David Guthrie, CPA, CA, National Leader – Agribusiness, Partner, KPMG Private Enterprise

Simran is the Managing Director at Athiana Acres, a 30-acre regenerative vegetable, fruit, herb and flower farm located in Vancouver, British Columbia, established in 2022. She oversees all aspects of the business with a particular focus on marketing, sales and strategy. She is passionate about leveraging technology to build more sustainable food systems and looks forward to leveraging her background in data within the agriculture space. Prior to this, Simran was a data analyst at TEALEAVES, a Vancouver-based tea company working to redefine luxury in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, Simran was the Managing Director at Data Feminism Network and built the organization alongside Ali Dunn and Jade Greer while completing her Masters of Business Analytics at the University of British Columbia. She now serves as an advisor for the DPA Data Feminism Program. Simran holds a BSc in Food, Nutrition and Health from the University of British Columbia

Katherine White, Senior Associate Dean, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Sustainability, Watkinson Professorship in Sustainability, and Professor, Marketing and Behavioural Science Division

Ian Lederer, Manager, Economic and Global Transfer Pricing Services at KPMG

Darren has over 25 years’ experience in business leadership, strategy and marketing, focused in the consumer packaged goods space

Bruce is an economist, but very much a practitioner. For the first 17 years of his career, he was an official with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in the Pacific region. He subsequently went into private practice, working very closely with industry as well as the government. He does extensive consulting work outside of Canada, as well as within, with examples being the US (both coasts), China, and Europe

Stuart is the Senior Vice President of MNP's Agricultural Services and National Leader of Crop Services, based in Edmonton. With more than 25 years of experience in agriculture, specializing in the grain industry, Stuart grew up on a grain farm and continues to be actively involved in the industry as a producer. This experience allows Stuart to relate first-hand to what Canadian agriculture producers face in their operations — and gives him greater insights into how to help producers overcome challenges and achieve their goals.

Mr. Quan is currently the Vice President of Finance for the Richberry Group of Companies. In his role, he is responsible for the overall financial and administrative management of all 6 independent farming operations within the group. He is part of the executive management team that oversees the management of over 1,200 acres of Ocean Spray cranberry bogs both in BC and Quebec. Under his leadership, the Richberry Group has implemented innovative financial strategies and policies resulting in increased profitability and improved overall financial health of the organization. He has an established knowledge of the North American cranberry and greenhouse sector working previously for Farm Credit Canada; Canada’s largest agriculture lender. He oversaw a team of lending professionals across British Columbia managing a portfolio in excess of $1 billion. His other experience would include complex corporate finance and syndicate transactions to large corporate farming operations in the publicly traded space. Being part of a management group that is one of the largest shareholders of Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc, he has great insight global consumer trends that are emerging in the food retail space. He has also served as a member of the Board of Directors as well as a strategic Board Observer for Zenabis Global Inc and Hexo Corp during the most challenging period for the industry. Mr. Quan holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Agriculture Economics at the University of British Columbia. Mr. Quan has over 20 years of experience providing effective financing structures with engaging mid-market companies. Described as a relationship builder with expertise performing financial modeling, assessing corporate financial risk, strategic leadership, and a strong understanding of the North American Banking industry

Dr. Dawit Guta is an economist specializing in energy, resource, and environmental economics, as well as development economics. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher and teaching fellow at the Department of Forest Resource Management at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on household energy demand, clean energy transition, renewable energy, water-energy-food nexus, environmental resource valuation, forest, climate change, and livelihoods impact evaluation. Dr. Guta previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics at Addis Ababa University and as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn. He also served as a lecturer at Ambo University. Dr. Guta has a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Economics from Addis Ababa University and a Ph.D. in Development Economics from the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn

Ryan Cardwell,  Professor, Department of Agribusiness & Agricultural Economics University of Manitoba and Managing Editor, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics. His research investigates how the Canadian policy to untie food assistance affected Canadian shipments using an operation-level dataset from the World Food Programme to investigate how procurement sources and commodity compositions changed after untying, and an empirical model of Canadian food assistance shipments that is used to compare observed shipments to counterfactually-tied shipments.