A conference delving into the disrupted frontiers of innovation.

BOLD SOLUTIONS

New Ideas, Bold Solutions, and Exploration.

This is what The Future of Innovation is.

The Future of Innovation Conference is an annual RBC Leadership conference, hosted by the J Herbert Smith Centre, that sparks new conversations about cutting-edge solutions for problems that are persistent throughout Canada and the world.

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The Conference

October 17-18, 2023

DELTA HOTELS BY MARRIOTT
FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK
CANADA

About J Herbert Smith Centre

The J Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (JHSC) was founded in 1988 to cultivate new ideas, creative thinking, and an entrepreneurial spirit for careers in the ever-changing world of technology. Over the past 35 years, JHSC has aided countless startups to move from ideation to early startup and equipped them with the skills they need to apply their expertise in a business environment.

Speakers

GORDON PITTS

Gordon Pitts is a business journalist and author who has been a reporter and editor on Canadian newspapers for four decades, in addition to writing eight books on Canadian business. They include his 2020 release, Unicorn in the Woods, How East Coast Geeks and Dreamers Are Changing the Game, which was long-listed for Canada’s National Business Book Award and named one of the Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books for 2020.

As a business writer, he won the National Business Book Award for Stampede: The Rise of the West and Canada’s New Power Elite, his 2008 book on the business leaders of the Canadian West. Another book, Fire in the Belly, the biography of distinguished director and lawyer Purdy Crawford, won the Dartmouth Book Award for non-fiction in 2015, part of the Atlantic Book Awards. Among Pitts’ other books are The Codfathers: Lessons from the Atlantic Business Elite and the biography of corporate director and executive Sir Graham Day, titled The Last Canadian Knight.

Until he retired from daily journalism in 2013, Pitts was a senior writer in the Report on Business of the Globe and Mail, having also held editorial roles at The Financial Post and Ottawa Citizen. He holds degrees in history and education from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, as well as a bachelor of journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa.

SAM MAGEE

Sam Magee develops new entrepreneurial pathways for young people at Harvard University and well beyond. He directs the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Harvard College, which includes both a curricular side and a co-curricular accelerator (H2A) that provides students with seed funding, mentoring, and networking opportunities.

Previously, Sam was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard University's Operation Impact. Before that, Sam devoted more than a decade to developing innovative programs for undergraduate and graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sam is involved in several Boston area startups in the space of innovation, community engagement, and immersive storytelling and holds a patent for a hardware/software device that detects free-fall and deploys an airbrake for drones.

SUSAN CHALMERS-GAUVIN

Susan Chalmers-Gauvin is a strategic, results-driven leader with over 25 years of management experience. Ms. Chalmers-Gauvin is the Co-Founder and CEO Atlantic Ballet Atlantique Canada and has been responsible for the strategic and financial development of the Company since its establishment in 2001.

Ms. Chalmers-Gauvin actively pursues innovative partnerships including collaborations with the education, ICT, health and social sectors and has led multi-stakeholder community engagement initiatives at the provincial, regional and national levels. She has used art as a platform for civic engagement on violence against women, youth retention, downtown revitalization, immigration diversity and inclusion, and digital transformation. She has 16 years of experience working with Wolastoq and M’kmaq communities in the Atlantic region.

She received the TOP 50 CEO awards by Atlantic Business Magazine in 2023 and 2015, The Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medals (2022), the Meritorious Service Decoration (Civil Division) in 2021 and the Order of New Brunswick (2017). She was designated one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women Top 100 in 2013. She received an Honourary Doctor of Letters from University of New Brunswick (2012).