Duri Al Ajrami  – @Duriajrami

Senior Partner, Director of Social Marketing – Ogilvy Canada. Armed with a BA in Economics and a Masters in Information Systems. Ventured into the Dot Com field early in his career when he helped start up the first Online Ad Sales unit under Arabia.com in 1998. Arabia.com was the first Internet Media website in the Middle East created under a joint venture between Intel and HP. Became Arabia.com Sales & Marketing Director in 2002 based in Dubai. In 2003, Duri established the first Internet Media House in the MENA region, Net Advantage where he signed exclusive representation agreements with 70 leading portals from the region. By 2005, Net Ad owned the largest online advertising Media Network in the MENA region. In 2005 Duri started up his own Interactive Agency; IGENCY, offering clients turn-key digital marketing solutions handling clients like IBM, HSBC, Marriot, Air Arabia, Sony Ericsson. In 2005 Duri established the Internet Standards Organization (Interstandards), which was a joint initiative between the British Standards Institute and Dubai Internet City for creating Internet Quality Standards for websites (ISO web certificates). In 2006 Mindshare, the WPP leading media agency, approached IGENCY with an acquisition deal which was concluded in Jan 2007 where IGENCY became Mindshare Interaction, and Duri became the Managing Director of Mindshare Interaction. In Jan 2009, Duri moved with his wife and two kids to Toronto where he became the Director of Social Marketing and Senior Partner at OgilvyOne Toronto.

Eric Alper – @ThatEricAlper

Eric is the Director of Media Relations and Label Acquisitions for eOne Music handling the PR for The Wiggles, Sesame Street, Bob Geldof, Ringo Starr, Ray Charles, Barry Manilow, Sinead O’Connor, Dan Zanes, Slash, Snoop Dogg, Robert Munsch, Deborah Cox, The Smashing Pumpkins and many more over his 20 years in the music industry. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew About The Music Business (published in 2011), and is the only winner of the Best Publicist Award at the Canadian Music Industry Awards. He can be seen on Twitter almost hourly dishing marketing advice to Mompreneur and small- businesses and heard in his house with Candace from Name Your Tune and 7 year-old daughter, Hannah.

Rebecca Brown – @bunchfamily

Rebecca Brown founded Bunch, a family experience company, back in 2006. The idea was born out of a desire to bring like-minded families together for amazingly fun experiences, like family dance parties and rock concerts. The first Bunch Family Dance Party saw kids and parents lined up around the block and secured Bunch’s reputation as the go-to brand for wildly different family events. Over the years, the company has branched out, offering Rebecca’s experiential marketing ideas and consulting chops to other brands. In January 2010 Bunch launched Bunchland, a newsletter and blog that shares creative ideas for having fun concocted by awesome families from around the world. Before starting Bunch Rebecca hung out in the theatre and art world. She has two kids named Rose and Sam.

Kathy Buckworth – @kathybuckworth

Kathy Buckworth is the award winning author of five books, including “Shut Up & Eat: Tales of Chicken,  Children & Chardonnay”.  Kathy writes columns for ParentsCanada, PostCity Magazines, The Women’s Post, Sympatico.ca;  her monthly column, Funny Mummy is on websites across North America. Kathy is the parenting correspondent for CTVNewsChannel, and appears regularly on BreakFastTelevision and CBC. Kathy co-hosted Slice Network’s “Birth Days”, and is a two time winner of the Professional Writers Association of Canada’s Excellence in Humour Award. She’s acted as media spokesperson for companies such as Research in Motion, Proctor & Gamble, LeapFrog Toys, and Frito-Lay.  Kathy spent 20 years in corporate marketing and helps develop social and traditional media strategies for corporations targeting Moms. Kathy has four children.

Julie Cole – @juliecole

Veteran mother, Julie Cole has six very young children in her charge and is the co-founder of Mabel’s Labels Inc. (www.mabel.ca).
In her role as company spokesperson, Julie has developed a dynamic, multi-media presence. She writes a popular syndicated parenting blog and regular columns for parenting e-newsletters including: The Yummy Mummy Club, Wee Welcome, Life with Kids, Canadian Parents and PTPA Media. With humour, she provides and upfront view of life in a family of eight while running a business. Her writing has also been published in several magazines, including Exceptional Families, where she talks about her experiences raising a child with autism.

