[Virtual] CMA Marketing Week: CMAfutureproof, presented by LG2

Esther Benzie
President & CEO, Canadian Marketing Association 

Esther Benzie is President and CEO of the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA). With more than 30 years in marketing leadership roles, she has helped build and transform some of Canada’s most recognized brands. Esther spent over two decades at Procter & Gamble before joining CIBC, where she led the global relaunch of the CIBC brand. She has experience with professional associations and most recently worked as a marketing consultant and executive coach. Esther is passionate about advancing the marketing profession, developing marketing talent, and helping marketers drive meaningful business and societal impact across Canada. She holds an MBA and is a Chartered Marketer and trained board director.

Alan Chaffe, PhD
Associate Director, Economic Research, Signal49 Research

Dr. Alan Chaffe is an Associate Director of Economic Research at Signal49 Research, where he leads custom research initiatives and provides strategic insight on key issues affecting Canadian organizations and public policy. Previously, Alan served as an economics instructor and teaching professor at the University of Victoria and held senior economist roles at Statistics Canada and the B.C. Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation. He has authored numerous research papers and book chapters on topics including economic impact assessment, program evaluation, labour markets, consumer prices, economic forecasting, and adult education and leadership.

Keera Hart
Senior Vice President, Public Relations, Financial Services Sector Lead, Earnscliffe

Keera is a seasoned public relations professional and trusted advisor for clients in the corporate and financial sectors. As senior vice president, Keera supports a variety of clients with strategic positioning, brand and reputation management, custom content creation, media and presentation training, and employee communications. Before joining Earnscliffe, Keera worked at a boutique financial communications firm where she developed and executed campaigns and strategies for clients across sectors, including asset management firms, mortgage brokers, and financial technology applications.  Keera holds a post-graduate certificate in public relations and corporate communications from Centennial College and a Bachelor of Psychology degree from York University.

Kerri Dawson, Past-Chair of Board, Canadian Marketing Association 

Kerri is a senior executive with 25+ years of experience in retail marketing, product management, sales, and digital commercialization. Most recently, she was Canadian Head of Digital Commercialization for Retail Banking and Wealth Management at HSBC Bank Canada, where she led teams using digital platforms and data to drive customer acquisition, engagement, and ROI on digital investments.  Previously, as Vice President at LCBO, she led Marketing, Data & Insights, and CRM/Loyalty, playing a key role in the organization’s digital transformation, including launching a new e-commerce platform, improved mobile app, and in-store digital strategy. 

Kerri is a past Chair of Board for the Canadian Marketing Association and served in multiple board committee leadership roles over six years.

Now retired, she is supporting a family health matter and enjoys having time for mentorship, community involvement, and sharing her passion for wine and beer education with appreciative friends.

For your message to work, it has to be seen first. That’s a real challenge when three out of four Gen Zers see advertising as intrusive and have mastered the art of skipping, blocking and scrolling past brands. Yet this audience can’t be ignored: in the coming years, Gen Z will outnumber Boomers. So how do you talk to them without making them run away?

Together, Verity, Francis and Alexis will share golden rules for communicating with Gen Z, breaking down what actually earns (and keeps) their attention. Through concrete case studies from Canada and around the world, they’ll explore what makes young audiences instantly swipe away, what actually earns their attention in the feed, and how brands can build long-term relationships instead of relying on one-off stunts.

Francis Mantha, Lead Strategist, LG2

Alexis Clovis, Art Director, LG2

Verity Badov, Creative Copywriter, LG2

Sean Stanleigh
Director of Globe Content Studio, The Globe and Mail

Sean Stanleigh is Director of Globe Content Studio, the content-marketing division of The Globe and Mail. His team blends audience data with journalistic intuition and experience to craft great storytelling on behalf of brands, positioning them as thought leaders with influential audiences across multiple platforms. Sean's background is rooted in journalism, and he has held senior editing roles at The Globe and the Toronto Star in disciplines that include national, foreign and local news, business, and entertainment. He has a keen interest in entrepreneurship as former co-founder of a networking events company. Sean was co-chair of The Globe’s innovation lab and past host of its Industry Interrupted podcast. He participates as a judge in business competitions, and he regularly appears at events as a host, speaker and moderator.

AI is transforming all aspects of business decision-making – creating game-changing opportunities for us in marketing. Successful campaigns are dependent on the quality of the data behind them. In this session, Jan Kestle, President of Environics Analytics, highlights what is required for responsible, effective innovation now and next.

Jan shares why trusted, privacy-first, Canadian data are a critical advantage in an AI-driven world. And it has never been more important or possible to measure impacts and learn what really works. Strong data, consumer-protecting privacy practices and great tech (built for Canada) help organizations move faster with confidence.

Jan Kestle, President & Founder, Environics Analytics

President and Founder of Environics Analytics, Jan Kestle, has been a leader in data and analytics for over five decades. An expert in using statistics and mathematics to solve social and business challenges, she has worked with hundreds of organizations in all sectors to support their data-driven decision-making. Jan is a former member of the Canadian Statistics Advisory Council and is the Dean’s Advisory Council Emeritus for the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University, and on the advisory boards of the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, and the Morrissette School of Entrepreneurship at the University of Western Ontario. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in applied mathematics from Western University and is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).

The customer journey is more fragmented than ever. With endless content, new channels, and rising expectations, how do marketers truly influence behaviour—not just add noise? This session cuts through the hype to explore what personalization really delivers, from mass campaigns and community-building to 1:1 experiences powered by AI. We’ll examine how personalization is reshaping creativity, media, budgets, and marketing fundamentals—and ask what audiences actually want in an era of infinite choice.

