Mike Rizkalla is an award-winning creative leader in the Technology and Robotics industry with experience in working with and operating organizations ranging from startups to $75M global businesses. Mike has successfully managed revenue goals up to $10M, operational budgets of up to $16M, and capital expense budgets of up to $2.5M. He is a capable mentor with a track record of attracting, recruiting, and leading teams to great success.

Patrick Wesonga is an accomplished tech professional with almost 15 years of experience delivering experiences across a variety of industries. He combines entrepreneurial hustle, startup grit, and *just* the right amount of corporate sophistication to build remarkable mobile, web, and custom hardware products (often taking them from “zero to 1”).

Since joining R/GA in 2007, he has lead the implementation of the award-winning Nike Human Race 2008 and Nike Ballers Network applications.

Launched Chanel’s e-commerce platform in 24 countries, and built Bridgestone’s first global cloud implementation, Bridgestone Hub for managing activations for the Olympics.

Most recent work includes Samsung Within which is a global campaign spanning 9 chapters built in WebGL 80 countries and 24 languages.

Whether it's creating his own or curating and promoting the work of others, Ryan Patey has dealt professionally with content for nearly two decades. From working with international corporations such as Discovery Networks and Pearson Education to helping non-profits, small businesses, and even a government develop their online presence, Ryan's writing has helped establish brands, entertain audiences, and encourage change around the world.

Steve Hecker has been creating innovative consumer products for over 25 years, and brings strong experience to bear for design, development, manufacturing, and startup company operations.
Hecker’s more recent experience has focused on early-stage consumer tech startups, and has been instrumental in successful market introductions for products such as the IoT-enabled infant sleep crib, the SNOO from Happiest Baby.

After two decades of building innovative technologies for education, he became the CEO of Encoura in 2020. Previously, Doug served as CEO of Surgarai, Inc., a medical technology startup, and as chief product officer at Knewton, recently acquired by Wiley. Prior to that, Doug spent 17 years at McGraw-Hill Education, in various senior leadership roles including chief sales officer, director of digital partnerships, and executive brand manager.

With a background in computer science, a medical postgrad, numerous company exits, a commercial pilot’s license, and even a few patents, Howard H. Thaw knows no limits. Over his career, he’s founded startups and worked with many others to build or turnaround companies, develop new technologies, resolve conflicts, and serve on public and private boards. Thanks to this, Howard is capable of seeing any situation from take-off to landing.

Dan is an animator from Clifton Springs, Australia. Living in Halifax since 2012, they love creating things that put a smile on people's faces, whether that's through animation, music, puppets, or some mashup of other things they can do.

Michael-Andreas Kuttner is one of the founding fathers of the Canadian Digital Media industry. Fresh out of university, he founded the pioneering Collideascope Digital Productions, one of Canada’s largest animation and digital media studios, focused primarily on kids’ entertainment. There, M-A went on to collect armloads of awards producing dozens of digital media properties and over 250 episodes of animated TV for international markets.

Dina is a world-class operations leader and program manager. She has led teams and international initiatives at Hasbro, Scholastic and R/GA. Her book of work includes, but is not limited to, the Transformers, My Little Pony, Nerf, Nike, and Samsung.

Ed is the former President of Hornby America and Carrera of America, and he boasts more than 40 years of experience in the retail sales trade. During this time, Ed also held executive positions with Hasbro, Tyco Toys, and Hedstrom while selling everything from Barbie and Hot Wheels to G.I. Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony.

Ruben has worked in both Android and iOS mobile development environments for more than 10 years. He has broad experience across a variety of different sectors, and utilizes multiple mobile technologies (Java, Kotlin, Swift, etc.) with great success. Above all, Ruben loves to collaborate in early staged-projects and help them to reach the moon!

Donald is the former CMO of Showtime Networks Inc., where he created and led the marketing organization that launched Showtime’s Streaming OTT service. Earlier, as Warner Bros. Pictures’ Senior Vice President, Digital Media, Don founded its Interactive Marketing department, and co-founded the company’s first digital content and programming division, Warner Bros. Online.

Dick boasts a distinguished legacy in global partnership formation from his roles in founding and leading successful ventures to profitable exits. His expertise in fostering international and regional connections is critical in Snorble’s efforts across communications, fundraising, and development.