Brief bios on the newly appointed members of the PTC follow. For more fulsome bios, please visit: http://premierstechnologycouncil.ca/team/council/
Don Mattrick – co-chair (incumbent)
As an industry-leading executive in entertainment, games and consumer products, Don has firmly established himself during a 30-year career in the technology space. Don’s recent role includes chief executive officer of Zynga, a social game services company headquartered in San Francisco, Calif. Before joining Zynga in 2013, he spent six years at Microsoft – the last three as president of the Interactive Entertainment Business.
Don was responsible for leading the team that grew Microsoft’s Xbox 360 global installed base by 700%, to nearly 75 million consoles, and the Xbox Live membership from six million to nearly 50 million subscribers in 41 countries. Don is widely recognized for transforming the Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business from one that was operating at a loss into a sustained and profitable business. Prior to Microsoft, he served in several leadership positions at Electronic Arts, most recently as president of Worldwide Studios. He founded his first company, Distinctive Software, at age 17; it was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1991 and subsequently became EA Canada. Don is the recipient of many awards, including Honorary Fellow of the Sauder School of Business at UBC, and an honorary Doctor of Laws at Simon Fraser University.
Amiee Chan – member
Amiee Chan has been the president and chief executive officer of Norsat International since 2006, a technology and communication solutions firm. Under her leadership, Norsat won a BC Export Award for Advancing Technology and Innovation. Amiee is a recipient of the Business in Vancouver’s Influential Women in Business award and the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. She is also a member of the UBC Engineering advisory council, the Dean’s external advisory board for the Beedie School of Business at SFU, and a mentor for the Ms. Infinity Program of Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. She holds her PhD in satellite communications from UBC and her executive master of business administration from SFU.
Dr. Alexandra Greenhill - member
Dr. Alexandra Greenhill is a physician entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of myBestHelper, a web service for families who need child and elder care. Alexandra is also the co-creator of Littlecodr, a game to teach kids coding. Previously, she was the chief medical officer and physician advisory for Medeo, a telehealth application; the associate CEO for the BC Medical Association; and the director for the Office for Leadership in Medicine for the Canadian Medical Association. She is the recipient of many awards, including WXN’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, Cartier Women’s Global Entrepreneur awards (North America) and a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. She has served on many boards including the Canadian Society of Physician Executives, the Canadian Institute for Child Health, and the Conseil Scolaire Francophone. She holds her doctor of medicine (MD) from the Université de Montréal and her bachelor of science from McGill University.
Judi Hess – member (incumbent)
Judi took on the role of CEO at Copperleaf in August 2009. Copperleaf is a software company that provides investment decision analytics to companies managing critical infrastructure. In 2016, Copperleaf was named the 17th fastest growing software company in Canada and the Emerging Company of the Year in B.C., which is a BC Tech Association 2016 Technology Impact award. In 2015, Canadian Business named Copperleaf one of the Top 20 Fastest-Growing Software Companies in Canada. Prior to her work with Copperleaf, Judi served as vice-president of Eastman Kodak and head of Kodak Canada. She also held a number of leadership positions with Creo Inc.; in just seven years she rose from program manager to president of the company before it was acquired by Eastman Kodak. Judi is a member of the board of directors of Pason Systems Inc. (TSX: PSI). She holds an honours bachelor of mathematics degree with distinction – Dean’s Honours List from the University of Waterloo, and was a René Descartes Scholar.
V. Paul Lee – member (incumbent)
Paul Lee is founder and managing partner of Vanedge Capital Partners Ltd., an early stage technology venture capital fund. Paul was the former president of Electronic Arts, Inc., responsible for all product development and has been an active investor in many successful technology companies. He served as one of Canada’s representatives to the APEC Business Advisory Council from 2010 – 2014 and as a member of the 2016 B20 SME Taskforce delegation. He serves on the UBC Sauder School Faculty Advisory Board and the Vancouver Public Library Foundation’s Campaign Cabinet. He also chairs D-Wave Systems and is involved with the boards of Canalyst, Control Mobile, Pacific BioEnergy and Vendasta.
