Bonnie Brooks is the President and CEO of the Bay, the country’s oldest department store, operating 92 stores across Canada. Ms. Brooks brings with her more than three decades of extensive prestige brand and department store experience to her role.

Ms. Brooks has spent more than 25 years building prestige retail formats around the world including Holt Renfrew, Lane Crawford, Harvey Nichols, and leading designer brand stand-alone stores in Asia. Most recently, Ms. Brooks was the President of the Lane Crawford Joyce Group based in Hong Kong. In this role, she oversaw all aspects of the company which represents many of the world’s leading brands and more than 500 locations in nine Asian countries including the 158 year old Lane Crawford department stores, Joyce Boutiques, Pedder Group, and the LCJG Distribution Company. Under her leadership, the company saw the expansion of these formats into Greater China and South East Asia.

In Canada, Ms. Brooks is best known for her roles at Holt Renfrew where she was Executive Vice President/General Merchandise Manager and Senior Vice President of Marketing. In these positions, she was responsible for strategic planning, marketing functions, merchandise buying and designer brand acquisition to name a few. Bonnie also served as Editor-in-Chief of FLARE, Canada’s largest fashion and lifestyle magazine and has an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.

Known as one of the most respected retail experts in Asia and North America, Ms. Brooks has been recently recognized in a variety of publications including 2010 Monocle Magazine’s 25 Top Retailers Worldwide and Fast Company (New York) Magazine’s 100 Most Creative People in Business for 2010 worldwide.

Ms. Brooks is a member of the Indigo Books & Music Inc. Board of Directors, and the Royal Ontario Museum Board of Trustees.

Paul Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, is an investor, essayist, technology analyst, and entrepreneur. A San Diego resident, Kedrosky assists the Kansas City-based foundation on issues related to entrepreneurship, innovation and capital markets. Previously, he was the executive director of the William J. von Liebig Center, an innovative seed capital program founded to help commercialize technologies developed at the University of California, San Diego. He is a sought-after speaker; an analyst for CNBC television; a research advisor to Ten Asset Management; a columnist for TheStreet/RealMoney; and editor of Infectious Greed, one of the best-known business blogs on the Internet. He has published more than 300 articles in academic and non-academic publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review. He serves as the chair of the Money:Tech conference in New York.

Kedrosky was previously a venture partner with Ventures West, where he invested in consumer technologies, media, semiconductors, and life sciences. He is currently an advisor/investor to CoveritLive, and Xpenser, and has been on the board of many venture-backed companies, including Marqui Corporation, Dabble DB, and ActiveState. Earlier in his career, Kedrosky was a highly ranked technology equity analyst, and founded the technology equity research practice at HSBC James Capel. As an entrepreneur, he financed and launched one of the first hosted blogging services, GrokSoup, which grew to more than 1,000 subscribers.

Kedrosky obtained his undergraduate degree in engineering from Carleton University, his MBA from Queen's University, and his Ph.D from the University of Western Ontario.

Michael Lee-Chin was born in Jamaica in 1951 to very humble beginnings. In 1986, at the age of 35, Michael showed his entrepreneurial spirit by purchasing AIC Limited (AIC) for $200,000; by the mid nineties and with Michael’s stewardship, AIC became Canada’s largest privately held mutual fund company. In September 2009, Michael sold AIC’s retail mutual fund business to Manulife Financial; Canada’s largest insurance company. This was the second company which Michael built from the ground up and sold to Manulife Financial; in 2007 Manulife Financial purchased the Bekshire Group, an investment dealer with approximately 1,000 financial advisors and $12.5 billion in assets under administration.

In 2002, Michael returned to his homeland of Jamaica and purchased a 75% stake in the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica Limited (NCB). At the time of purchase, he immediately deployed a transformation team with a mandate to improve employee morale, increase customer confidence and modernize the bank’s IT infrastructure. Today, NCB is the largest bank in the country and has a reputation for being a leader in corporate citizenship and for its mantra “Building a Better Jamaica”.

In 2006, Michael co-founded Columbus International Inc., a diversified telecommunications company which provides services to over 21 countries across the Caribbean and Latin America. Michael through Portland Investment Counsel continues to manage over $2 billion for Manulife Financial. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Portland Holdings Inc., Portland Investment Counsel and Chairman of Portland Private Equity.

Among his many personal accomplishments, Michael has received the doctor of laws degree from a number of distinguished universities including, McMaster University, the University of Toronto, Northern Caribbean University, Wilfred Laurier University, the University of West Indies and York University.

In 2008, he received the Order of Jamaica – one of the country’s highest national honours for outstanding service in business and philanthropy. In 2010 Michael joined the Board of the Trust for the Americas (a dynamic development institution affiliated with the Organization of American States (OAS) recognizing his “leadership in the area of corporate social responsibility”. The OAS is an organization that, with 35 member countries, facilitates development, security, human rights, democracy and prosperity throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Allan started his career in Mars Confectionery as a Salesman in 1974. He worked his way up through the company before leaving in 1991. He then joined Pedigree Petfoods, where he was Sales Director until his appointment in 1992 to Asda Stores Ltd. He began his career in Asda as Group Marketing Director and was appointed Chief Executive in September 1996. In November 1999 when the American company Wal-Mart bought Asda Allan became the President and CEO of Wal-Mart Europe.

