professionnelle de la nutrition, du marketing alimentaire et de la communication cumulant plus de 20 ans d’expérience, Isabelle Marquis possède un savoir-faire multidisciplinaire unique acquis à la fois en agence-conseil et en entreprise de transformation alimentaire. Reconnue pour sa grande rigueur, sa passion contagieuse ou encore sa créativité stratégique, Isabelle est aussi une communicatrice hors pair qui sait inspirer autant que mobiliser.

En tant que directrice marketing, Grande distribution et HRI au sein du Groupe Première Moisson Inc., elle fut responsable de nombreux projets d’innovation et de lancements de produits, en plus de contribuer activement au développement des affaires sur les marchés canadien et américain. Aujourd’hui à son compte, madame Marquis accompagne des entreprises de toutes tailles du secteur alimentaire québécois et canadien en stratégie de communication, de marketing et d’innovation. Ambassadrice Innovation pour SIAL Canada depuis 2018, elle collabore également auprès de magazines spécialisés et à l’émission L’épicerie sur Ici Radio-Canada Télé.

Jo-Ann has spent her career building consumer and retail brands at Molson, Procter and Gamble, Unilever and Cadillac Fairview.

As Division President of Molson Coors and a member of its North American Management Board, Jo-Ann led the charge to sell more beer more profitably.
As founding partner and president of Nourish Food Marketing, Jo-Ann now builds powerful food and beverage brands in Canada, the United States and Europe, developing marketing strategies that help move products from the shelf to the consumer’s shopping cart, to their plate and to their heart.

She has worked with entrepreneurs to launch award-winning products and with municipal, provincial and federal agencies to create programs that support the Canadian food industry. She has also been an instructor at the Schulich Executive School of Business, FoodStarter (a food incubator), and the Sponsorship Marketing Council of Canada and the Association of Canadian Advertisers.

Jo-Ann is the Founding Chair of the Sponsorship Marketing Council of Canada, Past President of the Empire Club of Canada, where she has hosted leaders from around the world, and Past President of ABC Life Literacy Canada. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Chapter of the Dames d’Escoffier.

With over 20 years in the organic food sector, Kim brings a wealth of supply chain and non-profit experience to the role of Member Relations & Business Development Manager at the Canada Organic Trade Association (COTA). Honoured with the 2016 Canadian Health Food Association Organics Achievement Award, Kim continues to diligently strive to bring value to the organic sector. Kim serves COTA members through an array of benefits programs and funding opportunities which assist members in strengthening their organic businesses.

COTA is the national membership-based association for organic agriculture and products in Canada. Members include growers, processors, handlers, certifiers, provincial organic associations, distributors, importers, exporters, manufacturers, brokers and brand management companies, consultants, retailers, and all points along the organic value chain.

The COTA mission is to promote and protect the organic sector and encourage the universal adoption of organic. To achieve this mission, COTA works on regulatory affairs, government relations, trading relationships, market research, market access, organic integrity, and builds public trust in organic through a variety of consumer-facing programs. Through industry task forces, webinars, or buyer missions, COTA assists businesses, whether in start-up phase or established players, to navigate the organic marketplace to discover ways to optimize their organic business portfolios.

Zeeshan Fazal is a Regional Manager at EDC, responsible for a team of Relationship Managers supporting Canadian companies to penetrate, grow and succeed internationally. He is also responsible to strategically increase EDC’s support to Québec companies in Agriculture and Agri-food sectors.

Mr. Fazal has significant experience in assisting Manufacturing, Technology and Innovation companies to go, grow and succeed internationally. Prior to his appointment to the Business Development team, Mr. Fazal held various underwriting positions for Accounts Receivable Insurance, Bank Guarantees and Loan Guarantees. He was also a Lean Sustainability Advisor where he collaborated closely with internal stakeholders to help lead projects, improve operational efficiencies and client communication processes.

Outside of EDC, Mr. Fazal was a lecturer at McGill University where he taught International Finance, Corporate Finance and Financial Statement Analysis. Most recently, he also taught a course on Business Valuation at the Smith School of Business at Queens University. Furthermore, he taught CITP professional designation courses on Global Value Chain and International Trade Finance.

Mr. Fazal holds a Master of Business Administration from the Smith School of Management (Queens University), a bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting and Biology from McGill University. He is also a Certified International Trade Professional (CITP | FIBP).

