Sam Jacobs – Founder of the Revenue Collective, Host of the Sales Hacker podcast
(Panelist)

Sam Jacobs is a successful and well known figure in the US tech community.  Sam has spent the last 16 years in New York building high-growth companies in commercial leadership positions including Gerson Lehrman Group, Axial, Livestream, The Muse, and Behavox.  Over that time, he’s helped those companies achieve an average revenue growth rate of 47% and raise over $500M in institutional investment.

In 2016, Sam founded Revenue Collective to help his peers and colleagues share best practices and insights.  Revenue Collective in a private membership for commercial executives and has 1600% year over year and is quickly approaching 1,000 Members in over 20 global cities around the world. Sam also founded and hosts the Sales Hacker Podcast where he regularly interviews thought leaders, generating over 30,000 downloads per month across his audience.Sam lives in the West Village of New York with his wife and philanthropist, Camille Zarsky, and two rescue dogs, Walter and Oscar, both of whom are very good boys.

Kathleen Roberge – Chief Revenue Officer, Rocketrip
(Panelist)

Currently the Chief Revenue Officer at Rocketrip, Kathleen has spent 20+ years growing technology companies through her focus on delivering strong go-to-market strategies, building demand generation engines, opening channels of revenue streams in new markets and verticals and developing customer success/account management programs.  Prior to joining Rocketrip, Kathleen spent 5 years at Aventri where she was the Chief Revenue Officer leading a global sales and account management organization resulting in an increase in revenue by 600%.

Before Aventri, Kathleen was the Chief Business Development Officer at Compushare helping take the company to a successful acquisition through her strong leadership of sales and marketing.  Earlier in her career, she served as the Executive VP of Sales and Marketing at Perimeter, one of the largest start-up success stories in CT. A graduate from Fairfield University, Kathleen contributes regularly to thought leadership participating in 20-30 speaking engagements annually, publishing dozens of articles and blogs and teaching several sales and leadership courses at local universities.

Butch Langlois – President, North America, Vend
(Panelist)

Butch Langlois is the President, North America at Vend, the cloud based retail point of sale and inventory management system running in more than 25,000 stores around the world. Butch leads strategy, sales, and operations for Vends fastest growing region, with a team of close to 100 at Vend’s North American headquarters in Toronto. Butch is also the Chairman and Founding Member of the Toronto Revenue Collective, an organization designed to support the professional development of revenue leaders at high growth companies and facilitate the sharing of best practices. An accountant by trade, before joining Vend, Butch was the CFO for the internet division at Rogers Communication, a publicly traded Canadian telecom company with more than 25,000 employees. Prior to Rogers, his decades of experience in high growth startups includes senior roles at VC funded companies like comparative shopping site BuyBuddy.com, e-commerce platform Truition, interactive travel mapping platform PlanetEye and real estate listing platform Zoocasa. In his younger years Butch was a successful Junior A hockey player and touring musician, only getting accounting designation in case the “music” thing didn’t work out.

Stephen Defina – Vice-President of Revnue, Clearbanc
(Panelist)

I am very fortunate to have worked with inspiring mentors and high performing teams that have empowered me to grow as a leader. As a result the teams that I have been part of have had success scaling in competitive and adverse conditions. Building growth models and coaching new leaders to be the best in class is what motivates me everyday. And I am grateful to have been part of building revenue models all across the U.S., Canada and South East Asia over the past 15 years.

Asad Zaman – Partner and MD, Sales Talent Agency
(Moderator)

As one of the rising stars in North America’s recruitment industry, Asad has excelled as an executive recruiter, strategist and leader. Over the last 3 years Asad has built Sales Talent Agency’s fastest growing division focused exclusively on executive, leadership and senior sales and marketing placements; and in 2017 and 2018 they placed the most sales and marketing leaders in Canada. Since joining STA, Asad has worked closely with C-level executives at fast growth technology companies to help them develop and define their sales hiring practices. Currently Asad is a Partner at Sales Talent Agency and the Managing Director of their Executive Search, Technical Sales and Professional Services divisions.