Thought Leaders

INNOVATE™ Antwerp Vol.2

Fred Niemans

FRED NIEMANS

PRESIDENT, WORLD TRADE CENTER ANTWERP

 It’s not the strongest species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent one. It’s the species that has the ability to cope with drastic changes. That’s Darwinism in a nutshell. His ‘survival of the fittest’… also applies to the corporate ecosystem. Agility reduces fragility: the companies and organisations that...

INNOVATE® Orlando

Pat Geraghty

Help People And Communities Achieve Better Health - Pat Geraghty

GuideWell

GuideWell is driven by our mission to help people and communities achieve better health, which is why our enterprise is not content that today’s health care industry will serve the needs of people tomorrow.   Better health demands better interactions with consumers, deeper knowledge of what health needs are, and...

INNOVATE® Philadelphia

Christopher M Wolfington

Christopher M Wolfington - Automating Peace Of Mind For The Modern Healthcare Consumer

Automating Peace Of Mind For The Modern Healthcare Consumer

Many people think that the healthcare system is broken because hospitals & insurance companies charge too much. The fact is, the market has seen a massive shift in financial responsibility for healthcare costs to the consumer. Combined with increased compliance burdens, the result is a massive spike in consumer out-of-pocket...

INNOVATE® Blockchain

ERYKA GEMMA

ERYKA GEMMA

FOUNDER OF MIAMI BLOCKCHAIN CENTER AND TIMELOCK VENTURES

As the world moves in cycles, we see that change is constant. The pendulum swings and with global lockdowns, continuous quantitative easing, and privacy breaches – we are approaching a point of conflicting overreach and control. However, there is hope! History shows that human ingenuity will always find a way....

INNOVATIONS in Pharmaceutical Development®

INNOVATE™ Oeiras

JOÃO ALMEIDA LOPES

JOÃO ALMEIDA LOPES

PRESIDENTE DA DIRECÇÃO DA APIFARMA

Past conquests bear witness to the value and significance of scientific knowledge and leave no doubt than an innovative spirit is still the best answer to major challenges faced by humankind. In fact, innovation-friendly policies foster models of development based on people and are a recipe for prosperity. This is...

INNOVATE® Orlando

Thad Seymour

Thad Seymour

PhD, Interim President | Vice President for Partnerships and Chief Innovation Officer - University o

As Interim President, Vice President for Partnerships and Chief Innovation Officer at UCF, Thad Seymour is helping to implement an aggressive 20-year plan for the university, including overseeing the new UCF Downtown campus at Creative Village in the heart of Orlando. In addition to his multiple entrepreneurial ventures, Seymour helped...

INNOVATE™ Bristol & Bath

PROFESSOR IAN WHITE

PROFESSOR IAN WHITE

VICE-CHANCELLOR AND PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Innovation and collaboration will always be essential to power progress in our societies and I think are a crucial part of what universities in particular can offer in partnership with others. This is especially important now as we begin to recover from Covid-19, and I have been pleased to play...

INNOVATE® Chicago Vol.1

DORRI MCWHORTER

DORRI MCWHORTER-PRESIDENT & CEO OF YMCA OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO

PRESIDENT & CEO OF YMCA OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO

  People will be studying the global pandemic’s effects on the workplace for decades to come. The trends it accelerated. The inequality it exposed. The countless challenges and opportunities it created. However, there is one thing that is already perfectly clear, and business leaders in every industry across the country...

INNOVATE™ Alberta

WAYNE KARPOFF

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND PRESIDENT, WILLOWGLEN SYSTEMS

In 1986, I left my position at the University of Alberta to enter the world of high-technology startups. Back then, there were no business support platforms that we enjoy today, such as Startup Edmonton or Platform Calgary. Canadians were cynical of the high-tech sector and assumed it was all in...

INNOVATE® Chicago Vol.1

Christine Schyvinck

Christine Schyvinck

President And CEO, Shure Incorporated

Business leaders choose different paths that eventually lead them to their present positions. Each individual journey can provide unique perspectives for unlocking success at their organizations. I’m proud of the path I chose, because it enabled me to immerse myself in the vision established by our Company’s founder, S.N. Shure,...

