President & Co-founder, TaraSpan Raj has helped Canadian Technology companies generate revenue from the Indian market. Raj was CEO and co-founder of TenXc Wireless, a company developing intelligent antenna systems for the GSM market. He helped launch startups and secured over $40m in funding for hi-tech startups. He transacted an M&A of an Ottawa software company by a publicly-traded Indian software company. Raj is a co-founder and Charter Member of the Ottawa chapter of TiE.

Founder, President & CEO, TK Financial TK Financial is a leading independent financial planning firm that provides integrated financial and pension services to corporate, self-employed and professional clientele. Milan has served professional and business clients in Estate and Life Insurance Planning and he is a partner Barrington Wealth Partners. He is a graduate of University of Ottawa, where he was a member of the football team and then went on to play in the Canadian Football League.

Managing Director of Innovation Kevin heads the Invest Ottawa Innovation team, which provides services from helping entrepreneurs start and grow their business, to innovation acceleration for tech companies. Kevin led the Launch Lab team in transforming Eastern Ontario into a hotbed for innovation and entrepreneurship; he was the Director of Commercialization at the Ontario Centres of Excellence. He focused on helping high-potential early stage companies become sustainable global competitors.

Regional Director of Business Development for Eastern and Northern Ontario, OCE John heads a team of Business Development Managers responsible for industry and academic engagement, support for the RICs, and OCE program delivery. John has experience in the high tech industry with Nortel, Mitel and Bookham Technology. He held senior management positions dealing with strategic relationships and mergers and acquisitions ranging from less than 100 persons several billion dollar investments.

Senior Business Development Manager, OCE Hindal’s experience includes business development in the ICT, digital media and health sectors. He co-founded multiple startups prior to joining OCE. Hindal spent over 20 years with the federal government and then joined Nortel Networks. He holds an honours degree from Carleton University and also undertook courses at University of Ottawa, American Management Association, and also studied law for couple of years at University of London, England.

SanDisk Ventures Mr. Renard joined SanDisk in 2014 to head the US datacenter and mobile investing initiatives. Mr. Renard has 20 years of business development and venture capital experience, including 14 as a corporate investor for the Orange-France Telecom Group in North America. Mr. Renard has had portfolio companies go public on the Nasdaq, NYSE, and Neuer Markt. Others have been acquired by Cisco, Yahoo, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Cable & Wireless, IBM, Keynote, and SAP.

Invest Ottawa Bruce Lazenby is President & CEO of Invest Ottawa. He was Chairman of the Ottawa Software Cluster; Vice President in Canada for Corum Group Ltd. an M&A advisory firm and CEO of FreeBalance Inc. raising funds for venture capital and debt financing. A graduate of Royal Military College, Bruce served as a Senior Naval Officer for 20 years. He speaks at knowledge-based events and, was voted Canada’s Private Sector Technology Leader by CATA.

DOCOMO Innovations, Inc. Christina is part of the Business Development and Investment Group at Docomo Innovations. Prior to that, she was part of Incubation and Ventures at Vodafone. Christina was founder of Shimmer Group Incorporated, an internet startup developing products for network of social media bloggers focused initially on the beauty space.

Mistral Venture Partners Code is a Founder and Managing Director of Mistral Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Ottawa Ontario and San Jose, CA. Code has more than 25 years of experience as a company founder, operating executive and investor. Prior, Code was the Chief Operating Officer of Zephyr Technology, a Senior Partner at Motorola Ventures in California and a Principal at Gabriel Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley based Venture Capital Firm.

Accenture Mr. Sauer leads Accenture's North American Advanced Technology and Architecture Innovation Services practice, and Accenture's Cloud Application Migration Services practice. He has held positions of Software Engineer, Technology Architect, Program Manager, Software Product Manager, and Consulting Service Line Practice Lead. He has experience in Financial Services, Government, Products, Natural Resources, and Telecommunications.

LaBarge Weinstein LLC Debbie Weinstein is a founding partner of LaBarge Weinstein, a business law firm, with over 25 years of diverse legal experience, providing services to emerging companies, established public and private technology businesses, and investment bankers, and venture capitalists. Debbie has substantial experience in venture capital and other private financing transactions.