Holder of a bachelor’s degree in industrial design with more than 30 years of experience in R&D, packaging engineering and marketing of food products, Mr. Papineau has a unique professional background recognized throughout Quebec. During his career, Mr. Papineau participated in and supported numerous companies such as Danone, Saputo, Coca-Cola as well as several hundred SMEs in Quebec. Several of its projects aimed to improve, develop and market new or existing products, optimize conditioning and packaging processes and techniques, without forgetting, of course, sustainability . Mr. Papineau is recognized for his great leadership, creativity and keen business acumen. He is also recognized by all his collaborators and colleagues for his great rigor, his passion for his work and finally for his human values.

Robert Dion a une vaste expérience dans le domaine du commerce de détail et des services alimentaires. In 1984, he founded his very first company specializing in the importation of European non-alcoholic beers and fine products. After the purchase of his company by a Quebec distributor, Robert Dion continued to build his experience in the food industry by becoming a sales representative and then an account manager for the food service division of J.M. Schneider’s, now known as Maple Leaf Foods.

In addition to his experience in retail and foodservice, Robert Dion is the creator and editor of the specialized magazine Hotels, Restaurants & Institutions, a leader in Quebec since 1996 because of its high quality content that meets the needs of industry professionals. In the early 2000s, his company took the technological turn by offering its customers a complete, user-friendly and dynamic website: www.hrimag.com.

Over the years, Robert Dion has established a respectful relationship with his readers and collaborators and has become an influential resource in the agri-food family. Today, in addition to being the editor of this renowned magazine, Robert Dion acts as a facilitator, speaker and consultant, both in Quebec and abroad.

Robert Dion has received many honors, including the Personality of the Year Award from the Société des chefs du Québec and the prestigious Sandy Sanderson Award from the Canadian Culinary Federation for his journalistic integrity.

Carl is a Montreal-based business strategist, digital marketer and executive advisor with over 25 years of hands-on operational, marketing and retail executive experience. He has worked across a full array of business environments from the very large, such as 10 years with Costco Wholesale to working as commercial applications lead for a global B2B security technology company. In both, managing product portfolios and emerging go-to-market strategies.

As the founder of StudioRx, he advises executives, B2C/B2B solution providers and all types of ecosystem partners on how to tailor their solutions according to customers’ evolving needs and build effective commercial strategies to meet them.

He holds an MBA from Queen’s University as well as professional certificates from Stanford, Harvard and MIT.

He advises several technology startups, industry associations and innovation labs.

He is the principal advisor for the McGill University Retail Innovation Lab in Montreal, Canada. He is also, course instructor at McGill Masters in Retail Innovation (emerging technologies and new business models) and adjunct digital marketing faculty at Asian Institute of Technology MBA School of Management.

Carl is recognized by Rethink Retail among the world’s most influential thought leaders and has keynoted, chaired and/or moderated the largest retail conferences around the world. He remains a regular media contributor with global news networks.

In 2021 he published his first book; The Great Acceleration – on how the Covid-19 pandemic rapidly propelled digital transformations and the business strategies to address the challenges that followed.

Geneviève Dionne has been a member of Éco Entreprises Québec’s (ÉEQ) team since 2010 and is the architect behind the packaging eco-design and circular economy team. Over the years, her expertise has served as part of several initiatives, such as Packaging ecodesign services program, an Ecodesgin Web portal a website with a host of tools and resources for companies seeking to integrate packaging eco-design into their business practices, as well as bold projects, such as Unwrapping, the documentary and co-authoring a book titled Do we need another package? Ms. Dionne also has regular invitations as a guest speaker to share her insights on packaging eco-design, recyclability, and the transformation of business practices. She also has a graduate diploma specializing in Management and Sustainable Development from HEC Montréal and is a visiting professor at the University of Montréal’s School of Industrial Design.

Jonathan Rodrigue is the co-founder and CEO of Still Good, a proudly carbon-negative circular economy company whose mission is to repurpose ingredients, primarily grains, to reduce food waste. Jonathan has extensive experience in implementing innovative programs for sustainable food and responsible sourcing in partnership with major corporations, retailers and social enterprises.

He has 15 years’ experience in business development, combined with knowledge of the environmental impact of food waste. His expertise in the field has led him to envision a new model for the agri-food industry where the circular economy and responsible consumption are prioritized. He has developed an “eco-valuation model”, “eco-” for ecological, but also for economic, since by working with companies, Still Good succeeds in turning what used to be a cost into a revenue stream.

