Growth Coaches

Janet Armstrong

Senior Director, Brand and Content Marketing at Axonify

Janet currently leads a team of experts that bring go-to-market strategies to life. She’s built strategic campaigns and impactful messaging for SAP, Unitron, TekSavvy and more.

Expertise: Go-to-market strategy, brand and storytelling, B2B and B2C marketing, channel marketing

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Eric Bencina

VP, Data Strategy, IT, and Operations at Communitech

Eric has experience in data management, monetization, growth and efficiency. He’s led ‘data as a product’ initiatives – data governance, process automation, privacy, protection, monetization and more.

Expertise: Data management, data strategy, data governance

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN and ENCQOR

Peter Bloch

Chief Executive Officer at BresoTEC Inc.

Peter has 25+ years of experience helping companies navigate rapid growth and change, forging strategic partnerships and alliances to enter new markets, boosting revenues and profitability, and securing funding. 

Expertise: Capital strategy, business planning strategy, partnerships, team building

Programs: Medtech

Vince Bowry

Head of Customer Success at Impro.AI

Vince has 15+ years of experience as a sales and customer success leader. He is focused on helping fast-growing companies formulate and optimize their sales and customer success teams. 

Expertise: Business development, sales, customer success, process and playbook development

Programs: Startups

Bruce Brown

Vice President, Sales and Marketing at BresoTEC Inc.

Bruce has experience in the creation and deployment of company strategy, brand development, product planning, as well as international distribution and launches.

Expertise: Company strategy, product planning, international distribution and launches, team development and executive coaching

Programs: Medtech

Nancy Buck

VP, People & Culture at P&P Optica

Nancy has experience in strategic HR leadership roles and also provides coaching and mentoring to executives and HR professionals in rapidly scaling companies.

Expertise: Culture and alignment, human capital strategy, strategic talent management, organizational development and design

Programs: Scale-ups

Ian Dewancker

Co-founder and CEO at SBX Robotics

Ian has experience in predictive modelling for autonomous vehicles at Uber ATG, Bayesian optimization as a service at SigOpt and data-driven spam mitigation at Yelp.

Expertise: Machine learning, computer vision and deep learning, A/B testing and system evaluation, data visualization

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN and ENCQOR

Sean Erjavec

Sean is a results oriented executive with global experience and has a strong track record of achieving goals. He specializes in developing sound go-to-market strategies and executing accordingly. He is experienced in building processes, frameworks, OKR/key results and leveraging data for decision making and optimizations.

Expertise: B2B direct sales, Integrated sales/marketing/partnerships GTM

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Frank Erschen

Entrepreneur in Residence/Pitch Coach at The DMZ

Frank is the originator of The Artful Science of Pitching®, a method for developing pitches for financing or strategic partnerships or selling that bridges art with science.

Expertise: Pitching, strategy, angel investing, governance

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Rod Foster

VP Sales, FormHero

Rod has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry and has held senior level positions in software sales, marketing and operations. He was most recently the CEO of Covarity and lead its growth throughout North America. 

Expertise: B2B sales, marketing, strategy, operations

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Heather Galt

Vice President, Marketing at P&P Optica

Heather has extensive experience in product and service go-to-market, B2B and channel marketing, and internationalization from small, scaling and large companies like Kik and BlackBerry.

Expertise: Go-to-market strategy, B2B and B2C marketing, channel marketing, international expansion

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Pamela Griffith-Jones

Pamela has 25+ years of senior level P&L, marketing, strategy and governance experience in the retail, aviation, consumer goods, healthcare and consulting sectors. 

Expertise: Strategy and business planning, brand and marketing strategy, leadership development and coaching, governance

Programs: Scale-ups, executive business coaching

Azhar Janjua

Head of Communitech Outposts and Program lead for Communitech’s Intellectual Property related programming.

Azhar spent 18 years helping Canadian based multinationals build and strengthen their global Patent and Trademark portfolios. He has experience in developing internal IP strategies, building employee patent programs and has successfully fought litigation battles against non-practicing entities.

Expertise: IP Strategies, Patent Programs

Programs: Startups, Scale-ups, Outposts

Cédric Jeannot

Co-founder at Be Financial Group

Dr. Jeannot is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of Be Financial Group, a diversified investment holding focused on emerging markets, specifically Africa.

Expertise: Fintech, blockchain/cryptocurrencies/DeFi, international expansion, emerging markets

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Atif Khan

Vice President, AI & Data Science at Messagepoint

Atif has experience harnessing cutting edge AI research and big data technologies to solve challenges. His focus is AI, information systems, and data privacy and security.

Expertise: Data architecture, data visualization, natural language processing, semantic textual similarity

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN and ENCQOR

Mike Kirkup

CTO of EnPowered

Mike is the former Director of Velocity, the University of Waterloo’s world-renowned startup program where he helped mentor hundreds of startups.

Expertise: Fundraising, business models, building product, technical leadership

Programs: Startups

Laurie Lafleur

Laurie has 20+ years of experience in health IT design, development and commercialization. She has led healthcare organizations across Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

Expertise: Product strategy, commercialization and marketing strategy, software as a medical device, health informatics and data management

Programs: Medtech

Dave Litwiller

Dave has 25+ years of experience with a focus on general management of scale-up stage firms, governance, financing, transactions, partnerships and high productivity R&D practices spanning hardware and software.

