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Puica Nitu is a Utility Executive with extensive global experience in all aspects of power systems operation and planning, energy markets, enterprise risk and regulatory oversight.

Puica Nitu combines broad industry knowledge with extensive global experience. She consults on business transformation, increased penetration of renewable resources from intelligent controls and integrated operation and planning.

Ms. Nitu lead complex projects from real time applications to long term planning (power system reliability with planning and operational standards). She is specialized in Digital Transformation, Smart Grids, Renewable integration, Financial Engineering, Energy Markets.

Recent Engagements: Manitoba Hydro International (MHI)

Expert Power System – Oman, Dec 2019- Feb 2020

Partnered with the Sustainable Energy Research Centre, Oman to audit the Dispatch and Scheduling Optimization function performed by the Oman Electricity Transmission Company.

Operations Expert – Guyana 2019

Partnered with MHI and IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) to improve the grid operations and power supply and delivery in Guyana to support the economic and social development of the country and its people.

Advise and solution on real time operation for Generation, Transmission and Distribution. Ms Nitu enjoys a dynamic global activity with management consulting and seminars for utilities worldwide: Oman, MEA, Thailand, SEC, Saudi Arabia, TNB, Malaysia, EDP, Portugal, ESKOM, South Africa, Japan, RENEL, Romania, and others.

Ms. Nitu has been peer reviewer and committee member to NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada), IEEE and Elsevier since late 1980-ies.

Ms. Nitu worked over 25 years with Ontario Power Generation (Revenue $1.2 Billion).

She reviewed NERC and NPCC standards for the Ontario electricity market.

Puica Nitu chaired international conferences, lectured on several continents, published a book, over 25 technical papers and published in the Ontario Journal for Public Policy.

Ms. Nitu delivered successful seminars organized by the Power Engineering Society, IEEE.

With strong leadership capabilities, Puica Nitu has a proven record in bringing people together and speaking at the right level across organizations. Ms. Nitu travelled extensively and worked closely with executives and professionals from Europe, Middle East, South America and South East Asia.

Puica Nitu is a registered member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada.

As VP, Regulatory Affairs, Indy has almost 20 years of experience in the electricity sector in varied positions including strategy, rates, regulatory affairs, government relations, privacy, compliance, strategic business development, corporate planning, and finance. Indy now leads the Regulatory Affairs department for the newly formed Alectra Utilities. Indy is a primary strategist behind developing policy positions for emerging issues from the Ontario Energy Board, Ministry of Energy, and Independent Electricity System Operator. Indy led the submission of a Merger, Amalgamation, Acquisition and Divestiture (MAADS) Application for Alectra’s merger, the largest electricity utility consolidation in Ontario’s history. Indy led the development of evidence for application filings and defense and provided evidence as an expert witness during proceedings. Indy has previously held senior roles at Horizon Utilities, Carbon Capital Management, EPCOR and Direct Energy. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Science and a Master of Business Administration in Finance from McMaster University.

For the past 15 years, Kimberly Laing has gained invaluable experience working in various areas of the energy industry. In her current position, Ms. Laing manages Manitoba Hydro International Ltd.’s (MHI) key accounts and collaborates with hundreds of customers around the world. She has extensive experience working with utilities, asset owners, equipment manufacturers, and consultants to champion and facilitate transmission and distribution projects. Ms. Laing works closely with MHI’s Innovation Team to deliver world-class utility products and innovative solutions to the global market.

Syed Mir is the Vice-President Corporate Services & CIO at London Hydro. He is responsible for Customer Services, Meter Services, Corporate Communications and Information Technology. As an Executive Committee member, he is responsible for “meter to cash” strategy and innovation to deliver customer value.

Syed Mir started his career at Ontario Hydro after graduating from the University of Western Ontario with a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science. He joined London Hydro in 2010 from Ontario Power Generation where he held various Vice-President positions. He served on the Sheridan College Board of Governors from 200-2015. He is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors for Green Button Alliance.

Mark is the Vice President of IT for Waterloo North Hydro, a power distribution company in the Waterloo Region with approximately 57k customers. Over the past ten years Mark has been working with intelligent communities, next generation wireless such fibre networks as well as IoT across utility, critical infrastructure, first responders and municipalities.

By playing a role in critical infrastructure from private, public, education and the utility sector Mark has gained a unique perspective of how communications technology, urban planning and artificial intelligence present an opportunity for substantial change.

Mark has been involved in a variety of early adoption projects such as outdoor wireless ISPs, smart metering rollouts, dark fibre builds, online voting systems as well as the automation of vehicles, wastewater, electric grids and core communications infrastructure. Mark is very passionate about the process of R&D, build it before you buy it, and attempts to stay current in all things security by teaching post-secondary students.