Quick to identify the potential of social media and word of mouth marketing, Julie is also active on online networking forums. She has spoken at conferences and conventions throughout North America, including ones for the Canadian Marketing Association and the International Camping Conference. Television appearances include Canada AM, Breakfast Television, Metro Morning, Better TV and The Mom Show.

Julie has become a well-known personality amidst Canadian mom entrepreneurs. She and her business partners were recently awarded the coveted Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year (Momentum) award. Julie’s willingness to share her entrepreneurial journey has led to various speaking engagements, from local moms groups to university level business classes.

Read Julie’s blogs at: www.mabelhood.com/JulieCole and www.thebabymachine.com

Janice Croze @janicecroze

In 2006, Janice Croze and her identical twin sister, Susan Carraretto, created 5 Minutes for Mom.com and it quickly became a go-to site for moms that entertains and informs, while promoting the online mom community.
The Wall Street Journal listed 5 Minutes for Mom as the 2nd top parenting blog and it has placed in the Top 100 in Technorati. Janice and Susan also own two successful e-commerce stores, http://www.PedalCarsandRetro.com and http://www.A-Rocking-Horse-To-Love.com and a threaded video conversation called, Say it Face to Face.com.

Heather Greenwood Davis -@greenwooddavis

Heather Greenwood Davis is a full-time freelance writer with more than 15 years of professional experience. Her travel columns appear in The Toronto Star, Lexpert Magazine and on UrbanMoms.ca. You can also find her words on the pages of magazines like Parents Canada, Budget Travel and Canadian Family. She’s  mom to two boys aged 6 and 8 and wife to a guy who didn’t know what he was getting into when he married her. Her latest venture is Globetrotting Mama (www.globetrottingmama.com) –  A travel blog dedicated to helping families plan and take great trips. As of July 2011 she’ll follow her own advice on a 1-year trip around the world with her family.

Maureen Dennis – @weewelcome

Founder & CEO of Wee Welcome Inc.
Before founding Wee Welcome, Maureen spent seven years with Famous Players, where she started and managed special-audience programming like Famous Babies, Popcorn Parties and Large ‘N’Live WWE and concert/sports satellite broadcast events.
Maureen was destined to start Wee Welcome, giving new parents the tools to ‘have a baby and a life’. After all, she is an on the go mom of three groovy kids herself.
Over the last 6 years Maureen has worked hard to make Wee Welcome the national mom-powered organization it is today. She is especially proud of the incredible Wee Welcome team of Canadian moms on the go and the community of over 30,000 members they have built together.
Maureen has become an important mom influencer, not only through WeeWelcome.ca but also through social and broadcast media. Maureen is active on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and has appeared frequently on shows such as CBC’s National News, CTV News Channel, Canada A.M., CHCH Morning, CityLine, Global National News, A Channel Ottawa, and Rogers Daytime. Maureen has also acted as a corporate spokesperson for a number of high profile brands.  You can also connect with her on LinkedIn.

Sharon DeVellis – @sharonDV

Sharon DeVellis is a mother, wife, writer and editor who can uncork a wine bottle in less than 10 seconds but buys twist-offs for emergencies. She started her job at the Yummy Mummy Club as their Coordinator after winning Canada’s Yummiest Mummy Contest, a contest based on creativity and not on parenting skills (*whew* wipe beads of sweat from brow).
After a year and a half of coordinating the ins and outs of YummyMummyClub.ca while writing her Inside Scoop blog and somehow managing life as a stay at home mom to two boys with no housekeeper and a husband who works ridiculous hours, Sharon was promoted to Editor where she is much better at catching other people’s typos than her own.

Ann Douglas -@themotherofall

Ann Douglas is award-winning author, journalist, and copywriter who specializes in writing about pregnancy and parenting. She is the author of 28 books, including The Mother of All Pregnancy Books (the lead title in The Mother of All ® books series, which she created and licensed to Wiley Publishing Inc.) She has contributed to a number of respected anthologies about motherhood, including Shari MacDonald Strong’s The Maternal is Political. And she writes the “Misconceptions” column for Conceive Magazine; blogs for Yahoo! Canada and Parentcentral.ca; and contributes videos to ParentsAsk.com.
Ann is a member of the Board of Directors for the Professional Writers Association of Canada (Past President); and a member of the Board of Directors of the Peterborough Victoria Haliburton YWCA. She and her husband Neil have four children, ages 13 through 22.   More information about her can be found on her personal blog.

