October 21 – 24, 2025

Speakers

Learn More About Our Featured Keynote Speakers

FEATURED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Vusi Thembekwayo

World renowned business leader
Main Stage | October 21
Learn More

Erica Dhawan

Award Winning Author
Main Stage | October 22
Learn More

Chris Barton

Founder of Shazam & Tech Investor
Main Stage | October 23
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The DEN Summit 2025

Speaker Application Form

Submission Deadline: February 16th, 2025 11:59 pm MST

Are You Ready to Lead and Inspire?

Apply to speak at The DEN Summit 2025, Canada’s premier entrepreneurship and leadership conference, where forward-thinking innovators, trailblazers, and industry leaders gather to shape the future of business.

Topics of Interest

We are looking for engaging speakers to present on topics that align with our conference themes:

Scaling Your Startup

From financing to operational efficiency, share strategies for scaling to a global enterprise.

Explore how fostering innovation and engagement drives business success.

Highlight innovative approaches to solving social and environmental challenges.

 

Examine how technology is transforming work and how entrepreneurs can thrive.

Provide insights on navigating international markets and cultural differences.

Inspire with lessons on leading effectively in fast-paced environments.

Discuss the critical role of mentorship, funding, and support networks.

Celebrate achievements and tackle challenges to promote gender diversity.

Share compelling stories of perseverance and lessons learned.

Explore trends such as remote work and digital nomadism.

Insights into securing venture capital, crowdfunding, and grants.

Focus on sectors like fintech, health tech, or renewable energy.

Join us for an unforgettable experience filled with dynamic discussions and impactful connections. Share your insights with over 1,250 attendees eager to be inspired by fresh ideas and practical strategies for growth.

This is your chance to engage a captivated audience and expand your executive network. Amplify your impact by contributing to the conversation in meaningful ways at Edmonton’s most prestigious business conference: The DEN Summit!

Apply Today

Use the form below to submit your application, including your proposed topic, relevance, and examples of past speaking engagements.

For questions or assistance, contact info@thedensummit.com

Terms & Conditions: Submission of an application does not guarantee a speaking spot. Selected applicants will be notified by The DEN Summit Program Team.

Thank you for your application to The DEN Summit 2025! We look forward to reviewing your submission.

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Our Sponsors

Featured Speaker

Vusi Thembekwayo

World renowned business leader, speaker and investor

Meet Vusi Thembekwayo; world renowned business leader, speaker and investor who redefines excellence in every endeavor. Founding CEO of award-winning investment firm MyGrowthFund Venture Partners, Co-founder of Club 100 and School of Scale as well as GQ Business Leader in 2020, Vusi’s innovative strategies and profound insights have transformed industries and empowered countless leaders.

Over his 20year career, Vusi has spoken in 6 of the 7 continents. A true global sensation. He is widely trusted by Fortune 500 companies and has been featured on prestigious platforms like CNBC and Bloomberg. He is not just a success story but a force to be reckoned with.

Erica Dhawan

Featured Speaker

Erica Dhawan

Leading Authority on 21st-Century Teamwork, Collaboration, and Innovation

Erica Dhawan is an internationally recognized leading authority, speaker and advisor on 21st-century teamwork, collaboration and innovation. Named as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, she is the author of two bestselling books, Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance.

As we continue to experience an increasingly digital world where work practices are changing blisteringly, Erica shares innovative strategies to unlock the collective power of teams, build a culture of trust across any distance and create authentic engagement to ensure competitiveness.

Rated #1 on the Top Women Keynote Speakers list, Erica frequently appears in the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. Erica speaks on global stages ranging from the World Economic Forum at Davos to the US Army and companies such as Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, and Cisco. She holds degrees from Harvard University, MIT Sloan, and The Wharton School.

Featured Speaker

Chris Barton

Founder and Creator of Shazam, Entrepreneur, Inventor, and Tech Investor

Chris Barton wanted a way to identify songs anywhere he heard them. There wasn’t one – so he invented an app called Shazam. Chris’s creation is nothing short of pure magic. Chris seeks to delight people by using technology to make seemingly impossible ideas come to life. Shazam is just one of them.


It changed the way the world discovers music and laid the groundwork for the consumer AI industry we know today. In addition to creating Shazam, Chris holds twelve patents and played key roles in the early days of Google and Dropbox. Chris’s newest venture, Guard, aims to use AI to detect drowning in swimming pools – a never-before accomplished effort. In his speeches, Chris’s story and storytelling completely captivate audiences. He inspires people to make big things happen in their organizations – to create magic in defiance of the obstacles.


Chris grew up with a French mother and British father – both of whom were university professors. Academics were a struggle for him, and Chris would come to realize he had undiagnosed dyslexia. Chris flipped this challenge on its head and learned to embrace what he now calls his superpower. Chris believes that dyslexia has allowed him to overcome barriers to achieve his many accomplishments. When Chris had the idea to identify music using a mobile phone, no technology existed to achieve his goal. He was told by Professors at MIT and Stanford that the necessary pattern recognition algorithm was impossible. Even after inventing a new technology that didn’t yet exist, he had to build a search engine supercomputer from scratch, create the world’s largest music database, and create a user experience on very basic mobile phones. Did Chris ever think the experts were right? “No way,” he says.


When Chris came up with the idea for Shazam in 2000, it was three years before iTunes and eight years before the App Store. Shazam launched as a phone number that you dialed, and the service struggled, teetering near bankruptcy for six years until the App Store launched in 2008, allowing Shazam to unleash its full potential on the world.
In 2018, Shazam was acquired by Apple for a reported $400 million, making it Apple’s 6th largest acquisition of all-time.


Shazam has been downloaded over 2 billion times and is used each month by over 300 million people, making it one of the world’s most popular apps. It has become an integral part of our everyday lives, with its ability to instantly identify songs and provide a range of music features such as lyrics. Shazam has become a verb, and it has changed the way the world discovers music.

Chris has also played a key role in tech history as a founding member of Google’s Android Partnerships team where he created Android’s mobile operator partnership framework. He also spent four years at Dropbox where he led carrier partnerships and was one of the first 100 people at the company.

Holding 12 patents, including one found within the Google search algorithm, Chris has made significant contributions to the tech industry.
He also invests in a wide range of start
-ups, including artificial intelligence for heart health and inflammatory disease therapeutics.
Today, Chris spends much of his time building his third startup company, Guard, an artificial intelligence system that detects drowning in swimming pools.

When he has time, Chris enjoys speaking at events and sharing lessons learned from his experiences overcoming the impossible.
He inspires people with firsthand stories that highlight key take – aways across technology innovation, persistence, removing friction, and entrepreneurship. Chris gives audiences a new framework for making big things happen. His truly inspirational story motivates them to take action.
Prior to his technology career, Chris was a strategy consultant and earned two master’s degrees from UC Berkeley and Cambridge University.

When he isn’t working or speaking, you can find Chris enjoying the outdoors and spending time with his son, Jude.