Speakers & Facilitators

DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University

Trish Ruebottom is a professor of Human Resources & Management and PhD Program Director at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University. Her research focuses on the transgression of social norms — as a way of being, a source of value, and a force for change. She has explored this dynamic in a wide range of contexts: entrepreneurship and community in the sex industry, gender activism in post-civil war Libya, a rock concert for social change, and businesses rooted in voyeurism; she has also examined the discursive, temporal and emotional forces maintaining the status quo in the media, the clean tech sector, the finance industry, and in everyday work. In doing so, her research struggles with the tension between our need for social norms and our desire to be free of them. She is interested in the experiences of misfits, outsiders and dissenters, how they come together, organize, and create new worlds, and what this tells us about the nature of being human. Her work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Human Relations, and Journal of Business Venturing.

Keynote Address — Day 2, September 22, 2026

Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University

Anna Kim is a William Dawson Scholar, Associate Professor in Management for Sustainability, and Director of Sustainability at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. Her research explores organizing for sustainability through the lens of time-space, with commitment to understanding long-term processes and consequences rooted in places. Through ethnographic and qualitative methods, Anna has collaborated with organizations and communities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nepal, Canada, South Korea, and the UK, including Indigenous enterprises on Turtle Island.

Opening Keynote — Day 1, September 21, 2026