Lane Merrifield – member (incumbent)
Lane Merrifield is a co-founder and CEO of FreshGrade, a learning collaboration and portfolio tool focused on the challenges facing teachers, parents and students in the 21st century classroom. FreshGrade is Lane's second startup to focus on his children, with his first being Club Penguin, the largest online virtual world for kids, which was acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2007 for $350 million. Lane also founded Wheelhouse, an organization that supports early stage technology companies and entrepreneurs through mentorship, access to early stage investment capital, and connections to global business networks and executive expertise. Lane has received an honorary fellows award, several leadership awards, and was listed as one of The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 35 Executives under 35. He has served on several technology boards as well as UBC’s board of governors.
Steve Munford – member (incumbent)
Steve Munford is an accomplished leader in security and enterprise software, with experience leading companies through rapid growth. Currently, Steve is involved with a number of public and private companies locally, in the U.S. and Europe, including director of Sophos Inc. (SOPH), chairman of Carbonite (CARB), and director of Utimaco GmbH, Alertlogic Ltd, Teradici, Quickmobile and Elasticpath. He was the past chairman of Wurltech, which was sold to General Electric in 2013, and Core Security, sold to Courin in 2015. He served as Sophos' CEO from 2006 to 2012 and, during that time, led the company through a period of dramatic growth, more than tripling bookings. Sophos sold to the private equity group Apax in 2010 and is now listed on the LSE. Prior to his role as CEO, he was president of ActiveState before its acquisition by Sophos in 2003. Under his leadership, ActiveState established itself as a global leader in email security software. Steve is active in the community, serving on the development committee at Social Venture Partner and The Children’s Wish Foundation. He also serves as a member of Science World’s Chairs Council. Steve has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Western Ontario and has an MBA from Queen's University, Ontario.
Cybele Negris – member
Cybele Negris is CEO and co-founder of Webnames.ca, Canada’s original .ca registrar and accredited registrar for hundreds of domain extensions, as well as provider of webhosting, email and web development and many other services. She is also a columnist for Business in Vancouver and Profitguard. She serves as vice-chair of the Small Business Roundtable of BC, sits on the Chair’s Council for Science World and is a member of SFU’s Advisory Council on Innovation. She formerly served on the board of governors of Capilano University, and is on the boards of Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, Vancouver Economic Commission and Wired Women. She’s a four-time winner and Hall of Fame inductee of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women, was named BC Business Top 50 Most Influential Women, honoured with Business in Vancouver’s Influential Women in Business Award as well as Top 40 Under 40 winner and nine-time winner of PROFIT W100.
Warren Roy – member (incumbent)
Warren Roy is CEO and founder of Global Relay, which offers information archiving and Cloud services. Today Global Relay has 20,000 customers globally — including 22 of the world’s top 25 banks. Global Relay has received numerous awards, including BCTA Company of the Year, Deloitte Canada’s Best Managed Companies (2014), BC Business' Most Innovative Companies (2013), and the City of Vancouver’s Award of Excellence for Business Innovation (2014). Global Relay has also been named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50/500 and Profit 500 lists, which rank the fastest-growing companies in Canada and North America. In 2013, Warren was named Entrepreneur of the Year and Person of the Year by Ernst & Young and the BC Technology Industry Association, respectively. He has also been named BC CEO of the Year by the Business in Vancouver Magazine for his outstanding vision, strategy and leadership at Global Relay.
Dr. Stephanie Simmons – member
Dr. Stephanie Simmons is an assistant professor in the department of physics at SFU, and CEO/founder of Qoherence Instruments. At SFU, she is a group leader of the Silicon Quantum Technology research group, where she works on silicon-based spin quantum bits (‘qubits’) with the particular aim to develop CMOS-compatible scalable quantum technologies. Her work on silicon quantum technologies was awarded a Physics World Top Ten Breakthrough of the Year of 2013 and again in 2015. Her work has been covered by the New York Times, CBC, BBC, Scientific American, the New Scientist and others. Stephanie earned a PhD in materials science at Oxford University in 2011 as a Clarendon Scholar and a bachelor of mathematics (pure mathematics and mathematical physics) from the University of Waterloo.
