Our Team

Tom McCaffery is a seasoned executive and strategist with three decades of leadership experience spanning government, industry, academia, and the nonprofit sector. His career has been defined by an ability to bridge worlds that rarely intersect. Linking public policy with industrial growth, sustainability with profitability, and innovation with pragmatic execution.

At the core of Tom's work is a deep understanding of how industries evolve. From manufacturing and energy to advanced supply chains and climate innovation, he has built a career helping organizations and governments navigate transition while maintaining operational discipline and long-term vision. His leadership has consistently focused on turning complex policy goals into measurable outcomes through national-scale investment programs, corporate turnarounds, or the creation of cross-sector partnerships that accelerate sustainable growth.

Tom's approach combines the analytical precision of a strategist with the creative instincts of a builder. He has led the development of large-scale initiatives in industrial decarbonization, energy transition, and technology adoption, mobilizing significant private and public investment toward shared climate and competitiveness goals. Throughout his career, he has managed portfolios exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars while cultivating organizational cultures grounded in performance, collaboration, and integrity.

A published academic and recognized thought leader, Tom has contributed research and commentary on manufacturing policy, ESG strategy, and Canada's innovation economy. His writing and speaking work emphasize the importance of adaptive leadership and system-level thinking in driving meaningful change.

Driven by a conviction that sustainability is already in our manufacturing DNA, Tom's career reflects a lifelong commitment to shaping systems that create financial, social, and environmental value.

Ray DePaul is the founding Executive Director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Mount Royal University, where he helps develop the innovative and entrepreneurial talent Alberta needs. As the university's senior executive responsible for the Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence, he works with the leadership team to ensure the Logistics COE delivers its commitment to being a valuable and trusted leader in the logistics ecosystem.

He brings decades of experience from the private sector, building innovative products, programs and companies. He has been a successful entrepreneur, selling his company to Intel, and was also a key member of the team that brought the iconic BlackBerry to the world. This enables him to successfully bridge academia and the private sector.

As a leader of the Growth Catalyst scaleup program and a board member of Platform Calgary, he has experience building effective and collaborative ecosystems. As a mentor and board member to dozens of Alberta entrepreneurs and companies in industries as varied as software, robotics, agriculture and construction, he brings a breadth of knowledge on what it takes to build successful companies.

Glenda Elepano serves as Sr. Advisor, Marketing, Communications & Events at the Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence, where she leads strategic marketing, stakeholder communications, and event development to strengthen Alberta's transportation and logistics ecosystem. Her work supports the Centre's mandate by translating complex sector priorities into clear, engaging narratives and designing forums that bring together industry, government, and ecosystem partners around shared objectives.

Over the past six years, Glenda has led Magnetech Marketing, advising associations and small to midsize organizations on marketing strategy, digital platforms, automation, and engagement frameworks. Her consultancy builds on more than 20 years of experience supporting associations, including work in membership growth, professional development programming, stakeholder relations, and cross-sector collaboration.

Glenda specializes in connecting strategy to execution. She is often engaged to clarify positioning, structure event agendas around outcomes, and ensure communications align with broader economic and sector priorities. Her approach emphasizes clarity, relevance, and trust, ensuring that marketing and events function as integrated tools for dialogue, insight, and measurable impact.

Known for her structured thinking and collaborative leadership style, Glenda operates as a strategic partner to internal teams and external stakeholders, helping organizations navigate complexity with confidence and purpose.

Dr. Bhatti is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Bissett School of Business. He is also a Member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Supply Chain Sector Council (CSCSC), which brings together partners in the sector to develop solutions to the human resource challenges faced by stakeholders in Canada's economy.

His current interests revolve around studying the carbon footprints of global supply chains and to understand, model and help reduce such footprints in logistics through better process design. Another area of interest to him is in warehousing and distribution where he works to understand workplace safety issues as a function of organization design. Currently, his team and he are also working on performance evaluation modelling of dealerships of heavy equipment manufacturers in Canada using Network Data Envelopment Analysis (NDEA) and also using the black box technique. He had also been engaged in analytical modelling of 3PL selection issues and has used hierarchy based discrete and fuzzy models to analyze the supplier selection problem.

Dr. Bhatti has also served at the Department of Supply Chain Management, Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba (UoM), where he taught advanced supply chain management courses in the Asper MBA Program (apart from teaching for the Asper Undergraduate Program). He worked as a volunteer for the University Technologies Inc. (INNOVATE CALGARY) at the University of Calgary where he carried out analysis and examinations of new invention patent applications for technical novelty and commercialization potential. He was responsible for performing market research, preliminary infringement analyses and search for "prior art" by analyzing patent file histories at USPTO and identification of potential licenses. Further, he has been a member of several bodies for curriculum design for under graduate courses in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and has a rich Industrial experience in ISO 9000 certification as Management Representative.