Garth Smith is the Director of Industry Relations at the Ontario Brain Institute where he is responsible for the development of collaborative partnerships with multinationals and Ontario-based SMEs to facilitate the commercialization of neurotechnologies in Ontario. He has over 10 years of experience in life science commercialization, has held various roles where he specialized in business and product development. Garth holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge in Neurophysiology.

APEX Investment & Company Jaewon Peter Chun is the CEO of APEX Investment & Company, a private equity investment fund and strategic consulting firm based in Korea. APEX specializes in leveraged buyouts and M&A in the traditional industry, and the company has recently been focusing more on investing the cutting-edge technologies in the field of ICT, Bio and security in both Asia and Europe. Mr. Chun also serves as a Senior Advisor at Tyco International and Executive Director at the Korea-ISR.

Partner, White Star Capital Jean-Francois has managed startups and investments for several years. He was the co-founder of Ludia, a leading digital videogame publisher, and managed all non-product related operations including Finance, Legal, Strategy and HR. JF gained extensive operational experience with his role at Ludia which grew from a startup in 2007 to a highly profitable 300 employee company today.

Jeff is the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) leader at Deloitte in the National Capital Region (NCR). Jeff’s primary responsibility is to bring in-depth industry knowledge and insights to our technology clients to help them grow and thrive in an increasingly competitive and global environment. He translates his experience advising clients into helping the local team of over 70 professionals dedicated to technology companies bring differentiated value and business solutions.

John is a passionate and committed entrepreneur, business leader and educator, he has a wealth of business experience that he wishes to share with students, entrepreneurs and business builders.John has expertise and experience to sell, market, build, staff and finance: projects, complex business systems and emerging technologies in both private and public sectors across multiple industries at home and abroad.

L-SPARK Leo Lax is currently the Managing Director of L-SPARK, a “one-of-a-kind” accelerator and incubator aimed at providing enterprise software startups and entrepreneurs with access to world renowned mentors and investors, to help them develop next generation products that are able to compete in the global marketplace. Leo has also been CEO of Skypoint Capital, a venture capital firm that specializes in telecom, since he and Andrew Katz co-founded the company in 1998.

FIRST STONE VENTURE PARTNERS Margo Langford brings 35 years of legal and business expertise related to media content and technology to her role as Partner with FIRST STONE VENTURE PARTNERS. Drawing on her experience as digital media entrepreneur, she is now a key recruiter of companies for First Stone investments and provides legal advice and corporate governance expertise to the portfolio companies in First Stone’s incubator.

Algonquin College As the Executive Director, Partnerships and Applied Mark is responsible for engaging industry, government and community organizations in the activities of the College. Since 2007 when he joined Algonquin College he has accomplished this by developing strong internal and external networks with creative, driven and passionate people; leveraging the expertise of faculty and staff; engaging students in addressing real-world problems and opportunities.

Strategy Corp Martin Rust is an experienced government relations professional whose diverse experiences have included political engagement in Canada at various levels and international consulting in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Having worked in the areas of strategy and communications, he has advised corporate decision-makers, Members of Parliament, Cabinet Ministers and senior government officials in building practical solutions to address complex problems.

Teres Capital Max Gurvits is a VC partner at Teres Capital, a new venture fund for high-growth companies in Southeastern Europe. He previously co-founded an online legal service company in the Netherlands and briefly worked as an investment banker. Max was a founding team member of Eleven Startup Accelerator in Sofia, the largest acceleration program and seed fund in the Balkans region, before joining Teres.

Datonics Michael Benedek is President and CEO of Datonics LLC, a leading data marketplace that facilitates the delivery of relevant, privacy-sensitive advertising to consumers on all of their devices. In March 2000, Michael joined behavioral targeting pioneer AlmondNet Inc., serving as VP, Business Development and President of the Data division, before being appointed President and CEO of AlmondNet spin-off Datonics.

Golden Gate Ventures Michael Lints is Venture Partner at Golden Gate Ventures. Golden Gate Ventures is an early-stage VC firm in Southeast Asia with over 17 investments to date. With offices in Singapore and San Francisco, the firm helps bridge Silicon Valley and Asia through investment, experience, and network. The firm invests in internet & mobile startups regardless of sector: ecommerce to payments, mobile applications to SaaS platforms.