Benjamin Sparrow – member
Ben Sparrow is the co-founder and CEO of Saltworks Technologies, an innovative desalination company that delivers solutions for heavy industry with significant water challenges. Ben is both an inventor and business person. He has 40 patents and grew Saltworks from a small machine in his apartment to a profitable firm with two factories and global customers, including many Fortune 100 companies. He was awarded the Queens Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contributions to Canadian clean tech. Ben completed his master of business administration from Simon Fraser University and his bachelor of science (mechanical engineering) from the University of Alberta. He is a certified professional engineer.
Kristine Steuart – member
Kristine Steuart is CEO and co-founder of Allocadia, an enterprise Cloud software company that helps marketers plan and measure their return on marketing investment. Kristine has led Allocadia from a bootstrapped startup with a handful of customers to a global organization with more than 150 enterprise customers including VMware, Arc’teryx and Charles Schwab, thousands of users worldwide and billions of dollars in marketing spend managed in their software. Kristine was recently named among the Top 40 Under 40 by Business in Vancouver and the Top 10 Women in Tech to Watch in 2015 by Inc. magazine. Allocadia has also received recognition as one of the Top 100 Tech Companies in B.C. by Business in Vancouver, received the 2014 Technology Innovation Award from Ventana Research, was awarded the 2015 Gartner Cool Vendor for CRM Marketing Applications and was named a 2016 Technology Impact Awards finalist in the category of Emerging Company of the Year.
Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey – member
Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey is a professor of computer science and the director of the software engineering program at the University of Victoria. She holds a Canada research chair in human and social aspects of software engineering and is a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. She currently holds the Lise Meitner guest professorship at Lund University, Sweden, and was a member of the Health Informatics and Modeling Topic Advisory Group for the World Health Organization. Margaret-Anne was also the principal investigator for the National Center for Biomedical Ontology with the National Institutes of Health in the United States from 2005-2015. She is a recipient of the Craigdarroch Silver Medal for research excellence from the University of Victoria, the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement award, the IBM CAS Faculty of the Year, the IBM Eclipse Innovation award and the Advanced System Institute fellowship. She regularly collaborates with high-tech companies to ensure real-world applicability to her solutions.
Dr. Ali Tehrani – member
Dr. Ali Tehrani is the president, CEO and co-founder of Zymeworks, a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of next-generation bispecific and multifunctional biotherapeutics, initially focused on the treatment of cancer. Under his leadership, Zymeworks has been recognized by BIOTECanada and LifeSciences British Columbia as Life Sciences Company of the Year. Ali has served as a director on the board of LifeSciences British Columbia, the MITACS Industrial Advisory Board, BIOTECanada’s Industrial and Environmental Committee and the Student Biotechnology Network. He is presently a member of the board of directors of CQDM, formerly the Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery. He holds a PhD in microbiology and immunology from UBC and a master of science and bachelor of science in biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst).
Denise Williams – member
Denise Williams is Coast Salish from Cowichan Tribes on Vancouver Island. She is the executive director of the First Nations Technology Council. Prior to joining the First Nations Technology Council, Denise was a program analyst with Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development Canada and a program officer of education technology for the First Nations Education Steering Committee. She is currently the vice-president of the Urban Native Youth Association and a board member on the First Mile Connectivity Consortium. She holds her executive master of business administration and her business administration graduate diploma from SFU.
Greg Caws – president of the PTC Secretariat
Greg Caws is a successful technology entrepreneur, who has founded and invested in several B.C. tech companies, including co-founding Eightfold Logic, a big data, Cloud-based analytics company. He was also the technical architect for TELUS’ initial digital initiatives, including TelusTV; served as the technology lead for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympics bid; and served as CEO and board chair of Victoria’s VIATEC, part of the BC Venture Acceleration network. Prior to his current position with the PTC, Greg was the CEO of the BC Innovation Council, a Crown agency of the B.C. government. Greg graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada as a fuels and material engineer.
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