Agenda

The Future-Proof Leader: Strategic Foresight in an Age of Disruption

The world is changing faster than most organizations can plan for, and the professionals who thrive will be the ones who learn to lead through uncertainty rather than wait for it to pass. In this session, futurist and author Ramy Nassar equips leaders with practical foresight tools to anticipate disruption, exercise sound judgment, and turn volatility into strategic advantage.

Read more about The Future-Proof Leader

Key takeaways:

Develop practical foresight skills to assess emerging changes and risks
A clearer understanding of the role CPAs play in technological advances and organizational resilience

AI and the Future of the CPA Profession

This interactive workshop moves beyond the headlines to explore what AI really means for CPAs, drawing on the collective knowledge and experience in the room. Through facilitated discussion and peer exchange, participants will examine how AI is already reshaping their work, where human judgment remains irreplaceable, and what a thoughtful first step forward looks like. This session is designed for honest conversation, not easy answers.

Read more about AI and the Future of the CPA Profession

Key takeaways:

Distinguish between tasks best supported by AI and those that continue to rely on professional judgment and expertise
Identify realistic, informed next steps for incorporating AI in tasks while preserving trust, accuracy and quality

Trust Over Control: Redefining Accountability in the Modern CFO Role

As the CFO role continues to evolve, technical excellence and operational oversight are no longer sufficient. Today’s most effective CFOs are trusted strategic advisors, shaping decisions, influencing direction, and leveraging engaged, motivated teams to drive performance across the organization. Yet, many leaders struggle to step out of the details without feeling they are losing control.

Read more about Trust Over Control

Key takeaways:

Evaluate the misconception that accountability requires micromanagement, and apply trust-based leadership practices that enable control through clarity rather than oversight
Develop strategies to build engaged, motivated, and accountable teams by fostering trust, empowerment, and shared ownership of outcomes
Redefine the CFO role as a strategic advisor by leveraging trust and influence to shape decisions and drive performance in a fast-paced environment

Refresh and Recharge Your Network

Don’t really like networking? A little rusty after COVID and work-from-home? Like to find more time to stay connected with your network? Want to grow your network? How about feeling more confident walking into a room full of strangers? For over two decades Gayle has been teaching people around the world how to do this!

Read more about Refresh and Recharge Your Network

This session offers a tactical and practice toolkit of networking skills, everything from starting a conversation with strangers to effective follow-up in a time-strapped world. Gayle will help you build a more strategic network and create higher-trust relationships. The bonus of this session is that participants will jump start their networking skills by just attending!

Key takeaways:

Immediately apply networking skills at the Infinite Conference and beyond
Share and develop networking skills with those you manage and work with

AI in Action - How CPAs are leveraging AI while managing risk

AI is rapidly reshaping the accounting and finance profession, and CPAs are at the forefront of its adoption. This panel will discuss firsthand experience of integrating AI into CPA's work. Moderated by Marc Low, the conversation brings together Christine Fung, Jennifer Chu, Rajveer Hundal, and Rocky Ozaki, each offering perspectives from in‑house finance, assurance, and organizational transformation.

Read more about AI in Action

Through moderated discussion and candid insights, panelists will share how AI is being applied in real‑world settings, the challenges encountered, and the practical steps taken to build capability and drive value. Participants will gain a grounded understanding of how AI adoption unfolds in practice and what it means for the evolving role of CPAs.

Key takeaways:

Learn how CPAs are applying AI in day‑to‑day finance and accounting work
Identify common challenges and practical approaches to AI adoption
Explore how the CPA role is evolving in an AI‑enabled environment

Tactical Influence: The Silent Language of Leadership

In high-stakes environments, the most effective leaders are not the loudest or the fastest to react. They are the ones who create clarity, project confidence, and maintain control when everything around them is uncertain.

Read more about Tactical Influence

This interactive workshop introduces a tactical framework for composure under pressure. Participants will learn how to regulate their presence, read shifting dynamics, and respond with intention in moments that test credibility and leadership.

Because leadership is not proven when things are easy. Leadership is revealed when pressure is high and everyone is watching how you respond.

This workshop reveals how composure becomes your competitive edge through the four principles of C.A.L.M.

