Stephan Argent is founder and CEO of Listenmore – chief listener, problem solver, negotiator and pitch doctor, with more than 25 years client / agency marketing experience in Asia, United Kingdom, United States and Canada.

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Listenmore is a confidential corporate and marketing advisory consultancy that helps organizations simplify and transform through neutral advice and practical insights.

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At Listenmore, Stephan has provided advisory services and marketing management services for some of Canada’s most iconic brands, including Air Canada, Audi, Home Depot, KFC, Lindt + Sprungli, Loblaws, McKesson, Ontario Lottery + Gaming, Rexall, Shoppers Drugmart, Subaru, Telus, Tim Hortons, VIA Rail, Wal-Mart and many others.

Listenmore is also a founding member of a global collective of strategic marketing management consultants across the world, headquartered in Sydney, Australia at TrinityP3.

Jacob is the Managing Director at the social-first agency, We The People. With offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, We The People offers a unique approach to helping some of the world's biggest brands to conquer attention on social and digital channels. Jacob brings a wealth of experience leading both local and global campaigns in the creator space.

Nilesh Ashra is a creative innovator and has spoken at numerous industry events including Cannes Lions
Festival of Creativity, FastCo Innovation Festival, and SXSW.

As a technologist, Nilesh focuses on helping companies navigate the ever-changing, but extremely exciting, creative business world.

Nilesh runs a specialized inspiration company called OK Tomorrow, based on the belief that organizations can get far more innovative thinking from
their people.

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Often, Nilesh’s keynote talks explore the nexus of business, storytelling, and technology.

Nilesh brings his steadfast belief in the power of optimism and curiosity to every talk.

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Nilesh is Portland-based and London-raised. He believes everyone's best idea is still yet to come.

Doug founded Agency Futures in 2019, after a successful 25 years career as an agency owner, and laterally as a transaction advisor.

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Now based in London – after having worked extensively in the United States, Asia, and Europe – Doug leads a team of highly experienced former agency leaders who work on transactions with independent agencies across the globe.

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His expertise, strategic mindset, and empathetic approach to M&A, are the engines that drive Agency Future’s mission to help clients get the most value from their life’s work, the agencies that they have founded and built.

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Agency Futures' philosophy of Empathetic M&A emphasises emotional intelligence, cultural alignment, and long-term success for both parties involved in a transaction. The firm also advises groups seeking to acquire agencies, helping buyers identify and secure the right opportunities that align strategically with their goals. This dual focus ensures that Agency Futures can facilitate balanced, mutually beneficial partnerships.

Considered one of the top voices in AI and the future of work, Ian Beacraft is a trusted advisor to the world's most innovative companies. The CEO of Signal and Cipher, Ian leads a future of work laboratory, guiding companies through the rapidly changing technology landscape to find meaningful routes to innovation that impact the bottom line, inspire cultural change, and create new products and services.  

Previously responsible for P&L’s and innovation departments at the largest agencies in the world, Ian is known for making bleeding-edge technology understandable and monetizable. Brands he has advised include Samsung, Intel, Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Symantec, Universal Pictures, and dozens more.

He’s known as a Gonzo Futurist, actively experimenting with new and emerging technologies before they leave the research lab to understand the implications and applications for the future of work and society at large. Ian is the first person ever to host a news segment as a synthetic human, the Future Report on Defiance Media, streaming to over 100 million devices around the world.

As founder and CEO of The Great Pitch Company, Marcus brings more than 20 years experience in galvanising clients, colleagues, and prospects across the communications industry. I have held numerous business development roles, led a cross-discipline, multi-lingual hub agency to award-winning success, and am the only Biz Dev consultant to have genuine multi-discipline experience spanning advertising, design, direct, digital, healthcare, and media.

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Marcus shares that the most important and enjoyable part of his job is working with such a wide variety of organisations and people to develop their pitching and performance techniques that ultimately lead to successful conversions. 

Vince is the founder of Adᐧvice, an agency-focused management consulting firm. 

Vince is a member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario and has been a CPA, CA in Toronto for over 30 years. He is a commerce graduate of McMaster University and earned his CPA, CA designation while articling at Ernst & Young.

Throughout his career in accounting, Vince has focused his expertise on the marketing and communications industry.

He served on the board of directors for the National Advertising Benevolent Society (N.A.B.S.) as treasurer for eight years, he has written articles for Marketing Magazine, he has been a speaker at agency seminars, and he is the exclusive consultant to Second Wind. This experience combined with a 30-year career working exclusively with the North American marketing and communications industry delivers insight at once vast and focused, resulting in unparalleled financial and organizational ad-vice.

Harry is the Founder & Director of TSA, a London-based influencer marketing agency that is now in partnership with the creative agency Five by Five. In just five years, Harry has built TSA on the strength of direct influencer relationships, delivering bespoke social media strategies that drive tangible ROI, desirability and engagement. Under his leadership and with the support of Five by Five, TSA has expanded across Europe and recently launched an exclusive talent management division, further solidifying the agency's position as a leader in the evolving social media landscape.

Cindy Gallop has turned an illustrious advertising career into a lifelong pursuit of changing the world, her way – one daring project after another.

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Reading English at Oxford University kindled a love affair with theater and led Cindy to begin her early career in the UK as a theater publicist, until an audience member’s observation that ‘You could sell ice to an Eskimo’ led her to make the move into advertising.

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She worked at Ted Bates, JWT and GGT before joining Bartle Bogle Hegarty in London in 1980 to run large global accounts such as Coca-Cola, Ray-Ban and Polaroid. In 1996 she moved to Singapore to help start up and run BBH Asia-Pacific, where she ran the Levi’s Asia-Pacific business, and in 1998 she moved to New York to start up BBH in the US, which began as Cindy in a room with a phone.