Amir Tajkarimi is the CEO and co-founder of Lexop, a SaaS company that’s changing collections and impacting the lives of tens of thousands of people every day. Before that, he practiced banking and IT law for many years at renowned firms such as IMK, BCF, Heenan Blaikie and the National Bank of Canada. He is a published author and has contributed to the “Doing Business Report” presented by the World Bank Group.

Rafael Etges is a governance, risk management and data security advisor with more than 20 years of advisory experience in Latin and North America, including 7 years directing the national security practice at TELUS and 2 years leading the Toronto-based cyber-security practice at Ernst & Young LLP. Recently, Rafael served as Manulife Financial’s AVP, Global Lead for Information Security Management.

Rafael has subject matter focused on governance, risk and security management, privacy, business continuity, and regulatory compliance. He has assisted numerous clients with governance and strategic direction, implementation of risk and security controls, benchmarking against industry standards (NERC-CIP, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, SOX/B.198, PIPEDA and international privacy laws).

He completed his doctoral research at Henley School of Management (UK) investigating challenges of governance and cyber-security capabilities within corporations and government agencies, focused on data security and privacy breaches, and budgetary allocation to protect sensitive intellectual capital in information risk management.

Rafael has practical experience with program management life cycle, including needs assessments, statements of work, effort estimation and tracking, metrics and KPIs, reporting, delivery and executive communication. He has been trained in effective in Board membership by the Canadian Board Diversity Council and is certified in Effective Negotiation and Change Leadership programs.

Rafael has published papers with ISSA, ISACA and ISC2 professional journals and IT

World/CIO Canada, and has been invited to speak in several conferences and public events.

He was a lead author of the TELUS/Rotman annual report on Canadian Security Practices and a contributor to the EY global security research. Rafael has been interviewed on CTV/W5 about Cyber-Crime in Canada and is a guest lecturer at the Police Senior Leadership program at the Rotman School of Management (Univ. of Toronto).

Rafael has taught business operations and quantitative reasoning for management at the Rotman Executive MBA program (University of Toronto), using statistics to solve managerial problems and improving decision-making based on data analysis. Rafael has also been retained by York University to provide expert advice and review the curriculum of YorkU school of Continuing Studies’ cyber security course.

Benoit (Ben) Marcoux has led over consulting 120 projects in strategic planning, business transformation, marketing and technology, including the management of the largest smart meter installation program in Canada.

Along the way, he has sold, financed, designed and managed systems, programs, services and organizations. His passion is to help utilities, vendors and investors to thrive through the energy transition and the electrification of transportation.

Ben graduated as a professional engineer and went on to complete a master’s degree in Applied Sciences and an MBA.

He often publishes analysis on his professional blog, www.benoit.marcoux.ca/blog. You can also follow him on LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/bmarcoux/, and on Twitter, twitter.com/bmarcoux.

John began his career at Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS – TMX Group), Canada’s central clearinghouse for equities and fixed income securities with over 4 trillion dollars of securities on deposit.

He was responsible for managing all technology services delivered to over 100 Financial industry participants and was a significant contributor to the CDS Interlink Program – a no touch money market/debt trading facility of 120 billion dollars daily. Following completion of the Canadian Securities Course (CSC Honors) and becoming a Registered Representative (IIROC regulated), John joined CDS Innovations where he became Managing Director for business & technology integration, reporting in to the company’s CEO.

Following his tenure at CDS, John worked in New York as Regional Director for Goldman Sachs / New Era of Networks focusing on institutional equity sales & trading, and related trading and post-trade technologies. John went on to join Fidelity National Information Services as Vice-President, where he led both the sales and full delivery of the Mutual Funds Order Management System (OMS) for RBC Royal Bank’s MFDA (1,300 Bank Branches) and IIROC Dealer (1,200 Advisors).

In 2009, John established First North Group. While he continues to focus on the company’s growth, John also leads critical client engagements that involve business transformation and modernization. Current engagements include the TMX Post-Trade Modernization program, where he leads the First North consulting team responsible for TMX’s engagement with industry participants, while serving as advisor to both the industry’s Executive Oversight Committee and TMX’s Clearing Board of Directors.

John is responsible for establishing the Securities Industry Data Exchange (SIDE), a cloud-based securities industry platform, operating in production since August 2015. SIDE delivers trade & post-trade modernization and efficiency to industry participants, including for institutional client allocations, and ETF’s for equities, bonds, and cash related transactions. On May 1, 2018, SIDE launched into production it’s Blockchain application component (SIDEchain). Beginning with legal trade confirmations, SIDE is currently working with Bank owned securities dealers to rollout the platform to their institutional buy-side clients, including global asset managers and pension funds.