C – Confident

Learn to project presence and act decisively under pressure when uncertainty creates noise

A – Adaptable

Strengthen your ability to interpret emotional and situational cues and pivot in real time to influence outcomes

L – Likable

Learn to create a connection without sacrificing credibility

M – Measured

Control your pace, your tone, and your reactions. Lead with composure so your influence lands without force

Organizational AI Adoption: CPA's Strategic Role

The CPA designation has long elevated your competency and credibility, but how might your role evolve in a world being driven by AI? Your training, certification and mindset are exactly what’s needed to drive responsible, scalable and value-adding AI.

Read more about Organizational AI Adoption

In this session, Rocky will share his company’s playbook for AI adoption that has been used by hundreds of AI champions and companies across North America, demystify “innovation accounting” and inspire you to want to accelerate AI adoption in whatever environment you currently work in. This is the must-attend workshop if you are serious about future-proofing your career while driving the AI journey for your company.

Key takeaways:

How your CPA designation makes you an obvious choice to lead AI adoption in your organization (in industry or public practice)
Understanding the “what and why” behind “innovation accounting”
The top 5 AI acceleration best practices that you can own starting next week

The Currency of Trust

In a profession built on accuracy, judgment, and credibility, trust is critical. It influences decisions, shapes relationships, and determines whether your message moves forward or is quietly questioned.

Yet most professionals focus on what they say, while missing the signals that determine how it’s received. In high-stakes environments, people don’t just evaluate your data. They evaluate you.

Read more about The Currency of Trust

This keynote introduces a practical, field-tested framework to strengthen trust in real time:

1. Display Trust with Intention

Align your body language, tone, and presence to project calm confidence and credibility, especially under pressure

2. Decode What’s Not Being Said

Recognize the nonverbal and behavioral cues that reveal hesitation, agreement, or resistance, so you can respond with precision

3. Detect Risk Before It Escalates

Identify subtle behavioral shifts that signal misalignment or uncertainty, allowing you to address concerns early and protect outcomes

Resilience And High-Stakes: Harnessing the Opportunity Of The Moment

In an era of transformational change, leaders and workplace culture are impacted in multiple ways. Some impacts are an acceleration of pre-existing trends, and some are new. But one thing is clear – many of these changes are far-reaching.

Read more about Resilience And High-Stakes

In this presentation, Dr. Pelletier brings together her experience as executive coach and practicing work psychologist with current research to challenge your assumptions and help your organization understand these changes at the individual, team and organizational levels.

More importantly, she highlights how organizations and individuals can manage the pressures of major projects and high-profile assignments. By approaching this moment in time with curiosity, agility and renewed energy and purpose, we can not only adapt to change, we can emerge more resilient.

Understand the links between your mindset, resilience and mental health.
Distinguish what factors contribute to mental agility and health, as well as to fatigue and burnout.
Align your strategic plan for the power of resilience based on strategies that work.

The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health

In this workshop, which complements her award-winning book “The Resilience Plan”, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier combines her vast expertise in leadership psychology, workplace mental health, and business to spotlight the art of crafting resilience strategically. This session isn’t just about recovering; it’s about reinventing oneself with style, insight, and a plan.

Read more about The Resilience Plan

Dr. Pelletier debunks common myths that often hinder personal and professional growth. She introduces an innovative visual model that vividly illustrates the concept of strategic resilience, highlighting the interplay between various life spheres. This model isn’t just informative — it’s a game-changer, providing a clear roadmap to resilience.

Key takeaways include:

Embracing Proactive Resilience: Dive deep into what it means to approach resilience as an ongoing, strategic endeavor rather than a reactive response
Crafting Your Resilience Blueprint: Discover the essential elements for developing a custom resilience plan that resonates with your unique circumstances
Harnessing Your Context: Uncover the critical role context plays in your resilience journey and learn how to navigate the interconnectedness of your personal and professional worlds to maximize your resilience

The Ethics of Trust: How Language Shapes Influence in Financial Leadership

Ethics is not only reflected in the decisions we make but also in the process of how those decisions are made and ultimately communicated. The structure and framing of language can shape perception, influence judgment, and either build or potentially erode trust. This session explores the structure and language that form our communication, helping leaders recognize hidden risks, avoid unintended bias, and communicate with clarity and integrity.

