SPEAKERS
Word to the Wise co-founder Laura Atkins is a speaker, educator, writer, and email specialist. She is passionate about demystifying email in general and deliverability in particular. Over the past 25 years, she has helped a wide range of clients, including small startups, retail chains, major social media companies, email service providers, and government agencies, develop better relationships through effective email strategies
LB Blair is a full-stack email solutions architect and Strategic Advisor at SendPost, with a career spanning billions of successfully delivered emails across high-volume enterprise environments. She works across every technical layer of the email channel — authentication, MTAS, APIs, deliverability infrastructure, and compliance — and is known for forensic-level diagnostics that uncover root causes most teams never find. At SendPost, she advises engineering and product teams on routing models, reputation-safe sending, and the infrastructure decisions that protect inbox placement at scale.
For over 30 years, Andrew has helped marketing and sales professionals – across industries – generate more, and faster, revenues.
He is author of several titles including, the Amazon #1 Best Seller, “Get Referred: How to Increase Sales Velocity, Volume, and Value”.
Andrew has led senior growth, marketing, and sales positions at international and national firms including Appfire, Crossey Engineering, KPMG, Scotiabank, Swiss Re, and Transcontinental.
He has written extensively for the Financial Post and Canadian Business on how to generate referral revenues (B2B), establish strategic alliances and optimize channel resellers.
Andrew is the lead author of several other books, including:
● “Two + Two = 5: The Complete Playbook for Creating a Strategic Alliance That is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts”
● “Putting it All Out There: The Complete Playbook for Selling Products and Services Through the Right Channels”
● “Business Insights” (Published by CPA Canada)
Andrew is a frequent guest lecturer at York University (Continuing Education for professionals) and Ontario Tech University on the topics of B2B referral programs, channel resellers, and strategic alliances.
Geoffrey Blanc is the General Manager of Cyberimpact, a Canadian email marketing platform renowned for its strong focus on compliance with local regulations such as CASL. With extensive experience in project management, e-commerce, and ERP implementations, Geoffrey has successfully led multidisciplinary teams and driven growth initiatives across multiple industries.
He is widely recognized for his expertise in email marketing strategy and regulatory compliance, and for his ability to deliver measurable, high impact results that help organizations grow sustainably.
In addition to his role at SURBL, Dijkxhoorn is a founding member and CTO of EHAWK, a platform focusing on fraud and abuse prevention, and he owns Prolocation, a Dutch ISP. His extensive experience in the industry makes him a well-regarded figure in cybersecurity, known for his contributions to enhancing internet safety and security protocols
As the Vice-President, Compliance and Enforcement, Steven’s leadership approach is to promote compliance with the applicable legislation and regulations through education and outreach and, when necessary, encourage and enforce compliance through both traditional and innovative approaches.
Steven joined Canada’s converged communications regulator in 2002 and has developed his expertise in both broadcasting and telecommunications through various positions of increasing responsibility. As Director General, Strategic Policy from 2012-2016, Steven led the development and implementation of key Commission policies, including the Wireless Code of Conduct, Video Relay Service, and Broadband Performance Measurement, through his leadership of the Social and Consumer Policy, Network Technology and Strategic Policy and International Affairs teams.
Steven began his federal public service career in 1999 with the Canada Revenue Agency, following several years in the private sector.
With a career spanning nearly 30 years across ESPs, agencies, brands, and technology providers, Garin has dedicated his entire career to email marketing and is recognized for growing messaging impact and revenue, launching new programs and products, and developing the strategies and thought leadership to support them.
This combination of business, marketing, and technology experience helps him develop effective marketing strategies and quickly turn ideas into practical solutions.
Dmytro is a strong advocate for Lean principles and their application to email marketing and marketing automation. His approach to Lean email marketing focuses on learning quickly, delivering value faster, eliminating waste, building quality into processes, and organizing knowledge effectively.
At Stripo, Dmytro and his team incorporate these ideas into products designed to help marketers work more efficiently and accelerate their own Lean transformation.