Angella Dykstra – @dutchblitz

Angella Dykstra, aka reigning monarch of Dutch Blitz, is the wife of one and the mother of three. She’s an accountant by trade but would prefer if we could keep that our little secret. She spends all of her free time writing and taking photos and often ties the two together. She’s proudly Canadian but loves Americans, and not just because they have Target. Aside from her personal site, she can be found at her photography site, The Bad Moms Club, Work It! Mom, The Daily Grommet and of course, Twitter.

Erica Ehm @yummymummyclub

Erica is founder, Publisher of YummyMummyClub.ca – the online social network that speaks to the woman in every mom

Erica’s message is one of empowerment. It was her difficult transition from career woman to exhausted mother that inspired Erica to create an online destination for women with children. A multi-tasking mom of two, Erica and her yummy YMC team have become well-read resources for Canadian women looking for insight and advice on how to survive mummydom. Coming up with new and playful ways to connect brands with moms is Erica’s definition of fun (she doesn’t get out much).
Her son Joshua, daughter Jessie and husband Terry are the reason Erica is a Yummy Mummy.

Lara Galloway – @mombizcoach

Lara Galloway has built a successful business by helping other women blend work and family priorities. She launched her business Mom Biz Coach to help women find enough time to “do it all.”
Galloway was recently featured in Forbes, is a sought after speaker and business coach, hosts a weekly radio show and is regularly featured in the national and international media.

Karen Green -@karengreeners

Karen is a full-time copywriter for a Toronto-based music company who spends her after-work hours juggling the needs of a busy household and community obligations,all of which she will gladly ignore in favour of getting into trouble with her husband and two delicious girls, born in 2005 and 2007.

For pleasure and therapy, Karen authors the blog, The Kids Are Alright and spends way too much time on Twitter, where she tries to unlock the secrets of the universe, 140 characters at a time. Karen’s writing has appeared online on various community blogs including BlogHer.com, YummyMummyClub.ca and CanadaMomsBlog.com. This past August, Karen had the honour of being a Voices of the Year Community Keynote Speaker at BlogHer ’10 in New York City.

Karen Humphrey -@scatteredmom

Karen Humphrey has been blogging on the West Coast of BC at Notes from the Cookie Jar since 2004. Passionate about good food and her job working with teenagers, all it took was a tweet from Jamie Oliver, a boy without a lunch, and Food Revolution Fridays was born. Soon her family was trekking over 8,000 km through the USA on their summer vacation, seeking out the fresh and unprocessed, sometimes with hilarious results. A firm believer that fresh can be fast, easy, and taste far better than processed, Karen dishes up mouthwatering photos, recipes, and tips at Chasing Tomatoes, as well as meal plans at Everything Mom.com as their Meal Plan Editor. The 14 year old taste tester certainly has no complaints.

Kate Inglis – @sweetsalty

Kate Inglis, writer of sweet | salty, lives on the coastline of Nova Scotia where she was born. She founded a collaborative blog for babylost parents called Glow in the Woods, a warm, embracing and entirely cherub-free community. She spends a lot of time with her camera in hand, chasing light, and writes for Shutter Sisters as a founding contributor. In November 2009 her first novel was published — The Dread Crew: Pirates of the Backwoods, a book January Magazine calls “a spirited tale, gorgeously rendered.” The second book is currently finding its words, page by page.

Alison Kramer – @nummiesbras

Alison Kramer is the owner of Nummies nursing bras.  A mother to three, writer and social media addict. Alison is behind the Nummies blog and is the voice and face of Nummies on Twitter and in the media. She is a proud contributor to the Yummy Mummy club, where she shares her daily lessons on her blog “What I learned Today”. Alison is regular guest blogger on many sites, where she writes about pregnancy, parenting, business, breastfeeding and her love of all things awesome.  So far, her proudest social media adventure was being a part of creating www.ReflectionsOfMotherhood.com .