Read more about The Ethics of Trust

Key takeaways:

Explore how language and communication structures influence ethical judgment, trust, and decision-making
Apply ethical communication principles to ensure transparency, fairness, and accountability when gathering and conveying information
Navigate potential power dynamics to engage teams using language and structures that build trust
Consider practical tools to align everyday communication with both ethical standards and trust-building leadership

Leading Productive Teams

High-performing leaders unlock team productivity by enabling high-value work, setting clear priorities, promoting accountability and empowering others to deliver. In this session, participants explore practical approaches to increasing team productivity without introducing unnecessary complexity or micromanagement.

Read more about Leading Productive Teams

The session discusses how leaders can set clear expectations, promote accountability, and reduce common sources of friction that undermine focus and collaboration. Participants will gain practical methods on aligning individual strengths with team goals, establishing norms around communication and responsiveness, and creating an environment where people can do their best work consistently. The session is designed to support leaders at any level who want to improve execution, engagement, and results.

Key takeaways:

Promote accountability without micromanaging
Set team standards around email management, responsiveness and focus
Align individual strengths with team and organizational goals

What Clients Value Most

For many CPAs, the sales function isn’t a comfortable one. The profession attracts people who thrive on precision and trust, and the traditional model of business development—convincing someone to choose you—can feel like it runs against those instincts. So how do you build client relationships, without it ever feeling like a pitch?

Read more about What Clients Value Most

This session introduces a values-based approach that reframes business development entirely. When you understand what matters most to a client, you stop trying to convince them and start giving them more of what they value. Participants will work through scenarios from their own practices and apply values data to client relationships at every stage, from first conversation to long-term retention.

Key takeaways:

A values-based client brief to apply to an existing relationship or a new business development conversation
A decision-making framework for using values data in any client context to shift business development from pitching to providing
Shared insights and approaches from CPA peers in different roles and sectors who are working through the same challenges

The Play-Big Mindset

Embrace the strategies elite performers use every day. Optimize your mindset to perform at your best when it matters most.

The session examines how leaders and professionals can navigate uncertainty, manage pressure, and challenge self‑limiting beliefs that undermine performance. Participants will learn practical techniques to reframe limiting thoughts, strengthen confidence, and apply visualization to drive excellence. Designed for real‑world application, this session equips participants to perform with clarity and intention, even in demanding or high‑stakes situations.

Read more about The Play-Big Mindset

Key takeaways:

Thrive under uncertainty and pressure
Enhance your confidence and visualize yourself living up to your full potential
Overcome fear, reframe self-limiting beliefs, and embrace the power of optimism to fuel your results

Tax Update - BC and Federal Budgets 2026

The world of tax is constantly changing, and government budgets provide advance notice of pending tax legislation changes. This session will provide a high-level overview of the announcements made in the BC Budget (issued March 2026) and the Federal Budget (to be issued in Fall 2026) that impact corporate and personal taxation. This is not intended to provide detailed coverage of the proposed tax changes because final legislation will not yet have been released; however, attendees will leave this session with an awareness of pending changes and any preparation strategies available.

Human Behavior on a Spreadsheet

As experienced CPAs retire and the pipeline of new CPAs narrow, leaders are being asked to do something their training never covered: motivate, retain, and inspire other human beings. Trying to hold everything together isn’t a technology issue, it’s a human issue. And human values are the answer.

Read more about Human Behavior on a Spreadsheet

In this keynote, human values research pioneer, David Allison, draws on a million surveys to reveal what matters most to the people you are leading: what drives their decisions, and what they need to feel in order to stay engaged, loyal, and believe their work is meaningful. For analytically trained professionals, this session presents hard data about soft skills. David will present a structured, evidence-based way to understand what matters most to the humans on your team, turning human behavior into something you can put on a spreadsheet.

Key takeaways:

Identify core values that motivate and drive engagement and retention in today’s workforce
A values-based approach to understanding people that is both more accurate and more actionable than anything built on job title, seniority, or demographic assumptions
A repeatable framework to incorporate values data to leadership decisions, including hiring and retention, culture-building and team communication