INNOVATE® Austin Volume 2

Douglas Ferguson

Voltage Control - Douglas Ferguson

President

Douglas is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based workshop agency that specializes in Design Sprints and innovation workshops. Less talk, more prototypingThe thought of prototyping might be intimidating. The word can conjure something daunting, technical, or elaborate....

INNOVATE™ Stockholm

ROBERT FALCK

FOUNDER, EINRIDE

The road freight industry stands at a defining moment. Once constrained by the limits of diesel and incremental change, the $4.6 trillion global market is now poised for disruption at unprecedented scale. The catalyst is clear: artificial intelligence is rapidly redrawing the boundaries of what is possible in logistics, and...

INNOVATE® Miami

Mitchell Kaplan

Mitchell Kaplan

Founder - BOOKS & BOOKS

“What I do isn’t just about selling books—it’s about creating spaces and events that bring authors and audiences together.” I was in college when I first imagined opening a bookstore. I had discovered that at the center of most literary movements of the twentieth century, a bookstore was involved. In...

INNOVATE® Washington DMV Edition

MARCY EWALD

Most entrepreneurs we work with, including ourselves, have been building businesses for over a decade. Most are not working on the first business they started either. Even if the concept you’re currently working on doesn’t shake out, the lessons, the networks, and how you respond to success and failure will...

INNOVATE® South Carolina

DR. GREGORY D. LITTLE

PRESIDENT, MIDLANDS TECHNICAL COLLEGE

In this life, some our greatest joys and successes are deeply connected to our relationships. It’s easy to remember and see it in our personal lives, but it can be easy to forget in our professional and business lives. All too often, we get mentally and physically stuck behind our...

INNOVATE™ South Africa

DR. SIZAKELE MARUTLULLE

CMO-SIZAKELE MARUTLULLE

I think it was the mighty Einstein who said ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’. Whilst he was not deriding education per se – I think he was advocating for an explosion of ideas – which (in my view) is the fuel that drives innovation. The ubiquity of the term...

INNOVATE® Blockchain

Soula Parassidis

CEO, LIVING OPERA

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE“It’s cancer.” That’s not a sentence you want to hear your doctor say when you’re only 23 years old. Seven days earlier having graduated with my degree in opera, and now I was sitting in a hospital. They say thyroid cancer is the “best” kind...

INNOVATE® Nashville

MATT FORBUSH

FOUNDER OF ZIGY

Zigy was born out of the simple yet often overlooked truth that a business’s success lives or dies at the frontline. While executives may set the strategy, it’s the employees at the counter, on the floor, or behind the wheel who determine whether customers return, sales grow, and brands thrive....

INNOVATE® Chicago Vol.1

GARY CONKRIGHT

GARY CONKRIGHT

CO-FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO

A visionary serial entrepreneur, physIQ co-founder, Chairman and CEO Gary Conkright has a passion for taking game-changing technology from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace to solve important problems. A University of Chicago MBA and Purdue Aeronautical Engineer, Gary previously served as the founding CEO and Chairman of SmartSignal (acquired...

INNOVATE™ Atlantic Canada

FLORIAN VILLAUMÉ

CEO, TECHNL

Innovation in technology often conjures images of sprawling metropolises like Silicon Valley—a beacon of transformation where ideas scale into industry-defining movements. But technology thrives where it’s least expected, and I am proud to say Newfoundland and Labrador has earned its place in that conversation. With a population of just 545,000,...

INNOVATE® Georgia

DAVID HESS

MCG DEAN, AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY

The statistics are startling. Georgia routinely ranks in the top 10 states in the country in terms of population size and growth, yet we continue to rank near the bottom in the number of physicians per capita, at a dismal 41st. Recent data show that roughly 185 Georgians die from...

INNOVATE® Chicago Vol.1

LESLIE J. ANDERSON

LESLIE J. ANDERSON

GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE AND U.S. CHIEF TECHNOLOGY RESILIENCY AND EXPERIENCE OPERATIONS OFFICER

Leslie J. Anderson is BMO’s Global Technology Experience and U.S. Chief Technology Resiliency and Experience Operations Officer. She is at the center of BMO’s Digital First strategy where she innovates and finds new ways to strengthen the employee experience. Like it or not, one can’t simply dissociate my experience in...

INNOVATE® South Carolina

GARRETT STERN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FURMAN UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP

For well over a century, higher education has treated its primary role as preparing young adults for their first job. In today’s world, where skills expire faster than degrees can be completed and technology reshapes industries overnight, that model needs to evolve. If we’re serious about our mission to foster...