Jen Maier – @Jen_Maier

Jen Maier is a mom of 2, a marketer, a blogger, and founder of the online community, UrbanMoms.ca. Throughout her career helping organizations find innovative ways of connecting with important consumer groups, Jen saw an opportunity to create a community connecting Canadian women and empowering them to take marketing messages into their own hands, at the same time working with organizations to achieve permission-based access to this influential audience. UrbanMoms.ca provides mothers with the diverse perspectives offered by other moms as well as one-of-a-kind opportunities to interact with products and services relevant to them.

Ali Martel – @alimartell

Ali Martell is the Editorial Director of UrbanMoms.ca, an online community for moms (and dads!) across Canada. In addition to the editorial work she does on the site, she writes the addictive
entertainment news blog, Juice (http://www.urbanmoms.ca/juice). She has also been writing about her life as a busy mom to three unintentionally hilarious children and wife to a
software-developer-turned-chef on her popular parenting site, Cheaper Than Therapy (http://www.alimartell.com), since 2004. She is a writer, a mother, a lion-tamer, a getter-of-drinks, a Tim Hortons coffee addict, a lover of cookie dough, an annoying movie quoter. And she is
way shorter than you might think.

Shannon McKarney – @zchamu

Shannon is a social media veteran, having started her first blog in the mists of antiquity of 2000. That blog is long since hidden (thankfully) and has been replaced by ThreeSeven.ca and ecochick.ca. Shannon has written for many online publications including Green Living Online, Canada Moms Blog, Scarlett Lounge and more, and has spoken on blogging and social media at the Women in Film New Media day in Vancouver and Ottawa’s BarCamp. She’s co-organizer of Ottawa Brain Drain, a monthly knowledge-sharing event around social media. She lives in Ottawa with her husband, dog, and daughter.

Jeanette Miller -@limelitepr

Jeannette is a seasoned public relations practitioner with over 15 years of experience, and Limelite PR’s chief mom-“knowledgist”. Prior to founding Limelite PR in 2005, she spent a decade managing publicity, grassroots and media promotional campaigns.
Jeanette had her entrepreneurial ‘a-ha’ moment in 2008 when she recognized that moms were one of the world’s largest power-consumer forces and a top-tier community influencer; and social networks were booming because of moms. While the market grows and evolves, Jeanette continually expands and updates her knowledge in order to develop new approaches, innovative campaign concepts and foster mutually beneficial relationships between brands and moms.
Jeanette is responsible for Limelite PR’s client engagement, account management, strategy and planning; with a goal to helping companies build solid strategies for community building. She is a Gen X mom of two girls, living in the Victoria, BC.

Tanis Miller- @redneckmommy

Tanis Miller spends most of her time reading, writing and rednecking in the wilds of Alberta. Her blog Attack of the Redneck Mommy is a humorous and insightful look at the joys of domestic life in an undomesticated setting. Her work has been featured on CNN, CBC, CBC News Network, The Globe and Mail and in a variety of Canadian daily newspapers. Attack of the Redneck Mommy won the Best Canadian Blog award in the 2010 and 2008 Bloggies as well as being named as one of the top ten mommy bloggers in 2009 by Babble.com’s list of Top 50 mommybloggers. In her spare time, Tanis is a frequent public speaker covering topics such as how to survive losing a child as well as advocating for the rights of special needs children!

Leigh Mitchell – @marketing4moms

Leigh had a safe and secure career in municipal marketing for over 10 years where she developed a passion for community development and social media. Then along came two kids and a travelling husband so she decided to leave her institutional “career” behind to develop a new one on her own terms. Now Leigh is a mom by day and networker by night. Her specialty is connecting women professionals together and creating environments for them to develop new business skills, knowledge and opportunities through her companies, Mom Entrepreneurs Network and Marketing4Moms. She loves to blog and Urban Moms.ca provides a forum to share her thoughts and experiences – Mom Inc. is where you’ll find them. Leigh also serves on the Board of Directors for Parent Education Network.

Aidan Morgan – @palinode

Aidan Morgan, aka The Palinode, is a freelance writer and communicator. He has been a television producer, a speechwriter and a watch repairman. Currently he writes and edits video for MamaPop.  He blogs for fun and peanuts at The Palinode. The peanuts are held in escrow.