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Four years later, BBH New York had won clients like Johnnie Walker, Unilever and Levi’s, and was named Adweek’s Eastern Agency of the Year. In 2003 Cindy was voted Advertising Woman of the Year.

While John wears many hats in the creative services space, he is driven by one overarching passion and aspiration – to help create healthier relationships client/agency relationships… and further, a healthier industry. In the process, John’s ambition is to help brands and agencies build stronger businesses (and deliver better business results)… not just deliver better “creative” solutions.

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Fueled by observations and experiences collected through a 20+ year career at Procter & Gamble, John launched A Better View Strategic Consulting, LLC to “enhance the intersection of creative relationships”.

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While at P&G, John’s global responsibilities in customer services, operations, international trade, strategic sourcing, and design & innovation touched every business unit and every region of P&G’s global operations, at various points during his career.

Pivotal to his present endeavor, in his final P&G role, John was a part of P&G’s initial, formative journey to elevate and leverage Design more strategically in its businesses, and in its DNA and culture. Sought specifically for this newly-created role – because John had built a reputation in P&G supply chain and sourcing communities as a “non-linear thinker”. John served as the relationship owner for all of P&G’s Design, innovation, and artwork/production needs. He was the architect and gatekeeper for the processes used to identify, assess, invite, inspire, and engage agency partners – incumbent and prospective, new agency collaborators.

He interfaced with HUNDREDS of agencies spanning Design, innovation, production, shopper/in-store, digital, consumer activation, and promotion. In this role, John also served at the global budget owner for P&G’s Corporate Design Function, as well as the point-person for dozens of other Fortune 500 corporations who sought to benchmark regarding P&G’s vision for a strategic role for Design, and agency relationship strategies.

Gregg is an accomplished executive with extensive experience in marketing and partnership development. He is a Partner at VMG, which specializes in enhancing brands' cultural capital through strategic partnerships and experiences, as well as serving as Principal and CMO at Outlander Capital. Prior roles include Chief Integration Officer at The Marketing Arm, Director at 24/7 Media, and Senior Account Executive at Octagon. Gregg holds a degree from The University of Texas at Austin. 

With 20 years of experience in investment banking, private equity and other strategic and financial roles, Lori left her role as a managing director at Diamond Capital Advisors to launch Evalla Advisors.

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Lori has managed a wide range of domestic and international transactions including buy-side and sell-side mergers and acquisitions, management buyouts, leveraged buyouts, private capital raises and debt financing. She has worked with such companies as Sapient, WPP, IBM, CACI and GXS Inc. She has significant expertise in the marketing services, digital media and technology sectors.

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Her wide-ranging experience includes commercial lending and investment banking at Silicon Valley Bank (Palo Alto and London), Grant Thornton UK, Results International and McCracken Advisory Partners. Lori headed growth efforts within the digital media practice at both Results and McCracken and lead winery investment transactions as a director at Bacchus Capital Management, a private equity fund.

Lori has an MBA in International Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a BA in Business from California State University, Chico. Lori holds Series 24, 79 and 63 with FINRA. BrokerCheck by FINRA.

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In her free time, Lori loves dance, volleyball and the outdoors.

Meagan is what you get when you combine the logical mind of an engineer, the passion of a teacher, and the comedic delivery of a stage performer. With an entertaining approach to skill building, Meagan O’Brien has helped create meaningful change for clients like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Facebook, and Google.

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Twenty years ago, Meagan O’Brien was a mechanical engineer. By day, she designed flight deck controls for military and commercial airplanes. By night, she studied and performed improv at iO and The Second City Theater in Chicago. After trading her day job for road trips in The Second City National Touring Company vans, she put her skills and experience to use at Second City Works, which uses humor and improv to train corporate audiences.

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At FutureThink, Meagan is known for shifting mindsets in a single workshop, as well as her “enter-training” techniques for improving culture and boosting creativity. (Also for the ability to wiggle her ears on demand.) Named to Fast Company’s list of the “Most Creative People in Business,” she helps companies apply improv’s “Yes, and…” approach to workplace collaboration, brainstorming, and problem-solving.​

Meagan earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toledo in Ohio. In one of the nine lives she’s had since college, she ate a yak steak at an elevation of more than 11,000 feet in Nepal. Whether she’s at the base camp of Mount Everest or hosting an annual Derby party, elaborate headwear is always involved. Meagan lives with her husband, four kids, and Princess Leia Noodle Flop, who’s arguably the cutest goldendoodle in Illinois.

Taryn Southern is an award-winning storyteller, speaker, and creative technologist whose works explores the intersection of emerging technology and human potential.

As an early YouTuber with more than 750+ million views, Taryn has more than two decades experience in attention-grabbing story and brand strategy for digital audiences.  Her groundbreaking AI experiments include composing the world’s first AI pop album in 2017, cloning herself in 2020, and directing a Tribeca Film Festival documentary on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

As Chief Storyteller at one of the world’s leading implantable neurotechnology companies, Taryn oversaw marketing, communications, and AI corporate policies across two successful funding rounds totaling over $230M+.  

As a keynote speaker and breast cancer survivor, Taryn delights in sharing practical applications of AI that unleash creativity, joy, critical thinking, wellbeing and productivity.

Danielle is widely recognized as an industry leader in content marketing, influencer marketing and social media strategy. Prior to founding Sway, Danielle ran social strategy for Edelman’s Chicago-based digital group. Recognizing a need to professionalize and streamline the process for connecting influencers with brands, she launched Sway Group in June 2011.