INNOVATE® Gaming & Esports

MALCOLM HOWARD

MALCOLM HOWARD

CO-FOUNDER & CTO, METARENA

By day, I build distributed systems as a backend engineer, but in my spare time, I learn and teach about game development using open-source technology. Generally speaking, open-source software is computer software released with a license that allows users to freely use, modify, and distribute it. My career in software...

Fred Niemans

FRED NIEMANS

PRESIDENT, WORLD TRADE CENTER ANTWERP

 It’s not the strongest species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent one. It’s the species that has the ability to cope with drastic changes. That’s Darwinism in a nutshell. His ‘survival of the fittest’… also applies to the corporate ecosystem. Agility reduces fragility: the companies and organisations that...

Pat Geraghty

Help People And Communities Achieve Better Health - Pat Geraghty

GuideWell

GuideWell is driven by our mission to help people and communities achieve better health, which is why our enterprise is not content that today’s health care industry will serve the needs of people tomorrow.   Better health demands better interactions with consumers, deeper knowledge of what health needs are, and...

Christopher M Wolfington

Christopher M Wolfington - Automating Peace Of Mind For The Modern Healthcare Consumer

Automating Peace Of Mind For The Modern Healthcare Consumer

Many people think that the healthcare system is broken because hospitals & insurance companies charge too much. The fact is, the market has seen a massive shift in financial responsibility for healthcare costs to the consumer. Combined with increased compliance burdens, the result is a massive spike in consumer out-of-pocket...

ERYKA GEMMA

ERYKA GEMMA

FOUNDER OF MIAMI BLOCKCHAIN CENTER AND TIMELOCK VENTURES

As the world moves in cycles, we see that change is constant. The pendulum swings and with global lockdowns, continuous quantitative easing, and privacy breaches – we are approaching a point of conflicting overreach and control. However, there is hope! History shows that human ingenuity will always find a way....

JOÃO ALMEIDA LOPES

JOÃO ALMEIDA LOPES

PRESIDENTE DA DIRECÇÃO DA APIFARMA

Past conquests bear witness to the value and significance of scientific knowledge and leave no doubt than an innovative spirit is still the best answer to major challenges faced by humankind. In fact, innovation-friendly policies foster models of development based on people and are a recipe for prosperity. This is...

Thad Seymour

Thad Seymour

PhD, Interim President | Vice President for Partnerships and Chief Innovation Officer - University o

As Interim President, Vice President for Partnerships and Chief Innovation Officer at UCF, Thad Seymour is helping to implement an aggressive 20-year plan for the university, including overseeing the new UCF Downtown campus at Creative Village in the heart of Orlando. In addition to his multiple entrepreneurial ventures, Seymour helped...

PROFESSOR IAN WHITE

PROFESSOR IAN WHITE

VICE-CHANCELLOR AND PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Innovation and collaboration will always be essential to power progress in our societies and I think are a crucial part of what universities in particular can offer in partnership with others. This is especially important now as we begin to recover from Covid-19, and I have been pleased to play...

DORRI MCWHORTER

DORRI MCWHORTER-PRESIDENT & CEO OF YMCA OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO

PRESIDENT & CEO OF YMCA OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO

  People will be studying the global pandemic’s effects on the workplace for decades to come. The trends it accelerated. The inequality it exposed. The countless challenges and opportunities it created. However, there is one thing that is already perfectly clear, and business leaders in every industry across the country...

WAYNE KARPOFF

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND PRESIDENT, WILLOWGLEN SYSTEMS

In 1986, I left my position at the University of Alberta to enter the world of high-technology startups. Back then, there were no business support platforms that we enjoy today, such as Startup Edmonton or Platform Calgary. Canadians were cynical of the high-tech sector and assumed it was all in...

Christine Schyvinck

Christine Schyvinck

President And CEO, Shure Incorporated

Business leaders choose different paths that eventually lead them to their present positions. Each individual journey can provide unique perspectives for unlocking success at their organizations. I’m proud of the path I chose, because it enabled me to immerse myself in the vision established by our Company’s founder, S.N. Shure,...

Douglas Ferguson

Voltage Control - Douglas Ferguson

President

Douglas is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based workshop agency that specializes in Design Sprints and innovation workshops. Less talk, more prototypingThe thought of prototyping might be intimidating. The word can conjure something daunting, technical, or elaborate....

