Jodi Baxter is a highly accomplished professional with over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry. She currently serves as the Vice-president of 5G & IoT Connectivity at TELUS, where she leads a dynamic team that drives digital transformation across IoT platforms, enabling businesses to harness the power of data and 5G technology to achieve their operational goals.

Jodi’s journey with TELUS began after graduating from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, majoring in Marketing. She has since obtained an MBA from the University of Victoria and has held various positions in Product Marketing, contributing significantly to TELUS’ success in areas such as High-Speed Internet for Business, Optik TV for Business, and TELUS Health. Currently, she leads the 5G & IoT Connectivity team, responsible for product development, implementation, and day-to-day support for over 2M connected devices.

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.