CIMTEC, the Centre for Imaging Technology Commercialization Michael Waterston heads the business development team at CIMTEC, the Centre for Imaging Technology Commercialization. Michael fosters new medical imaging engineering and testing projects and prepares clients for growth. Before coming to CIMTEC, Michael worked in neuroscience commercialization at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto where he implemented an entrepreneur-centric incubation model.

Smith Petrie Carr & Scott Insurance Brokers (SPCS) Neil is Vice President of SPCS and co-founder of Globalex Risk Management – a specialty insurance operation servicing the Venture Capital and Technology industries. A graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University, Neil has over 25 years of industry experience; dealing with risk management and insurance issues for start-up organizations.

Spring2 Innovation Nilufer Erdebil is CEO of Spring2 Innovation, an innovation and strategy consulting firm. Prior to launching Spring2 Innovation, Nilufer began her career working at Procter & Gamble, in sales, and moved into software engineering. As a software designer she has worked on leading edge technologies and products, in a variety of international defense and telecommunications companies, including General Dynamics, CrossKeys Systems (now Oracle) and Marconi Wireless (now Ericsson)

Cisco Investments Paul joined Cisco in 2004 and has held various roles in Sales, Partner Operations, R&D and Innovation. In his current role, Paul is part of the Cisco Investments team focused on Canadian investment opportunities and helping to grow an ecosystem of enterprise and industrial internet startups. In these roles he was part of the key product launches in IP Communications, Collaboration and Data Center.

BDC Capital Ron is a Managing Partner in the IT Venture Fund and joined BDC Venture Capital in 2000. Ron has led VC investments in Ottawa including Tarian Software, Blaze Software, CloudLink Technologies, Klipfolio and Privacy Analytics. Ron is an experienced operator with a proven record of building successful enterprise software companies. During the early part of his career, he held progressively senior positions in engineering, product management, software sales and marketing.

iGan Partners Sam has over 15 years of entrepreneurial, technology and venture capital experience. As leader of the iGan Partners team, he is involved in evaluating new investment prospects, structuring transactions, helping companies raise funds, and leading the firm’s other efforts with respect to portfolio companies. Sam has been extensively involved in many portfolio companies, often serving as CEO particularly in the early stages of each company’s development.

Immediate Past-President AUTM Sean Flanigan is the Immediate Past-President of the Association of University Technology Managers and a technology transfer practitioner. Mr. Flanigan studied law at the University of Ottawa and has been a member of the Ontario Bar since 1993. At the University of Ottawa Mr. Flanigan leads the team responsible for industrial liaison, technology development and transfer, new company creation and student entrepreneurship.

Founder and CEO, Qodeo Simon founded qodeo to combat problems he encountered working in VCs and as an entrepreneur. Simon has experience as Director at Australian Westpac Institutional Bank and working at Ernst & Young in the UK. Simon has had senior operational roles in media and entertainment; he worked for US Congressman Jack Kemp in Washington DC. Simon has BA, MA and MBA degrees from Cambridge University and studied in corporate finance at London Business School.

Tata Group, Mumbai Angels Suneel has worked in the telecommunications business in India in sales, marketing and program management culminating in a COO position. He joined the Tata Group in 1989 as a Tata Administrative Service Officer and worked on Group strategy and new business development during the early part of his career. He is interested in investing in start-ups in the mobile Internet & apps, m comm, M2M, cloud solutions and mobile gaming businesses.

Bloomberg News Theo Argitis, 47, has been Ottawa bureau chief for Bloomberg News since 2005, managing a team of six reporters and editors in what is the largest international news office in Canada's capital. In his job as a beat reporter on Canadian government policy, Mr. Argitis has covered 10 budgets, three elections, and dozens of G-20/G-8/G-7 meetings around the world.

Digital Editor, Ottawa Business Journal A graduate of the Carleton School of Journalism, Tom joined OBJ in June 2014 after a 20-year career in the broadcast media. A classically trained pianist, Tom also runs a music school, with a small but growing staff, offering piano and theory lessons in your own home. Tom is happy to be involved in Axis Ottawa 2014 and looking forward to seeing the effect it will have on the Otttawa business ecosystem.