ROBERT FALCK

FOUNDER, EINRIDE

The road freight industry stands at a defining moment. Once constrained by the limits of diesel and incremental change, the $4.6 trillion global market is now poised for disruption at unprecedented scale. The catalyst is clear: artificial intelligence is rapidly redrawing the boundaries of what is possible in logistics, and...

Mitchell Kaplan

Mitchell Kaplan

Founder - BOOKS & BOOKS

“What I do isn’t just about selling books—it’s about creating spaces and events that bring authors and audiences together.” I was in college when I first imagined opening a bookstore. I had discovered that at the center of most literary movements of the twentieth century, a bookstore was involved. In...

MARCY EWALD

Most entrepreneurs we work with, including ourselves, have been building businesses for over a decade. Most are not working on the first business they started either. Even if the concept you’re currently working on doesn’t shake out, the lessons, the networks, and how you respond to success and failure will...

DR. GREGORY D. LITTLE

PRESIDENT, MIDLANDS TECHNICAL COLLEGE

In this life, some our greatest joys and successes are deeply connected to our relationships. It’s easy to remember and see it in our personal lives, but it can be easy to forget in our professional and business lives. All too often, we get mentally and physically stuck behind our...

DR. SIZAKELE MARUTLULLE

CMO-SIZAKELE MARUTLULLE

I think it was the mighty Einstein who said ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’. Whilst he was not deriding education per se – I think he was advocating for an explosion of ideas – which (in my view) is the fuel that drives innovation. The ubiquity of the term...

Soula Parassidis

CEO, LIVING OPERA

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE“It’s cancer.” That’s not a sentence you want to hear your doctor say when you’re only 23 years old. Seven days earlier having graduated with my degree in opera, and now I was sitting in a hospital. They say thyroid cancer is the “best” kind...

MATT FORBUSH

FOUNDER OF ZIGY

Zigy was born out of the simple yet often overlooked truth that a business’s success lives or dies at the frontline. While executives may set the strategy, it’s the employees at the counter, on the floor, or behind the wheel who determine whether customers return, sales grow, and brands thrive....

GARY CONKRIGHT

GARY CONKRIGHT

CO-FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO

A visionary serial entrepreneur, physIQ co-founder, Chairman and CEO Gary Conkright has a passion for taking game-changing technology from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace to solve important problems. A University of Chicago MBA and Purdue Aeronautical Engineer, Gary previously served as the founding CEO and Chairman of SmartSignal (acquired...

FLORIAN VILLAUMÉ

CEO, TECHNL

Innovation in technology often conjures images of sprawling metropolises like Silicon Valley—a beacon of transformation where ideas scale into industry-defining movements. But technology thrives where it’s least expected, and I am proud to say Newfoundland and Labrador has earned its place in that conversation. With a population of just 545,000,...

DAVID HESS

MCG DEAN, AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY

The statistics are startling. Georgia routinely ranks in the top 10 states in the country in terms of population size and growth, yet we continue to rank near the bottom in the number of physicians per capita, at a dismal 41st. Recent data show that roughly 185 Georgians die from...

LESLIE J. ANDERSON

LESLIE J. ANDERSON

GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE AND U.S. CHIEF TECHNOLOGY RESILIENCY AND EXPERIENCE OPERATIONS OFFICER

Leslie J. Anderson is BMO’s Global Technology Experience and U.S. Chief Technology Resiliency and Experience Operations Officer. She is at the center of BMO’s Digital First strategy where she innovates and finds new ways to strengthen the employee experience. Like it or not, one can’t simply dissociate my experience in...

GARRETT STERN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FURMAN UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP

For well over a century, higher education has treated its primary role as preparing young adults for their first job. In today’s world, where skills expire faster than degrees can be completed and technology reshapes industries overnight, that model needs to evolve. If we’re serious about our mission to foster...

MALCOLM HOWARD

MALCOLM HOWARD

CO-FOUNDER & CTO, METARENA

By day, I build distributed systems as a backend engineer, but in my spare time, I learn and teach about game development using open-source technology. Generally speaking, open-source software is computer software released with a license that allows users to freely use, modify, and distribute it. My career in software...

INNOVATE® Ecosystems