4.30-4.50 – Meeting Slot 6
4.55-5.15 – Meeting Slot 7
5.20-5.40 – Meeting Slot 8
Networking Opportunities
Veterinary leaders are facing a triple bind: talent recruitment, declining footfall, and tech growing pains. In this interactive session, hear how top-performing practices are solving for scale—redesigning workflows, rethinking roles, and leveraging technology to boost revenue per DVM, reduce churn, and build more resilient, high-performing operations from the inside out.
Unleashing Profit Potential
Moderator
Tori Williams
Founder
Lemonade Coaching & Consulting
Brendan Lynch
SVP, Innovation
VCA Animal Hospitals
Connor Lawrie
President & COO
Heartland Veterinary Partners
The best campaigns don’t guess—they adapt.
Discover how leading pet brands use real-time consumer insight to guide creator strategy, stretch budgets, and break through the noise. across Instagram, YouTube, and beyond.
Listen better, spend smarter, and turn scrolls into serious traction.
Engaging Pet Parents
Shawn Pate
Head of US Pet
TikTok Shop
Brooke DeLuise
Managing Director, Animal Health
FWD People
In today’s pet industry, brand isn’t enough. This session explores how proprietary innovation—whether product science, tech platforms, or service protocols—can drive valuation and strategic interest.
Learn what acquirers are really looking for, how to protect your edge, and how to position IP as a core asset, not an afterthought.
Scaling Smarter
Steve Garlock
Partner
Thompson Coburn
Matthew C. James
Founder/CTO
TravelReadyPets + Immuniscan
Matthew C. James is a visionary tech entrepreneur and inventor, best known as the founder of TravelReadyPets® and Immuniscan™, pioneering the world’s first AI-powered platform for pet travel compliance and microchip-based verification. With a background in enterprise cloud automation and AI strategy, he is leading the future of regulatory technology and global mobility through intelligent infrastructure that enhances safety, trust, and cross-border movement.
Jonmichael Hands
CEO
FarmGPU
Jonmichael (JM) is a storage and AI expert, and sustainability leader. JM is currently the CEO of FarmGPU, an AI infrastructure company which hosts a decentralized cloud for AI on-demand compute and storage - and also partnering with Solidigm for the innovative AI central storage lab.
Jonmichael spent ten years at Intel in the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions group working on product line management, strategic planning, and technical marketing for the Intel data center SSDs. Jonmichael is the president of the Circular Drive Initiative, 501(c)(6) non-profit, promoting the secure reuse of drives and circular business models for the storage industry. Jonmichael started his storage career at Sun Microsystems designing storage arrays (JBODs) and holds an electrical engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines.
Michael Hurnaus
CEO
Tractive
Successful exits start long before the deal. In this breakout, M&A insiders reveal how to position for acquisition—from shaping financials and forecasting performance to managing risk, brand narrative, and buyer alignment.
Learn what truly drives valuation and how run a process that protects your upside and delivers results.
Unleashing Profit Potential
Investment Opportunities
Carol Frank
Managing Director
BirdsEye Advisory Group
Richard Kestenbaum
Partner
Triangle Capital, LLC
Richard is a co-founder and Partner of Triangle Capital and has been an investment banker for over 35 years. Richard has a great deal of experience advising clients in merchandising businesses, particularly in the Retail & Consumer sector. Richard is an often-quoted expert on the retail and merchandising industries. He is a Contributor to Forbes.com where he writes a regular blog about trends in retail and consumer product businesses. He also appears regularly in print and other media as well as industry panels and speaking programs.
Before co-founding Triangle, Richard was a Managing Director at a boutique investment banking firm called Financo, Inc. While at Financo, Richard was responsible for a majority of the firm’s apparel industry transactions. Prior to joining Financo, Richard was a Partner and First Vice President at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At Drexel, Richard was responsible for a group of 14 professionals doing middle-market mergers and acquisitions around the world.
Richard is the co-author of three books on finance and computer programming. He is formerly an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Business at the graduate program of the Stern School of Business at York University.
Richard received a BS in Accounting from New York University and an MBA with a concentration in Finance from Harvard University. Richard is married and lives in New York.
Click here to read Richard’s blog and follow him on Forbes.com.
According to Salesforce, 62% of customers feel emotionally attached to the brands they love. Creating a lasting, positive impression can build long-term loyalty—but earning that place in your customer’s heart isn’t easy. This interactive roundtable will guide you through exercises to identify your white space and share practical tips to craft a compelling brand story that helps your brand truly stand out.
Engaging Pet Parents
Katy Briggs
Managing Director
Willoughby Design
In her role as Managing Director, Katy is focused on guiding brand strategy and uncovering consumer insights that lead to big ideas. Katy's career has been driven by developing a keen understanding of the human behavior that drives purchasing decisions. She has worked with world-class brands like Hallmark, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Helzberg Diamonds and Kohl’s. At her core, Katy is a problem solver and a storyteller. As a strong collaborator and thoughtful writer, Katy leads teams through the strategic process to simplify the complex and deliver succinct brand systems.
Megan Stephens
Co-CEO & Owner
Willoughby Design
In her role as a brand strategist and agency co-owner following the purchase of Willoughby in 2016, Megan has led a large range of brand identity, consumer packaged goods and retail experience projects. Whether infusing new energy to help brands compete in the ever-changing marketplace or creating new brands from the ground up, she specializes in framing the business challenge, synthesizing the strategy, ideating solutions and then working with the design team to bring those ideas to life.
From rising shipping costs to sourcing volatility, pet brands are under pressure. This breakout reveals how to build true operational resilience—through smarter supply chain diversification, logistics optimization, and leveraging data to mitigate risk.
Walk away with actionable strategies to protect margin, reduce disruption, and scale confidently in uncertain times.
Scaling Smarter
Mindy Cannon
Director of Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships
epiq Animal Health
Anje English
Managing Director
epiq Animal Health
C-suite executives from across the pet care ecosystem, leading veterinarians, insurers, retailers, investors as well as multinational pet care corporations, and the rest, gather to connect, partner and do business at Pet Connect.
• Meetings are 15 minutes in length
• Pet Connect attendees will use the Swap card event app to schedule meetings with fellow attendees.
• Access to the app will be provided 2 weeks prior to the event for attendees and 3 weeks prior for event partners.
12.30-12.45 - Meeting Slot 1
12.50-1.05 – Meeting Slot 2
1.10-1.25 – Meeting Slot 3
1.30-1.45 – Meeting Slot 4
1.50-2.05 – Meeting Slot 5