David Brown, Founder and President , Mindshape

David Brown is Founder and President of Mindshape, an independent marketing and advertising agency recognized for delivering transformative brand and advertising strategies. As a respected agency leader, executive advisor, and thought leader, David helps organizations unlock growth through sharper positioning, stronger customer connection, and insight-driven marketing that reflects the demands of today’s personalized marketplace.

Justin Haberman, Vice President, Client Services, Elemental

Justin Haberman is Vice President of Client Services at Elemental, a fully integrated advertising agency, and a member of the CMA Brand Council. He has spent over two decades helping brands grow by balancing performance with emotional connection. With an MBA in Strategic Marketing, Justin brings both analytical rigour and creative perspective to conversations about how the most successful brands stay human in an increasingly data-driven world.

Gena Sherwood Lead Client Partner, Pinterest Canada

Gena is Lead Client Partner at Pinterest Canada, bringing years of experience driving results across industries including CPG, Telco, Tech, and Financial Services. A passionate community builder, she pioneered Pinterest’s international ERG expansion and now serves as the Global Lead for the Blackboard ERG, in addition to her role as Pinterest Canada’s Philanthropy Impact Ambassador. Prior to Pinterest, she managed cereal brand marketing at General Mills and held positions at Microsoft and Google.

Corby Fine, Vice President, Digital Marketing, IGM Financial

Tucker Bryant
Innovation Keynote Speaker | Renowned Poet

After spending a decade alongside world-class innovators at institutions like Stanford and Google, Tucker Bryant discovered an unexpected solution to help leaders and their teams unlock their potential for transformation — the outlook of a poet. As a renowned poet and sought-after keynote speaker, Bryant challenges leaders to unlock growth by Turning the Page™ on the status quo and unlock creativity, collaboration, and competitive advantage in the areas of business that matter most.

Bryant is an entrepreneur and innovation strategist. After nurturing his craft at Stanford University, he went on to become a lead product marketing manager at Google. This was where he discovered the potential of applying creative tools that poets have relied on for millennia to the corporate world to drive innovative leadership. After a decade in Silicon Valley, Tucker left Google to help leaders worldwide overcome universal barriers to change and unlock innovative leadership and sustainable growth.

Bryant’s innovative keynotes blend poetic storytelling with business insight that is tailored to each of his audiences’ business context. His performances have garnered millions of views online and been featured at TEDx, The New York Times, and dozens of other organizations across the globe. Bryant has shared the stage with such influential individuals as Mark Cuban, Malcolm Gladwell, Gary Vaynerchuk, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and Mel Robbins, as well as governors and executives from scores of Fortune 500 companies

AI-powered search, chatbots and agents are reshaping how consumers discover, evaluate and choose products and services online.

AI-generated summaries now appear before traditional blue links. Product comparisons and price checks increasingly happen inside tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. In some cases, transactions are beginning to occur without a website visit, sales call or e-commerce checkout.

The history of digital consumer behaviour suggests that convenience wins, and AI-powered search and shopping are delivering that. The question isn’t whether this shift will happen, it’s whether your brand will be visible when it does.

This session explores what’s changing and what to do about it. You’ll learn how large language models are compressing buyer journeys, shifting brand visibility from rankings to citations and moving decision-making into AI-powered environments, including emerging agent-driven experiences. Members of CMA’s AI Committee will outline structural shifts redefining digital discovery and share practical strategies to help brands remain visible, trusted and commercially competitive as AI continues to reshape the web.

Chris McLellan, Marketing Consultant, Friends Electric

Chris McLellan is Principal at Friends Electric, a GTM consultancy focused on marketing knowledge bases, AI optimization (AIO), event marketing, content engines, marketing agents, and custom-built lead magnets. In 2016, he founded AskAI.org, a nonprofit dedicated to showcasing Canadian AI innovation and helping professionals navigate AI in the workplace through interviews, short videos, and free guides. A multi-time founding marketer at startups backed by Sequoia, Union Square Ventures, and Sir Richard Branson, Chris also volunteers at the Digital Governance Council of Canada as co-author and Technical Committee Lead for the Data Collaboration Framework, a Canadian and international digital innovation standard.

Sheng Sinn – Chief Client Officer, WTD

Sheng Sinn is Chief Client Officer at WTD – Canada’s leading CRM and personalization agency. Founded with a focus on engineering modern marketing systems, WTD has built a reputation for combining deep CRM expertise, advanced marketing technology, and Agentic AI to deliver measurable growth for ambitious brands., advanced marketing technology, and applied AI to deliver measurable growth for ambitious brands.

Sheng is a deep believer that all marketing aspires to be empathetic, timely and 1:1 and has spent his entire career spanning mass, digital, social, XM, promotions, CRM, and martech working to deliver those experiences with an ever-evolving toolkit.

Alexis Zamkow, IBM Global Marketing & Experience Transformation Lead

As a member of IBM’s Global Marketing & Experience Transformation offering team, Alexis guides clients in the application of leading technology platforms, process, and AI/GenAI solutions to deliver impactful experiences and optimal ROI. Alexis brings a wealth of knowledge in leading complex data-driven transformations from both an agency and client perspective across industries. As an advocate for the responsible use of AI to elevate customers and employee experience, Alexis works with enterprise clients to understand, and activate solutions for AI Search as a critical enabler for the future.