Art, Design, Business Speaker Series brings together practitioners with a breadth of experience in entrepreneurship practices, with a focus on the creative sector. Hear the stories of entrepreneurs, designers and tech pioneers who’ve put together wildly successful startups, worked with top companies and developed new and incredible products and business models.

On March 22, Husein Hallak (Founder, Next Decentrum) will be talking about Validation, to be followed by a Q&A session. This talk is moderated by Julia Conejero (Sessional Faculty, Emily Carr University/Project Coordinator, Unity Technologies).

Hussein Hallak is the CEO and Founder of Next Decentrum, a blockchain education company, and an Evangelist at Launch Academy, one of North America’s leading tech incubators with over 600 tech startups incubated and over $150 million raised.

A serial entrepreneur and startup founder with over 25 years of business experience, Hallak has developed 20+ startups and mentored and trained thousands of entrepreneurs. He has been featured in Forbes, BBC, Entrepreneur, Roundhouse Radio, and Notable.

Throughout his career, Hallak has served as a strategic advisor for several successfully funded tech and crypto startups, including Fintrux, Interfinex, Traction Health, and Peace Geeks. He was the Marketing Advisor for leading conferences, including Fintech & Funding, Traction Conf, CIX, and Van Funding.

Passionate about tech, lean, startups, design thinking, impact, blockchain and decentralized innovation, Hallak lives to inspire entrepreneurship and unleash breakthrough innovation through connection, collaboration, and community. He is a graduate of the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Programme and holds a BSc in Electronics Engineering.

Julia Conejero is a Project Coordinator with Unity Technologies. She has been in the tech field for more than 5 years and prior to her current work, gained vast knowledge and experience by working for companies such as Electronic Arts and Microsoft. Through a career of developing for emerging technologies, she quickly gained awareness for opportunities to create and challenge appropriate human-centred design for emerging tech. Her current challenge is to create intuitive and accessible design in the Mixed Reality Space.

Please note all Art, Design, Business Speaker Series events will be recorded and published at a later date on Shumka Centre's website.