Tricia Mumby – @mumby

Tricia is one of the four Co-Founders of Mabel’s Labels and the company’s Vice-President of Marketing & PR. She brings several years of experience in graphics and printing to her role and was instrumental in developing much of the company’s technical infrastructure. She and her husband Joe have a daughter, Ruby J. (six).
She particularly enjoys connecting with customers and other “mompreneurs” at industry events and conferences. For Tricia, as with the other Co-Founders, Mabel’s Labels has allowed great work-life balance and exciting opportunities. She is especially excited by how the social-web is changing the business and is confident that for Mabel’s Labels, the best is yet to come!

Jennifer Reynolds – @canadianfamily

Jennifer Reynolds, Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Family magazine – After completing her undergraduate degree at Queen’s University, travelling the world, running a women’s resource centre, a garden centre and her own landscape design business, Jennifer Reynolds developed her communication skills at House & Home Media where she worked as a magazine editor and a television personality. Honing her passion for publishing, she launched several award-winning lifestyle magazines at Redwood Custom Communications and has had numerous articles published in the county’s top newspapers and magazines. Jen loves watching her energetic six-year-old bust out his latest break dancing moves but despite publishing several articles on the subject, she is still working on trying to find the perfect work-family-life balance.

Julia Rosien – @juliarosien

Julia Rosien is the Owner/Editor/Chief Girlfriend at GoGirlfriend.com. A social marketing strategist in the private sector, Julia is also a buzz-builder, information junkie and avid blogger who’s adept at straddling multiple mediums to nurture community and share information.
In her past lives, Julia served as the senior editor for a leading national pregnancy magazine and contributed to the Chicago Sun, Boston Globe and a wide variety of women’s magazines.  She also managed the community and editorial voice of an online restaurant review site that welcomed more than 2 million visitors a month.
Julia has been named by one of the most influential women in social media today as she connects her communities across networks like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Schmutzie – @schmutzie

Schmutzie hails from Regina, Saskatchewan and is the founder, administrator, and blogger at Schmutzie.com, the Canadian Weblog Awards, and the Grace in Small Things social network, as well as being a contributing writer at BlogHer and Life as a Human and a graphic designer at Sweet Blog Design. Add to that the fact that she is also a needlecrafter, photographer, feminist, and shoe salesperson, and she is basically a superhero, as long as her laptop holds out.

Nadine Silverthorne — @sweetmamadotca, @scarbiedoll

Nadine Silverthorne’s love of journaling began in Grade One with the entry, “I am the greatest dancer!” A chronic over-sharer, Nadine began writing her honest-to-a-fault blog, Martinis for Milk, six years ago, after learning she was unexpectedly expecting.Two babies later, she has found her home away from home as SweetMama Editor at sweetspot.ca, where she writes the blog, Silver Spoons. Nadine has also written for TodaysParent.com, Canadian Family, Canadian Geographic, ParentDish.com, HGTV.ca, ElleCanada.com and more.  She’s currently working on her first book, which she hopes to publish before she’s dead.

Bonnie Stewart -@bonstewart

Bonnie Stewart is an educator, writer, and social media researcher with a penchant for jellybeans. On her blog, cribchronicles.com, in her academic work, and as a cofounder of the Glow in the Woods community for babylost parents, Bonnie writes about not looking away. Mama to Oscar and Posey, and to the memory of Finn, Bonnie has lived on all three coasts of Canada and in Asia and Europe. She has, however, achieved the Nirvana of her people and come home to the red mud of Prince Edward Island without having to work in the Anne of Green Gables industry. Her roots in the tightly networked habitat of PEI inform her doctoral studies in social media communities, connections, and branded identity. Her life’s goal is to be on Celebrity Jeopardy.

Scott Stratten – @UnMarketing

Scott Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing.com. He is an expert in Viral, Social, and Authentic Marketing which he calls Un-Marketing. It’s all about positioning yourself as a trusted expert in front of target market, so when they have the need, they choose you, That’s UN-Marketing.

Over 50,000 people follow his daily rantings on Twitter and was voted one of the top influencers on the site with over 90 million users . His recent Tweet-a-thon raised over $16,000 for child hunger, in less than 12 hours.

