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Speaking & Programs

Panelist, fellow, delegate

2024–2026

Youngest speaker in the conference's history.

A handful of stages and programs, and what each one actually asked of me.

I say yes to rooms where I am the least experienced person present, because that is where I learn fastest and where being wrong in public costs the least. It is also the only reliable way I have found to act before feeling ready, which is a habit I would rather keep than lose.

IPN Summit 2026, Houston. I spoke as a featured panelist on the founders track about building Finlo, in front of 6,000 industry professionals from 15 countries, and was the youngest speaker in the conference's history. Standing backstage next to people with decades of experience I did not have was its own kind of pressure. Going on anyway, and having it go well, is one of the moments that has stuck with me most.

Web Summit Vancouver 2026. We were selected for the Startup Program and ran a booth in front of 700 investors and 20,000 professionals. It is also where I felt the most out of place I have ever felt at one of these. Watching our product hold up against far better-funded competitors settled that feeling more effectively than anything I could have told myself beforehand.

TEDEd Conference, Vancouver. I launched XChange's web app to 800 participants and ran a booth teaching students and parents about the financial literacy gap. This was the moment XChange stopped being a project we believed in and became something strangers were willing to pay for, in person, in front of me.

BETA Camp 2024. I led a team of six building and pitching XChange to three investors in front of a public audience of 200, finished first among 50 startups, and received the leadership award. It is also where an advisor told me bluntly that six equal voices with no clear leadership would not survive what came next, and where my own co-founders voted me in as CEO. He was right, and it took me another year to fully believe him.

Aga Khan Foundation Canada Youth Leadership Academy 2025. A fully funded five-day program in Toronto, one of forty students nationally, working on global citizenship, the SDGs, and a youth action project with direct mentorship from the foundation's CEO. It was the only one of these rooms where nobody was selling anything, which I noticed.

The pattern across all of them is the same. Being underqualified for a room is uncomfortable for about ten minutes and useful for years afterward, provided you go in willing to be the one asking questions rather than the one performing.

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