In addition to piloting the Still Good company since 2017, his circular economy innovations have won multiple accolades including various Dux Manger Mieux awards, the CTAQ Ecofriendly Innovation award in 2022 and 2023, the CTAQ Food Innovation award in 2023,  Arista award in the category Québec’s young leader : Social Responsability category in 2023, the ESTim 2023 award in the manufacturing company category. In 2024, his company won one of two grand prizes in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Food Waste Challenge in the business model category, in front of over 300 companies, following a three-year selection process.

Jonathan has been a guest speaker and panelist on food waste reduction and sustainability initiatives on numerous occasions and received PMI Montreal’s Elixir Award as project manager of a national retail food waste reduction initiative. He has served on numerous advisory committees discussing waste reduction solutions, as well as on the boards of non-profit and social enterprises.

Today, he aspires to integrate his new business models into the food industry so that the circular economy, local and responsible consumption become essential practices worldwide.

Stéphane has helped organizations create powerful branding and meaningful communication campaigns rooted in an in-depth understanding of consumers, markets and cultural truths for 30 years.

He’s held marketing management positions at both client and agency level, leading brand strategy and positioning for a wide range of companies, from start-ups to to national market leaders throughout the Canada and US.

For Stéphane, a deep understanding of the consumer behavior, the product category and retail environment is critical. Creative and visionary, he’s contributed to the success of brands such as, CF Montréal, Nortera (Arctic Gardens, Del Monte), Nutrinor, St-Hubert Retail, Royale, Cavendish Farms, Danone, Vintners Quality Alliance of Ontario (VQA), Unibroue (Sleeman), Lavo, Dainty, Abbott Nutrition, Fontaine Family, Perdue Farms and I.D. Foods, to name a few.

Stéphane’s analytical mind and intellectual curiosity, coupled with decades of experience in marketing communication and branding, make him a dedicated brand specialist and true strategic partner.

Jean-François Béliveau is a seasoned creative director with over twenty years of experience in advertising, branding, and graphic design. His expertise spans the promotion of brands in various sectors, including agri-food, restaurants, entertainment, tourism, and culture.

Whether it’s in structuring and implementing brand ecosystems for renowned companies such as Gogo Quinoa, Van Houtte, La Parisienne, 3 Brasseurs, Éducaloi and Montreal Airports or in-store communication for reputable retailers and consumer brands such as Metro, Super C and Food Basics Jean-François has an intrinsic understanding of the critical moment of truth.

His impressive portfolio includes significant contributions to the identity and recognition of numerous local and international brands, including CF Montreal, IKEA, Del Monte, Nutrinor, Biscuits Leclerc, Lactantia, Astro, Cirque du Soleil, Almond Fresh, SoNice, Boston Pizza, Hershey’s, Maple Leaf, Air Transat and Mont-Tremblant. Jean-François brings valuable creative and strategic vision to his role as creative director at PIGEON, where he shapes innovative and impactful advertising campaigns.

Elyse Boulet is the dynamic force behind PIGEON, an award-winning agency renowned for its prowess in branding, packaging, and communication.

A forward-thinking leader, Elyse is known for her honest and collaborative approach which unites her team to create brand value with every engagement, enabling people to buy, love, and recommend brands. With truth as her rocket fuel, she orchestrates strategies, designs, and integrated marketing efforts aimed at delivering tangible ROI for clients. She is an out of the box thinker with an energetic and entrepreneurial spirit that is highly contagious. Her portfolio boasts an impressive array of projects for esteemed brands such as IKEA, Metro, Hershey, Cara, Danone, Coca-Cola, and L’Oréal, among others. Her contributions to brand strategies, design solutions, and integrated campaigns span local, national, and international markets.

In the past two years, she has been named in the IERA Women Top 10 Inspiring Women Leaders, is an RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur nominee, and included in the Honored Listee of Marquis Who’s Who. She oversees a team of fearless brand design and communication specialists in Toronto and Montreal.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University.

Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability with over 775 published peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Charlebois is also an editor for the prestigious Trends in Food Science Technology journal. He co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries and which is the most listened Canadian management podcast in Canada. Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, nationally as well as internationally. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces and other countries.

From the age of 16, Olivier Roy launched himself into the world of video production, embarking on an early career marked by a variety of collaborations, notably with municipal candidates, communications agencies, municipalities, as well as provincial and federal government entities, establishing his footprint in Canada, Cameroon, Nicaragua and Haiti.

His career path then led him to explore the field of marketing and video production with a Montreal-based technology company, awakening in him a deep fascination for technological innovations. In 2019, faced with the inefficiency of payment systems in bars, Olivier, with the help of his childhood friends, set out to design an innovative solution.