His book “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” is due to hit the shelves in the Fall of 2010 from Wiley & Sons.

His clients’ viral marketing videos have been viewed over 60 million times and has generated massive profits and lists. One of the movies was chosen by the Chicago Bears as their biggest motivator towards their Super Bowl run a few years ago, while another made their client over $5 million in 7 days.

He recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Mashable.com, USA Today, CNN.com and Fast Company. That plus $5 gets him a coffee anywhere in the world.

Since he still has to pay for his own coffee, he earns his keep by speaking and consulting around the world on how businesses can engage better (or at all!) with their current and potential customer base using social media, viral marketing and just plain old engaging conversation.

Annie PhD – @phdinparenting

Annie has been blogging about the art and science of parenting at the PhD in Parenting Blog since May 2008. She is a social, political and consumer advocate on issues of importance to parents, women and children. She regularly uses her blog as a platform to create awareness and to advocate for change, calling out the government, corporations, media and sometimes other bloggers for positions, policies and actions that threaten the rights and well-being of parents and their children. Annie also contributes occasionally at Attachment Parenting International and Moms Rising and is active on twitter and facebook.

Denise Tanton -@dtanton

Denise is the BlogHer Community Manager who started her life on the internet by developing a serious addiction to chat at iVillage. From there she was employed at Women.com as a Message Board Moderator and WebMd as a Senior Community Moderator.

Samantha Temptingmama – @temptingmama

Samantha has been blogging since mid-2005 – back in the day when MySpace diaries were cool – which was a stepping stone from which she began her personal blog, Temporarily Me. Since then she’s worked with many different blogging platforms and collaborative websites including Blissfully Domestic, Craftster, Canada Moms Blog, BlogHer Canada. Samantha works full-time outside of the home and in her free time (Heh.) manages her own small web design business, Temptation Designs, as well as works as a freelance designer and developer for Swank Web Style.  In November, 2009 Samantha started Craftastrophe with her dear friend and fellow blogger, Karen Bodkin. Together Sam and Karen grew their website of off collar crafts found around the internet into a collaborative web site which has been featured on site such as: Jezebel, BoingBoing, CafeMom, Neatorama, CraftZine, MamaPop and the numerous newspaper sites including the Toronto Star. Samantha is addicted to social media and can be found roaming the interwebs on twitter (@temptingmama), facebook and dailymile. If you see her, do her a favour and tell her to get back to work? Also? Is Samantha the only one who finds referring to herself in third person a little creepy?

Amy Urquhart – @Amy_Urquhart

Amy has been blogging on various sites, both collaborative and personal, for nine years.  Her current home on the internet is Hearts into Home, a personal site where she writes lovingly of her life with her husband Graham and their ten month old son, Nathan.  Amy is also a regularly contributing blogger on the popular lifestyle site,  Aiming Low.

Emma Waverman -@emmawaverman

Emma Waverman writes frequently, candidly and often with typos on the parenting blog EmbracetheChaos.ca, which is part of the MSN.CA network. She is also co-author of the family cookbook Whining and Dining: Mealtime Survival for Picky Eaters and Families Who Love Them published by Random House which she wrote when it became obvious that her first of three children was going to exist on beige food for his entire life. Occasionally, she is organized enough to write for national, old-style print publications. But more often than not, she can be found lurking on twitter.

Katie York – @motherbumper

Katie York was an IT specialist with a large global technology company who left the glamorous world of multi-million dollar projects for a chaotic life of a low-paying, single offspring installation that will never really ever be complete. She can only hope that the handoff will go smoothly in approximately fourteen years.

Ever since her child’s birth in the mid-oughts, Katie has been an extremely active member of the blogging community both online and behind the scenes. In addition to her own personal labour of love, motherbumper, she is also a regular columnist at MamaPop, an editor at Kirtsy, a graphic artist for Sweet Blog Designs, and–because she just can’t stay still–she is also the co-founder of the wildly wonderful Bad Moms Club with Catherine Connors. Katie’s hosted many blogging events, including the always popular People’s Party at BlogHer, as well as brand events for the likes of GM Canada, Fairmont, and HP. And to think, she’s done this all without the benefit of regular childcare or sleep. Imagine what she could do with a nanny and a regular REM cycle?!