Dr. Bhatti has a number of research publications in peer reviewed, indexed journals and conferences. He has authored one book and is the Editor-in-Chief (Emeritus) of the International Journal of Applied Industrial Engineering, Pennsylvania, USA. He has guided one PhD and three Master's theses so far and has served on several Ph.D. committees.

Brent Willett is a supply chain and logistics execution leader, Owner of Engaged SCM, and a contributor to the Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence. His work focuses on modernizing supply chains by ensuring strategy, technology, and operations translate into measurable results.

Brent works with leaders who are accountable for outcomes. His experience spans the full organization, from warehouse and operations teams through to senior executives and boards. He is known for helping organizations move from insight to decision and from decision to delivery by closing the gap between ambition and execution. His approach is practical and execution-led, grounded in structured programs, applied initiatives, and clear roadmaps that reduce risk, accelerate adoption, and build internal capability.

With experience across warehousing, transportation networks, inventory management, and enterprise systems, Brent brings an operator's perspective to complex supply chain environments. He has led and delivered initiatives for mid-sized operators, large industrial organizations, and public-sector organizations, helping them simplify complexity, prioritize what matters, and make confident go or no-go decisions on strategically important investments.

Through his involvement with the Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence, Brent leads and supports programs that translate ideas into action. His work includes designing and running execution-focused initiatives, guiding proof-of-concepts where appropriate, and working directly with teams at all levels of the organization. His focus is raising the operational sophistication of Alberta's transportation and logistics sector by ensuring modernization efforts result in real, sustained performance improvement.

Brent is a trusted advisor to senior leaders navigating supply chain transformation in increasingly complex operating environments.

Chris Beringer serves as a Strategic Advisor at the Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence, guiding transportation and logistics leaders through forward-thinking dialogue, technology integration, talent cultivation, and adaptive trade navigation. His contributions include shaping sector foresight, facilitating applied innovation, building workforce capabilities, and developing resilient strategies that address global market dynamics—translating strategy into execution and accelerating real-world outcomes.

As a University of Alberta Commerce graduate, CIFFA advanced certificate holder, and 25-year veteran in transportation and logistics, Chris excels at translating intricate supply chain, infrastructure, and sustainability challenges into actionable insights. He is frequently called upon to inform executive decision-making, structure collaborative forums around emerging trends, and align initiatives with industry priorities. His background includes managing multimillion-dollar global projects with record-breaking transports, launching profitable startups amid economic shifts, rebuilding operations to triple revenue in downturns, advising on organizational strategy, leading teams through pandemic recovery via process modernization, and advancing innovative technologies like hydrogen fuel cell propulsion systems for rail transport.

Known for business acumen and strategic leadership, Chris's approach prioritizes resilience, collaboration, and impact. Rather than isolated, company-specific solutions, he designs programs that grow the proverbial "pie" for the entire ecosystem. He partners with teams and stakeholders to integrate advisory services as tools for insight, innovation, and enduring competitiveness in Alberta's logistics landscape.

Chris' goal is to transform the transportation and logistics ecosystem in Alberta from an investment barrier into a competitive advantage, equipping the businesses that provide and use that ecosystem to thrive.

David Kalinchuk is the Senior Advisor, Strategic Partnerships and Business Development. He supports the Alberta Logistics Centre of Excellence (ALCoE) through maintaining and enhancing relationships with companies, professional organizations, service providers and local governments in Alberta's growing transportation, logistics and supply chain sector. He leads strategic growth planning and executes new initiatives to expand ALCoE's presence in Alberta's transportation and logistics sector.

Dave has over 25 years of economic development and industrial development experience in Alberta. He has worked in three provinces (Manitoba, British Columbia and Alberta) throughout his 30+ year career, focusing on value-added processing (beef, pork, grain, oilseeds and seafood), oil and gas development, tourism, warehousing and logistics as well as forestry products production (pulp and paper, lumber) and hard-rock mining development. In 2018, Dave was awarded Alberta's Economic Developer of the Year through the Economic Developers Association Alberta (EDA).

In Dave's extra time, he cooks exotic cuisine and is regarded as a culinary horticulturalist. Dave also paints, curates a large music collection and travels overseas to deliver lectures at universities, business schools and international conferences throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Dave has written a book entitled Rich for the Right Reasons – Economic Development of the Individual and keeps busy promoting the book and speaking to groups large and small.