The emergence of COVID-19 in March 2020 forced the start-up to rethink the traditional approach to the restaurant sector. After months of intensive technological development and redevelopment, the team inaugurated Leav, a pop-up store at Montreal’s Eaton Centre, distinguishing itself as Canada’s first completely cashier-free establishment. This initiative marks the beginning of an ambitious quest to revolutionize retail with a completely mobile and unobstructed experience, a testament to the ingenuity and perseverance of Olivier and his team.

Strategist and marketing professional, Annik Labrosse has been working in the food industry for 20 years.  Her main focuses are innovation and branding, major keys in this industry where consumer needs are continuously evolving.  In food packaged good or in restaurant business, status quo is more than often synonym of decline.

Annik holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from Université du Québec à Montréal, as well as a Master of Business Administration from Université de Sherbrooke.  She is also member on the Board of Directors of the Conseil de la transformation alimentaire du Québec (CTAQ), of Cintech Agroalimentaire and of Éco Entreprise Québec.

Francis has been working in Nielsen’s Montreal office for over 15 years and has been Vice President, Eastern Canada for the past 2 years, responsible for the retailer and manufacturer relations teams in Eastern Canada. He is also involved in many initiatives, looking for new ways to collaborate with different partners. Curious by nature, his colleagues and clients appreciate his extensive knowledge of consumer and retail trends, both locally and internationally.

Michael is the founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a senior advisor to the Retail Council of Canada in its consulting practice. He has over 25 years of leadership experience in branding, retail, marketing and e-commerce and has been at the forefront of change in the retail industry throughout his career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s leading retail podcast, The Voice of Retail, as well as Global E-Commerce Tech Talks, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and, now in its second season, Conversations with CommerceNext! You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to check out Michael’s latest adventure for fun and influencer enrichment: Last Request Barbecue, his barbecue cooking YouTube channel!

Stewart is a recognised thought leader in the retail industry, with a comprehensive understanding of retailer strategies, format evolution, digital transformation, and cutting-edge innovation. His insights have helped numerous companies stay ahead of the curve in this ever-changing landscape.

As part of IGD Consulting, he collaborates with international business leaders on strategic projects that drive growth and profitability. Stewart’s expertise has garnered attention both domestically and internationally, leading to frequent speaking engagements. He is also a regular commentator in the media, sharing his perspective on current trends and developments in the retail industry.

Joseph Sabatier is a born entrepreneur and co-founder of the Mamie Clafoutis bakeries, specializing in artisanal everyday agri-food products. After completing his training, he honed his skills in various French companies and sought the expertise of the best to enhance his experience. At 21, he had the opportunity to become a bakery trainer and discovered the joy of sharing his craft and passion.

Joseph moved to Montreal at the age of 22 to experience the delights of Quebec. He had the chance to invest in a delicatessen, but although the business did not last, he learned valuable lessons from it.

Thus, at the age of 26, he founded the first entity of the Mamie Clafoutis group. The venture was a success, and he and his team then worked on launching a franchise in 2014, which enabled the company’s development. Joseph is an active member of the Montreal bakery scene and has been involved in creating training programs at the provincial level. He was instrumental in establishing an association of Quebec artisan bakers. A father of four boys, healthy eating is important to him, so he decided to collaborate with La Milanaise mill to create an organic flour blend that aligns with his values.

Passionate about innovation and aware of the post-pandemic reality, he and his partner decided to rethink artisanal bakery as a business equipped with technology that would offer faster and more tailored service. A significant new challenge for the retail food industry.

Renée-Maude Jalbert is Vice-President of Marketing at Krispy Kernels, a Canadian company that processes and distributes savoury snacks. Before joining Krispy Kernels in 2002, Renée-Maude worked in the wines and spirits marketing field at Maxxium House, an establishment that represents a portfolio of iconic brands, such as Robert Mondavi, Masi, Absolut Vodka, Rémy Martin and Jim Beam.

Renée-Maude Jalbert possesses a leading edge expertise in the food marketing sector. During her career, she has implemented numerous marketing campaigns aimed at establishing brand influence and dominance for Yum Yum and Krispy Kernels.

Renée-Maude combines a strong creative acumen with an in-depth knowledge of everyday consumer products marketing and sales. She has actively participated in the development of several product innovations, including Viva vegetable chips in 2004 and, most recently, St-Hubert BBQ flavoured potato chips.