Expertise: General management success, governance, strategic intelligence, high output R&D

Programs: Scale-ups

Vartika Manasvi

Founder & CEO at StackRaft

Vartika has 11+ years of experience in building products and go-to-market strategies. She’s built seven community-first tech products, contributing to startup ecosystems across India, Egypt, Eastern Europe and North America.

Expertise: Product development, product market fit, go-to-market strategy

Programs: Startups

RJ McNaughton

RJ currently works as President of Strategic Transformation Consulting, a private consulting firm focused on providing strategic sales and marketing services to small and mid-cap companies. Prior to this, RJ was an award-winning senior executive with a demonstrated history of success delivering sales in Medical/IT industries.

Expertise: GPO & national account management, Sales operations and marketing strategy, Distribution management

Programs: MedTech

Alexander McVittie

Platform Developer at SkyWatch

Alex currently creates solutions for working with satellite imagery in Java. He also contributes to the European Space Agency's open source Sentinel Application analysis software.

Expertise: Geographic information system, GIS software development, remote sensing

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN and ENCQOR

Matthew Monteyne

COO at RideCo

Matthew is an entrepreneur and executive who has spent the majority of his career growing small or startup tech firms. He has extensive, hands-on expertise with starting and scaling sales and marketing organizations.

Expertise: Product management, sales and business development, marketing, business planning and roadmapping

Programs: Startups

Leena Motwani

With an engineering and education background, Leena helps organizations build high performance teams and bridge the gap between front-line team members and leaders with a systematic, thoughtful and people-centred approach.

Expertise: Remote/hybrid work, HR policies & procedures, Talent planning, Learning & development

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Chris Mulhall

Jacqueline Nuwame

Marketing Director at Earin AB

Jacqueline has 15+ years experience leading business expansion initiatives, brands and start-ups like Manulife and DHX Media, and has hands-on technological expertise in product management in consumer electronics.

Expertise: Digital marketing automation, branding strategies, communication and public relations

Programs: Startups

Andrew Ricchetti

Andrew has 15+ years of experience in analytics and data science. He’s also worked with executives and shareholders to unlock value and growth opportunities.

Expertise: Building data science teams, establishing data driven culture, establishing data science practice (architecture/budgeting/governance/ security)

Programs: Startups, Scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN, ENCQOR

Paul Thompson

Business Development at Sonova Group

Paul has 15 years of experience growing a medical device company. He’s a versatile executive with an entrepreneurial attitude, strong financial foundation and cross-cultural leadership skills.

Expertise: Strategy, sales and marketing, new channel development, financial management

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, financial expertise as a service

Vinay Nair

Fractional CMO/GTM Advisor at Scalewise

Vinay is a passionate technology market strategist and SaaS go-to-market executive. He advises companies on how to build a scalable customer acquisition and expansion strategy with systems thinking principles in mind.

Expertise: Go-to-market strategy, brand and storytelling, B2B and B2C marketing, channel marketing

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Paul Weber

Director at FirstScreen and Managing Director at OnPoint Ventures

Paul has 25 years of medtech experience with a focus on establishing strategy, securing funding, building execution teams and forming partnerships that accelerate growth and drive value for investors. 

Expertise: Strategy, product development, funding, partnerships

Programs: Medtech

Gord Wehner

With 35 years of experience in Quality Management and Regulatory Affairs, Gord Wehner brings extensive experience in guiding innovative medical organizations toward the implementation of an effective quality management systems and navigating international medical device regulatory requirements.

Expertise: Medical device regulatory strategy, Quality Management Systems

Programs: Medtech

Karen Wetteskind

Director at FirstScreen and Managing Director at OnPoint Ventures

Karen has expertise in product, project and operations management with startups, scale-ups and global enterprises and previously worked overseeing sales, marketing and development activities.

Expertise: Strategy creation and implementation, product management, people leadership, operations management

Programs: Startups, scale-ups

Sonya Willsher

Lead Generation, Search (SEM & SEO) for startups & scale-ups

Sonya has over 20 years of marketing and advertising experience with large consumer brands, B2B companies, and startups. She is an award-winning digital marketer, with a focus on acquisition using inbound and paid marketing channels. Building multi-variant testing models to garner higher results and better alignment of prospects’ behaviours and needs. Sonya delves deep into data to understand how people consume media and content, how to measure results, optimize experiences, and enhance performance. Outside of work, Sonya is an avid reader and loves to cook. She also enjoys spending time with family playing board games and hiking local trails.

Expertise: Digital Marketing Strategy

Programs: Startups, Scale-ups, AVIN

Adeel Zaman

CTO at DOZR

Adeel has built two deep learning startups and has expertise in architecting and leading AI-powered products from the ideation stage to scale.

Expertise: Data architecture reviews, hiring/culture for data science, data roadmap, storage and strategy, deep learning and NLP

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN and ENCQOR

Shaohua Zhang

Co-Founder and Chief Instructor WeCloudData

Shaohua runs a data science education startup and has experience building the data science team at BlackBerry. He played a key role in helping BlackBerry leverage big data and machine learning.

Expertise: Data science and engineering, data architecture, data visualization, data mining

Programs: Startups, scale-ups, AVIN, CENGN and ENCQOR