Innovation Leaders

Backgrounder

Biographies

Janie Béïque is Senior Vice-President, Natural Resources, Industries and Consumer Goods at Fonds de solidarité FTQ. She is a board member of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association and is a member of the Autorité des marchés financiers’ advisory committee on SME financing.

Dr. Elizabeth Cannon is President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calgary. She serves as chair of the Canada Research Knowledge Network and of Universities Canada and is a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council and the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities.

Valerie Fox is Chief Innovation Consultant at The Pivotal Point. She is co-founder and former executive director at Ryerson Digital Media Zone, a university business incubator housing over 190 companies.

Dr. Arvind Gupta is a distinguished visiting professor at University of Toronto. He is the former president and vice chancellor of the University of British Columbia and former CEO of Mitacs Canada. Dr. Gupta has been a member of the Government of Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council since 2012.

Austin Hill is co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, a provider of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Mr. Hill was a venture partner with Montreal Startup and helped create Real Ventures, Canada’s leading early stage venture capital firm. Mr. Hill also co-founded Zero-Knowledge Systems, the largest and most funded research company focused on cypherpunk technologies for privacy, anonymity and electronic cash.

Dr. Sarah Lubik is the Director of Entrepreneurship for Simon Fraser University, developing, aligning and accelerating its innovation ecosystem from entrepreneurial education across disciplines through to early stage incubation and commercialization. Dr. Lubik is also a certified business coach and co-founder and director of a high tech start-up firm, Lungfish Dive Systems.

Dr. Maurice Moloney is Executive Director and CEO of theGlobal Institute for Food Security. Dr. Moloney is also the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) / Dow AgroSciences Industrial Research Professor at the University of Calgary. He founded SemBioSys, an agricultural biotechnology company, and served as its president and then its chief scientific officer between 1994 and 2010.

Mark Podlasly is the founder of Brookmere Management Group, which helps Indigenous and local communities identify and engage economic, social and educational opportunities. Mr. Podlasly is also co-founder and CEO of North Pacific Energy Ltd., a Canadian wood biomass energy company. Mr. Podlasly is a trustee at Tribal Sovereign Wealth Fund, a senior teaching fellow at Harvard University, a fellow at Action Canada and a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation.

Dr. Ilse Treurnicht is the CEO of MaRS Discovery District, a leading innovation hub in Toronto. Dr. Treurnicht is a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council. She was previously President and CEO of Primaxis Technology Ventures, a startup-stage venture capital fund.

Dr. Tyler Wish is the co-founder and CEO of Sequence Bio, a data-driven precision medicine company based in Newfoundland and Labrador. The company is a leading large-scale initiative designed to deliver precision medicine in Newfoundland and Labrador and enable therapeutic discovery. Prior to co-founding Sequence, Dr. Wish was founder and president of Research Avenue, a niche contract research company that provided outsourced development services to health care and life-sciences companies.

Related products

• News Release: Building an inclusive and innovative Canada
• Backgrounder on the Innovation Agenda and the six action areas
• Speech: Launch of Innovation Agenda – Minister Bains
• Speech: Launch of Innovation Agenda – Minister Duncan
• Speech: Launch of Innovation Agenda – Minister Chagger
• Video: Canada: A Nation of Innovators

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Hon. Navdeep Singh Bains Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada Economics and Industry