Derek is the Managing Director of Newport Thomson, a data protection and privacy advisory firm in Toronto, specializing in CASL, PIPEDA, GDPR, ePrivacy, and CCPA/CPRA compliance. As Chairman of the Response Marketing Association, Derek leverages over 30 years of marketing and advertising experience to help clients achieve compliance with minimal disruption. He authored “CASL Compliance: A Marketer’s Guide to Email Marketing to Canadians” and advocates for practical, feasible compliance solutions.
Active in the privacy community, Derek chairs the Guidance Committee of the Canadian Advisory Council – GDPR, co-chairs the IAPP Toronto Chapter (2020/2021), and participates in several committees, including ISO 31700 and the Data Governance Standardization Collaborative. Educated in Marketing at the University of Toronto, Derek has led his ad agency to success, handling brands like Air Canada Vacations, Canon, and The Salvation Army, with seven out of nine becoming top in their categories in Canada.
For more than a decade, Tilak has worked hands-on with email programs ranging from early-stage startups to high-volume senders delivering more than 50+ million emails per day. His work has included recovering damaged sender reputation, resolving Spamhaus and ISP-level blocking incidents, managing ESP and infrastructure migrations, rebuilding domains and IP reputation, and helping businesses scale email volume across multiple providers and sending environments.
He has personally advised more than 500 clients and has worked with over 100 SMBs on scaling email programs from early-stage sending to millions of messages per day. His experience spans inbox placement, sender reputation, blocklists, authentication, infrastructure stability, and troubleshooting complex Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft deliverability issues.
That experience led him to create Mailora around a simple principle: deliverability teams do not need more disconnected dashboards, they need clearer intelligence about what is happening, why it is happening, and what action to take next.
Through Mailora, Tilak is focused on making advanced deliverability intelligence more accessible to startups, agencies, SaaS companies, ecommerce brands, and other growing email teams.
Throughout his career, Bob has supported organizations in designing and implementing CRM, marketing automation, personalization, deliverability, and AI-enabled strategies. He is particularly focused on helping teams connect their technology investments to meaningful customer and business outcomes while building the processes and capabilities needed for long-term success.
Matthew Vernhout, known online as @emailkarma, is the Principal Email Advisor at Email Industries, where he brings his extensive expertise in email marketing, deliverability, and privacy advocacy. A respected figure in the digital marketing world, Matthew serves as the chairperson of the ANA’s Email Experience Council and holds a Director-at-Large/Secretary with the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE). He is also the Communications Chair for the AuthIndicators Working Group (BIMI Group), and founder of the Canadian Email Summit.
With a reputation as a thought leader, Matthew was recognized as the 2019 EEC Thought Leader of the Year and is a Certified International Privacy Professional (Canada) (CIPP/C). He frequently speaks at global email marketing and technology conferences, sharing insights from his celebrated blog, EmailKarma.net. Notably, in 2010, EmailKarma was recognized as one of the top 40 marketing blogs in Canada, underscoring Matthew’s influence and expertise in the marketing community.
Clinton Wilmott is a Senior Email Marketing Manager, speaker, and lifecycle strategist. He focuses on building scalable email systems that drive measurable growth through personalization, automation, and experimentation. Over the past decade, he has worked with global brands including Namecheap, P&G, and Rogers, helping teams turn customer data into high-performing lifecycle programs that deliver measurable impact.
Lindsay Wilton is Director of Customer Operations at Dyspatch and a digital marketing strategist with 15+ years of experience across customer engagement, operations, and product marketing. She brings the secrets to scaling she has learned from working with Fortune 500 brands, helping teams build scalable, data-driven email programs that strengthen brand presence and performance.
Previously, Lindsay led customer engagement and product marketing strategy in the MedTech and fundraising SaaS space. She brings expertise in lifecycle marketing, customer experience, and building high-impact engagement strategies.
Register Now!
Connect with many of the brightest minds in Canada regarding email marketing for a series of thought-provoking topics that will change the way you use email marketing in your organization.