Our History
Speakers featured in the past
Past Event Highlights
All Our Past Speakers
Samar Singla
Samar Singla is a serial entrepreneur and a physicist by education.
He has previously worked as a researcher at IBM and CERN. He is one of the industry’s foremost speakers.
Samar founded Jugnoo in 2014 with the vision to transform the Indian auto-rickshaw sector.
Apart from Jugnoo, Samar also founded Click-Labs, a profitable SaaS technology solution provider of Business suit called ‘JungleWorks’.
He is an avid traveler and amateur photographer who likes to document the everyday world. Samar’s personal website calls him ‘Someone somewhere in a garage’ which clearly portrays his love and penchant for building new things.
Sujan Patel
Sujan Patel is the founder of Mailshake, a sales engagement software used by 20,000 sales and marketing professionals. He also owns 8 other SaaS companies under the Ramp Ventures brand.
Sujan has over 15 years of marketing experience and has led the digital marketing strategy for companies like Salesforce, Mint, Cafepress and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies.
Hilary Callaghan
HRebel founder Hilary Callaghan exists at the intersection of productivity, diversity, recruitment and hiring. Her background isn’t a linear story of X then Y; she has led a career that has seen her building teams and systems for Optus, HOOQ, GWA and dozens of other major companies and tech startups.
At HRebel, Hilary’s mission is to use her knowledge to create scalable strategies that can reimagine what it means to be an employer and an employee by designing tools that combine bottom line business outcomes with a truly people centric, inclusive DNA.
They aim to transform the way you manage and build your team, your productivity and the future of your culture, through a shared focus on storytelling and on people centred decision making and structures.
Hilary is also a Senior Tech Recruiter at Canva.
Andrey Khusid
Andrey Khusid is building the world’s most popular online collaborative whiteboard platform. Currently, he’s the Founder and CEO of rapidly growing Miro, funded by Accel and Iconiq.
Miro has over 15 million registered whiteboarding fans and is used by 95% of Fortune 100 companies for brainstorming & ideation, research & design, agile ceremonies and many more. Prior to Miro, Andrey was the Founder of Vitamin Group, an award winning creative agency.
Steph Smith
Steph Smith is the Head of Trends, Product Manager at The Hustle.
Trends is the Hustle’s latest product with 6000+ paying subscribers. Trends helps business operators stay ahead of the curve by understanding upcoming market trends and how they can pounce on them.
Leah Sutton
Leah Sutton is the SVP, Global Human Resources at Elastic, a global open source software company, and responsible for all facets of HR from recruitment to business partnership.
Prior to Elastic, Leah was the Senior Director of HR at Plum Organics where she was responsible for supporting the leadership team through a period of high growth and change post-acquisition by Campbell Soup Company. Prior to working at Plum, Leah spent five years with Bloom Energy, a Silicon Valley based clean tech company. During her tenure at Bloom, she held various HR roles, including a stint in Bangalore as the HR Leader for India and Asia Pacific. She was also a consultant at Deloitte and a Peace Corp Volunteer in West Africa. Leah holds a BA in Anthropology & African Studies from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Sam Pessin
Sam Pessin is Founder & CEO of Remote Year.
Remote Year delivers community-focused travel programs to remote workers worldwide.
Sam Pessin grew up all over the world with his family. His father was a foreign correspondent and because of this, Sam lived in Beijing, Jerusalem, London, and the U.S. Sam went to University of Michigan for undergrad, and then worked at Bain & Co for three years. Sam sought out international experiences, and took the opportunity to transfer to Bain’s Mumbai office for six months. About a year later, Sam started Remote Year with one of his best friends, and has been focused on that ever since.
Milena Berry
Milena is the co-founder and CEO of PowerToFly.com – the fastest growing global platform connecting women with companies that value work-life integration, female-friendly benefits, equal pay for equal work and environments where they thrive. Milena’s on a mission to partner with top 100 brands to bring them a slew of diversity solutions provided through the PowerToFly platform.
Milena was born in Bulgaria and moved to New York City a week before September 11th to pursue a Masters at ITP NYU. Prior to co-founding PowerToFly, Milena has contributed to numerous startups, and had a blast being the CTO of Avaaz.org where she oversaw the technology to support growth to over 30 million members.
Milena is a frequent commentator on how companies can diversify their teams, especially in tech. Her work for PowerToFly has been recognized in Business Insider and she was named Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business in 2015. Her biggest accomplishments are her four children who constantly push her to rethink what work-life balance means.
Sagar Khatri
Sagar Khatri is a young and dynamic professional and CEO of Multiplier, a SaaS-based global employment solution that was founded in 2020.
Having worked with global brands, he hones rich and well-rounded experience in Regional P&L Management, International Expansion, Fundraising and M&A. He has been a part of the leadership team at Hmlet and worked in deal advisory at Nomura prior to that.
He hails from India and is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay – one of the most prestigious universities in India.
Johnny Boufarhat
Located in London, Johnny Boufarhat is the Founder and CEO of Hopin, an online events platform that’s redefining virtual events and connecting people around the globe. The platform has been used by well-recognized organizations including the United Nations, NATO, Dell, Slack, CNBC, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and many more. Boufarhat started Hopin in 2019 and in less than a year, scaled the company to over 3.5 million users and 50,000+ organizations hosting events. Bourfarhat developed the concept for Hopin to bring the intrinsic value of live in-person events to a virtual venue. Hopin replicates the dynamism of live events by providing interactive sessions, breakout rooms, and randomized pairing for networking. The company recently closed its $125 million Series B this November. Johnny graduated from The University of Manchester with a Bachelor of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering with Management in 2016.
When Johnny is not working on Hopin, he is an avid food and health enthusiast and enjoys keeping up with world news.
Morgan Legge
Morgan is the engine that keeps a 35 person, multilingual, 11 timezone, non-hierarchical remote team running smoothly…….. Somehow.
During her time at Convert.com, she’s transitioned the team onto management via Holacracy; implemented a progressive employee perks program; and built an in-sync, accepting, and enthusiastic company culture in an async, fully remote, fast-paced, work environment.
With 20 years of experience in team and project management, and a lifetime of experience in “making challenging things work”— Morgan’s become an advocate for building remote teams that work together, work for the greater good, and are excited “show up” to work in the first place.
Marcie Murray
Marcie Murray is the Global Director of Support at Shopify. She joined Shopify in 2012 on the Guru team where she had the opportunity to speak to merchants everyday. Since that time she’s been an integral part in taking the Shopify Support team remote across Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. Marcie and her team collectively support all of Shopify’s merchants around the world across social channels, chats, phones and email.
Marcie has a homegrown spirit of entrepreneurship that developed early while helping her parents run their business. It is through that lens of the business owner that Marcie relentlessly pursues Shopify’s vision of world class quality and value for all merchants.
Shopify Support has been remote first, for the past 4 years. It grew from a small team of 20 remote employees in a city an hour from our headquarters, to a team of well over 1000 in 4 distinct countries around the world. It’s important to note as well that these are employees of Shopify, not outsourced support. Shopify Support is remote. It’s built into the DNA of every new member of their workforce, and has been a point of pride within the company that makes them different. “This difference is something that they are extremely proud of”, says Marcie.
Shopify has experienced tremendous growth in the past few years, and it’s been a challenge for the remote support team to keep up with that pace. Marcie has been instrumental in the scaling of this global team to meet the demand of this growth and will be sharing that experience, as well as the challenges that come along with that scaling.