In November 2000 he left Asda and developed a new work ethic – ‘Going Plural’ and is currently President of Loblaw Companies Ltd, Deputy Chairman of Selfridges & Co and George Weston Ltd, and Non Executive Director of BskyB Group plc.

Amber MacArthur is a young, bright and deeply credentialed Web consultant -- a leading voice of the social media generation. Amber Mac, as she's known to her legion of fans, is also a pioneering and wildly popular web journalist who interviews the Web's users, content producers and entrepreneurs. Her book, Power Friending, is a comprehensive guide for utilizing social media to spur business growth. In podcasts and on television (she has worked for the CBC, CityTV, CTV and G4TechTV), she traces the profound impact of emerging technologies on the way we live, work and play -- and she makes it all fun, informative and accessible. Currently, MacArthur is the co-founder of MGI Media, where she has been a lead consultant for Tony Robbins, among many notable clients. Amber also writes "Trending Tech", a weekly column in The Globe and Mail.

Previously, she was a key strategist for the world-famous Razorfish, in San Francisco, and has worked on projects for Microsoft, Adobe, HP and Bell. MacArthur also hosts the podcasts net @ night, commandN, and Webnation, which won the 2007 iTunes Top New Podcast award. She also hosts and produces a show called Girls Go Geek on Xbox LIVE.

Adam L. Penenberg is a journalism professor and assistant director of the Business and Economic Program at New York University, and author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves (Hyperion). A contributing writer to Fast Company, he has also written for Inc., Forbes, the New York Times, Slate, Wired, The Economist, Playboy, and Mother Jones. At New York University, Penenberg is the assistant director of the Business & Economic Program, heads the department’s ethics committee – he wrote the department’s journalism handbook for students, which received unanimous faculty approval and the ethics pledge, which all students must sign – and teaches multimedia, magazine writing, and hard news and investigative reporting to graduate and undergraduate students

In Penenberg’s Viral Loop talks he names and explains the paradigm-busting phenomenon which is the essence of how the most successful Web 2.0 companies – from Google to PayPal – are growing. Each designed its product with a viral loop at its core: to use it, you have to spread it. The result: Never before has there been the potential to create wealth this fast, on this scale, and starting with so little

Penenberg explains that all of these companies are powered by something called a “viral expansion loop,” which is accomplished by incorporating virality into the functionality of their products. In plain English, it means a company grows because each new user begets more users. Just by using a product they have to spread it. After all, what’s the sense of being on Facebook if none of your friends are on Facebook, or using Flickr if you can’t share your photos? The result is a type of alchemy that, done right, leads to a self-replicating, borg-like growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and more. It is not a stretch to say that viral loops have emerged as the most significant business accelerant to hit Silicon Valley since the search engine.

A former senior editor at Forbes and reporter for Forbes.com, Penenberg garnered national attention in 1998 for unmasking serial fabricator Stephen Glass of The New Republic. Penenberg’s story was a watershed for online investigative journalism and is portrayed in the film Shattered Glass (Steve Zahn plays Penenberg).

David R. Shaw is the Founder and CEO of Knightsbridge Human Capital Management Inc., a national human resource firm specializing in a strategic, solutions based approach to help clients manage their most important asset – their people. Since its founding in 2001, the firm has acquired eight of Canada’s leading H.R. consulting firms and has twenty offices across the country. Recent acquisitions include Axsium Group, acquired in July 2008, which has extensive business revenues in the US in the Workforce Management space as well as an office in London, UK; and MICA Consulting Partners, acquired in June 2009, a leadership solutions firm focused on assessment, coaching and leadership consulting. The company employs close to 300 people.

Prior to founding Knightsbridge Human Capital Management Inc., Mr. Shaw was President and CEO of Pepsi Cola Canada Beverages from 1996 to the end of 1999, a $1.0 Billion company, employing 3,500 people within Canada. Mr. Shaw’s career with PepsiCo spanned twenty-two years within Canada and abroad where he demonstrated a successful track record in building, growing and sustaining customer-focused businesses and relationships. From 1989 until 1996, Mr. Shaw lived in Australia, Singapore and Turkey holding various levels of general management responsibility.

Mr. Shaw is the former Chairman of the North York General Hospital Foundation and member of the Hospital Board of Directors, and former Chairman of the Canadian Soft Drink Industry. He is the current Chair of the Stratford Chefs School. In addition, he sits on the Queen’s School of Business Advisory Board, The Junior Achievement of Canada Foundation Board, the Amrop Hever Board, and two publicly traded boards, Sceptre Investment Counsel Limited and Brick Brewing Co. Limited.