You built this business. Don't let someone else decide how you leave it.

Jessica Craig is the founder of Exit Welle, a sell-side M&A advisory and exit planning firm built for established business owners — particularly women founders — preparing for their next chapter.

A Certified Business Intermediary (CBI), Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), and MBA, Jessica has spent her career translating the mechanics of a sale into a plan owners can actually act on: valuation, buyer psychology, deal structure, and the negotiation table itself. As Past President of IBBA Canada, she's worked alongside advisors across the country to raise the standard of exit planning nationally.

At The Exit Room, Jessica brings the buyer's-eye view — what actually moves a business's value, and how to walk into a negotiation already knowing the rules.

Rachel Wood is an award-winning entrepreneur, inventor, and product innovator who built and successfully exited a $7M+ international consumer brand. She is recognised for identifying real-world problems and turning them into innovative, practical solutions that scale globally.

Her work earned the King's Award for Enterprise in Innovation in 2023 — the UK's highest business honour — highlighting her ability to create meaningful impact through groundbreaking design and strategic leadership.

Zahra is a Fractional CFO and founder of Crunch TimeZ CFO Services, where she works with ambitious founders to make sense of the numbers behind their businesses and make more confident decisions about what comes next.

Zahra believes your financials should do more than tell you what happened last month — they should show what's really driving your business, where the opportunities are, and what might be getting in the way of the next stage of growth. Through her work with founder-led businesses, she brings a practical, strategic perspective to conversations that often feel hardest to navigate: profitability, growth, cash flow, investment, and eventually, what a business could be worth.

At The Exit Room, Zahra will explore what your financials can reveal about the value and strength of your business — and why understanding that story well before an exit conversation gives founders more choices, more confidence, and more control over what comes next.

Jenna Herbut is the founder of Conscious Lab, a Vancouver-based gathering space and community for entrepreneurs, creators, and changemakers who want to do business, and life, a little differently. Through intimate dinners, workshops, conversations, and unexpected experiences, Jenna brings thoughtful people together to connect beyond the surface, explore new ideas, and build the kinds of relationships that can genuinely shift what's possible.

A lifelong entrepreneur and community builder, Jenna is also the founder of Make It, one of Canada's leading handmade markets, which she has grown over nearly two decades. She is the author of Make It Happen and a passionate believer in the power of entrepreneurship, human connection, and creating spaces where people feel inspired to think bigger and live more intentionally. Conscious Lab is the evolution of that work: a place to gather, experiment, connect, and imagine what comes next.

Tovah Paglaro is a two-time founder and COO working at the intersection of narrative, strategy, and systems. She co-founded Avalanche Insights, tech-enabled research that helped drive $2B in campaign spending before its 2023 acquisition, and Fathom AI, a human-in-the-loop AI text-analytics platform used by teams like Gallup and Paramount, acquired by QuestionPro in 2026.

She now works with founders and mission-driven organizations to find the lever that changes trajectory, then build the operational machine to make it real.

Sarah Bundy is Co-Founder and CEO of Athena Collective, a growth platform helping women build, scale and exit their companies. A serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience building and scaling successful businesses, she founded and grew All Inclusive Marketing into an award-winning global company before its mid-market acquisition in 2020.

Sarah has been recognized as one of Canada's Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs and a Top 40 Under 40, is recognized as a B2B leader on LinkedIn, and has served on both public and private boards. A visionary entrepreneur with an instinct for spotting opportunity, Sarah has built her career turning ideas into businesses and creating value through growth, innovation and strategic partnerships. Today, she's on a mission to help 100 million women thrive in business and in life.

Brianna Blaney is a serial entrepreneur, ecosystem builder, and CEO & Co-Founder of Pocketed, a Deloitte business. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs turn big ideas into thriving businesses through better access to capital, partnerships, and opportunity.

After building and scaling multiple ventures, Brianna led Pocketed through its acquisition by Deloitte and now works with founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders across Canada to strengthen the pathways that help businesses start, grow, and succeed. She brings a founder's perspective to conversations on entrepreneurship, leadership, resilience, growth, and navigating the journey from startup to successful exit.

Sonya is a Senior Tax Advisor at Plena Wealth Advisors of Raymond James Ltd. She is a CPA licensed in both Canada and the U.S. and specializes in Canadian and cross-border tax planning. She is also the co-author of the best-selling book, Your Move to Canada.

Working in wealth management as a tax planning specialist allows her to view planning from a holistic perspective that goes beyond the tax return, from how to structure a business to maximize your after-tax proceeds from the sale, to how to invest the proceeds from your exit to grow your wealth for generations to come.