Roger is currently doing private consulting advisory work along with organization and talent mentorship. Roger is an innovative goal-oriented communications, media, ICT, and high tech executive with a passion to discover, advise, and drive business outcomes coupled with a strong passion for establishing, training, mentoring and leading energetic top producing teams. Roger has held leadership positions across a wide spectrum of organizational functions at Alcatel, Lucent, HPE, and Ericsson and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to help guide the industry and organizations through the Industrial 4.X Digital Transformation. Roger is a high energy, team-oriented, democratic, inclusive, and entrepreneurial executive. Roger’s formal background is in electronics and computer science with numerous personal and professional development involvements and awards over his 30+ year career.

Samer Bishay is President and CEO of Iristel & Ice Wireless, Canada’s leading provider of wireless and wireline IP services. As Iristel’s founder, Samer led the company from a small startup to an international telecommunications service provider with domestic infrastructure licenses on three continents (North America, Europe and Africa). Samer oversees global and domestic strategies for Iristel and Ice Wireless and their various brands such as Sugar Mobile. He ensures business objectives are in line with telecommunications trends; guaranteeing customers continued success in highly competitive markets. Well known in the telecommunications field, Samer is a frequent contributor to various public platforms; from newspapers and television to social media and industry websites. Samer also actively participates in many public forums that are helping shape Canadian broadband policy; a key to Canada’s future, especially related to rural broadband development and bridging the digital divide. A licenced jet pilot, Samer was appointed Honorary Colonel of 34 Signal Regiment of the Canadian Armed Forces in 2019. In this role, Colonel Bishay serves as an advocate for the Regiment and the CAF in general; and he helps strengthen the military’s bond with the community. Prior to founding Iristel, Samer was a lead systems engineer in the Radarsat program at the Canadian Space Agency. He is a graduate of the Space & Communications program at York University, with an Honors Bachelor of Science Degree.

Ibrahim Gedeon is one of the global telecommunications industry’s eminent thought leaders. He has carved out an international career by combining tremendous insight and skill as an applied scientist with a lighthearted and non-conventional approach to leadership. As Chief Technology Officer for TELUS, a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, he is responsible for all technology development and strategy, security, service and network architecture, service delivery and operational support systems, as well as service and network convergence, and network infrastructure strategies and evolution. Under his leadership the TELUS wireless broadband network has become one of the best in the world.

Within industry, Ibrahim has held leadership roles and chaired many events in the IEEE and received the IEEE Canada’s Outstanding Canadian Engineer Award in 2001. He serves on the board of the Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions and the Institute for Communication Technology Management.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the American University of Beirut and a Master’s in Electronics Engineering from Carleton University. In 2010, Ibrahim received a Honourary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of British Columbia. In 2014, he was elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) in recognition of his significant contributions to the field of engineering. He has been named five times to the Global Telecoms Business magazine’s GTB Power 100, a list of the 100 most powerful and influential people in the telecoms industry.

Matt has a wealth of experience in telecommunications, technology and business and a true passion for developing innovative service offerings. In addition to his leadership and business development skills, he has frequently appeared before the CRTC and the Canadian Parliament, as well as the US Senate, on industry matters.  Matt was honoured to be the recipient of the Top Canadian Telecom CEO Award for 2019, which recognizes leadership in communications, innovation and social responsibility.

Before joining Distributel as CEO in 2014, Matt was the Chief Technology Officer of Primus Telecommunications Group. Matt’s prior roles include Vice-President at CallNet and Principal Consultant at ArQana Technologies. He is an active participant and board member of YPO, a global leadership organization.  Matt is also currently the President & Chairman of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC).

Namir Anani, President and CEO of the Information and Communications Technology Council (ictc-ctic.ca), is the chief strategist and driving force in bringing ICTC’s world-class centre of expertise and services to industry, education and government; enabling Canada’s advancement as a leader in innovation, productivity in the global economy. Before joining ICTC, Namir previously led Policy Development & Research at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). He has also held several executive leadership roles in both the private and public sectors including the Department of Canadian Heritage (Director General & CEO), CGI consulting, Nortel, and Novartis (Switzerland). Mr. Anani’s experience extends to; strategic policy development and implementation, learning and capacity building, business transformation, national/international strategic alliances, economic and market research, and technology innovation. Namir holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Salford (UK) and holds Professional Engineer designation in Ontario (P. Eng.). He is also a board member of the Women in Communications and Technology.

With over 25 years experience in various roles in network and system architecture, mobile video system architecture and governance in both telco and retail sectors, Vanessa has developed a diverse toolset. Vanessa spent much of her career as a contractor, consulting for nearly every telco as well as major retailers in North America over the years. Having worked as everything from unix sysadmin to Chief Technical Officer with a number of leadership and architectural roles in between, Vanessa has contributed to technologies from mobile, enterprise data centre, multi-national networks and beyond. Now at Interdynamix Systems (www.interdynamix.com) as the Global CTO, Van is focused on creating leading innovative solutions that address the current and upcoming market by leveraging commercial hardware and software as well as Open Source technologies in useful solutions that solve for specific problems. This role has her speaking at conferences around the world, and spreading the word about the next generation of technologies. A member of Women of Openstack, and Women in Comms, Vanessa is active in showcasing and championing women in tech fields. Currently splitting her time in various open source communities, Vanessa was the Chair of the Technical Steering Committee of Open Source Mano, is a member of the Layer 123 NFV advisory board, a Linux Foundation Board Member, and spear headed the VNF Onboarding open source community. Vanessa attended the University of Toronto where she majored in Computer Science and Astro-Physics. Vanessa currently makes her home in Toronto Canada, where she enjoys spending her free time playing hockey, tennis and fishing.