Baycrest

Over his 30 year career Chris has been an engineer, entrepreneur, executive, and advisor. He has worked across a number of industries, but he has specific knowledge of software solutions related to eCommerce, Retail, Data, Loyalty, Martech, and Fintech. Chris has been on the founding team of two UK tech startups - the first, uSwitch, was acquired for over £200m, and the second, KidStart, is profitable and now has over 1m members. Chris also spent six years on the leadership team at Google Canada, where he helped to grow the business from 50 people to over 300 and was responsible for all relationships with Retailers, Telcos and Tech clients in Canada. Chris also led a two-year turnaround of Computacenter France, a €400m IT company - transitioning the business from products to services and into profitability. Most recently, Chris was also part of the executive team at RBC which built RBC Ventures - an internal corporate incubator. While at RBC, Chris was an active member of RBC's Venture Board, RBC's Innovation Committee and RBC's Diversity & Inclusion Council. Chris is a Venture Partner at The Group Ventures and an Advisor at Next Canada and Loyal Ventures. He is also a Non-Executive Board Director at KidStart, BEAN Partners, and the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation (CABHI). He is Chair of the Advisory Committee at Juniper. Chris has an MBA from INSEAD, in France, and an Engineering degree from Queen's University, in Canada.