Tobin Ansong is a manager on the central office team at Scotiabank. He works with his team to manage two products: Limit Administration Management System (LAMS) and Risk Adjudication (Ra). LAMS is Bank of Nova Scotia’s internal desktop computer software system. It enables users to access the bank’s market risk limits, change limits, and locate historical limit documents. Ra is a workflow automation tool that helps risk managers track limit requests, like a Trello board.

Claudia Hidou is a culturally versed customer advocate with several years of consulting and start-up experience working with Canadian brands to redesign experiences leveraging service design, business strategy and change management. Currently, in her role as a Health Care Advisor for the Swedish Trade and Invest Council, Claudia helps Swedish health companies that are looking to enter the Canadian market while strongly advocating for knowledge sharing and collaborations between the two countries. Claudia is also Sweden’s representative in Canada for the Nordic Canada Health Initiative, a program supported by Nordic Innovation to assist SMEs entering Canada.

Vladimir Bogdashkin is a management consultant at Novantas Inc. who specializes in bank analytics and distribution strategy. He has advised many C-suite executives on market entry strategies, market identification and indirect value attribution. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the Smith School of Business and a micromasters from Columbia University in business analytics.

He has competed nationally for Canada in paddling, and while in university he was the founder of a pre-portioned ingredient startup that was sold to a local business owner. Currently, Vladimir runs a private equity firm specializing in real estate investments and development with a focus on affordable housing.