IG Apex Summit 2.0

Conference Details

Education Tracks

Our IG Apex Summit 2.0 education tracks will offer you practical advice and guidance that you can use to enhance and grow your practice.


Patti Williams

Patti Williams

This session is offered in ENGLISH Only.

Professor Patti Williams examines ways consumers’ emotional responses influence consumption and persuasion. Her current research projects focus on how emotions influence consumer decisions and processes of persuasion; consumer responses to emotional and attitudinal ambivalence; emotion regulation; and the emotions associated with social identities.

Her research has been published in top-tier academic journals including the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. She serves on the Editorial Review Boards for the Journal of Consumer Psychology and the Journal of Marketing Research, and she currently serves as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research.

She teaches a course on Strategic Brand Management to undergraduate and MBA students; previously she has taught the MBA core courses and classes on Advertising Management. Professor Williams earned her PhD and MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her BA from Stanford University.


Eszylfie Taylor President, Taylor Insurance and Financial Services
Creator, The Taylor Method

Eszylfie Taylor

This session is offered in ENGLISH Only.

Eszylfie Taylor is the founder and president of Taylor Insurance and Financial Services located in the financial district of Pasadena, California, and serves as financial advisor to individuals, business owners, and high net worth families. He attended Concordia University on a basketball scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management. Prior to founding his own company, he was a standout financial advisor at New York Life, making Chairman’s Council and finishing his career there as the highest producing advisor in the history of the African American market.

Early on in his career, Mr. Taylor had a breakthrough that centered around how to improve his market and focus on solving problems, not selling products. Naturally, he built upon this and used his successes and failures as teaching tools that would contribute to the start of The Taylor Method, a sales process for financial advisors.

Mr. Taylor has been a Million Dollar Round Table Top of the Table producer since 2011, which places him in the top 1% of advisors worldwide. In 2015, he was the recipient of NAIFA’s Advisor Today Top 4 Under Forty award.

Through all the success, Eszylfie has continued to contribute to his community. Since 2003, his nonprofit, Future Stars, has been hosting a basketball camp for underserved youth in the community, instilling in them the tools he uses to achieve success: hard work, perseverance, integrity, and sacrifice.


Judy Paradi and Paulette Filion

Strategy Marketing

This session is offered in ENGLISH Only.

Judy Paradi, cancer survivor, entrepreneur, speaker/lecturer, adventurer, wife and mother, and Paulette Filion, a bilingual blogger/tweeter, successful author, sought after consultant and speaker in the financial community, have teamed up to pursue their joint passion -- bridging the gap between the financial community and women.

The partnership between Paulette and Judy, thought leaders in the financial community, ensures delivery of the best growth strategies for their clients, be they individual advisors or large financial institutions.

Paulette brings her deep knowledge of the financial community and Judy brings her many years of marketing experience. A winning combination, they are frequently sought out for their insights and have been extensively quoted by mainstream media.

Judy Paradi

Judy Paradi

As owner of a successful marketing company for over 20 years, Judy had the opportunity to work with a variety of blue chip clients such as the Royal Bank, BMO, Scotiabank, Heart and Stroke, Kraft, Novartis etc. While clearly her clients represent an assortment of industries, Judy’s passion, and the reason for her success, was understanding the needs of her clients’ target markets and developing winning marketing strategies that spoke to those needs.

Because of this passion, it was not long into her career that she became aware of the huge disparity between how women thought and how they were being marketed to and she started focusing her efforts on marketing to women in specific. To that end she published a white paper, What you don’t know about marketing to women and why it could hurt you.

Soon after, in collaboration with Paulette Filion that white paper was followed up with two more highly acclaimed papers; Why women leave their Financial Advisors and how to prevent it and Financial Advisors are failing women: What female clients really want and how to change the dialogue.

Judy’s enthusiasm regarding women’s issues is further evidenced by her involvement as a board member and mentor with Step Ahead, an organization devoted to mentoring female entrepreneurs. In addition, she lectures at the University of Toronto, delivering a course on entrepreneurship, with a special focus on targeted marketing and is involved with the university’s Hatchery program, serving as an advisor on women’s issues.

Paulette Filion

Paulette Filion

Paulette, a sought after marketing expert within the financial services industry, has always worked hard towards creating a better understanding, acceptance and consideration of clients based on their behaviours rather than demographics.

She believes that consumers want to do business with companies that understand them and to purchase products that already mirror their existing beliefs.

Paulette reflects the voice of consumers (often women) motivated by natural tendencies and emotional instincts rather than by product features.

Her passion to voice these concerns began early in her career with the very first, extremely successful, series of seminars she produced on behalf of Merrill Lynch in New York which focused exclusively on women. Back when women were little more than ‘wives’ and ‘girlfriends’ Paulette was already a leader in recognizing the vast societal changes about to take place. The first seminar attracted more than 1,000 women and showed the need and desire for financial knowledge and understanding tailored to half of the population.

In her quest to change the status quo, Paulette also conducted research with women investors related to the communications provided by financial services companies. She found that the focus on quantitative results was failing to inspire or reassure female clients which led her to redouble her efforts to help bridge the gap between women and the financial community.

In addition to her consulting Paulette found the time to co-author a book with Gail Vaz-Oxlade called Marketing Financial Planning to Women. The book was aimed at advisors interested in learning how to develop better relationships with female clients.

Since then, as a partner in StrategyMarketing.ca she has become an avid blogger and co-authored two white papers; Why women leave their Financial Advisors and how to prevent it and Financial Advisors are failing women: What female clients really want and how to change the dialogue.