Advisors

Alexander has 30 years of experience as CEO, President and Executive Chairman at public and private global businesses covering a broad range of sectors. Prior to taking on executive roles, he was a Partner of McKinsey & Company and worked at the Toronto, Brussels, Montreal, and Stockholm offices. Alexandre is primarily focused on developing the Firm’s executive and advisor network as well as serving on the Inovia Capital Investment Committee.

Allyson Letteri is a marketing executive and startup advisor who’s spent her career building marketing teams at fast-growing tech companies in Silicon Valley (Intuit, Thumbtack, and Handshake). She now advises founders and leaders at VC-backed startups so they can create powerful marketing growth engines and build teams that deliver results.

Allyson began her career at the Boston Consulting Group, creating marketing and growth strategy for consumer goods companies. At Intuit she led market entry strategy in Asia, go-to-market for Intuit’s mobile payments products in Canada and the UK, and retention marketing globally for QuickBooks Online. At Thumbtack, Allyson built and led the Pro Marketing team, significantly increasing the number of small business owners getting hired on the platform. As VP Marketing at Handshake, Allyson launched a new brand identity and led significant growth in college students using the platform to get hired for internships and jobs.

Allyson lives in San Francisco with her husband and two kids. Allyson holds a BS in Business Administration and BA in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (‘03)l.  She received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (‘07). Allyson loves to hike and is an avid watercolor artist.

Andre joined Inovia Capital as a Venture Partner in November 2019. Most recently, Andre was an operator at Hired as VP of Strategic Development and also raised his own fund called Maple VC. At Hired, Andre was one of the first 15 employees and led the company’s expansion to 16 markets across 6 countries.

At Maple, Andre is focused on investing in exceptional Canadian founders (regardless of location) and partnering with them on talent and growth. Maple has invested alongside top Silicon Valley funds including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock and Sequoia. Previously, Andre was one of the first 25 employees at Uber and led new market entry for the company into Canada. Prior to tech, he started his career in investment banking at Wachovia Securities. Andre holds a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Toronto.

Bernard Paradis has been active in the venture capital industry since 1985, mainly as Senior VP of Desjardins Capital de Risque. Recently, he has focused his activities on advising SMEs as well as managers of VC funds. Bernard played a key role in the launch of Capital Régional et Coopératif Desjardins, Desjardins Innovatech and Fier Partenaires. Bernard has been a Board Member or Advisor with Inovia Capital since 2004.

Colleen is Chief Client Officer at Osler. She is responsible for implementing Osler’s client-focused business development strategy. Colleen works closely with the Managing Partner and the members of the firm’s Client Relations Committee to deepen and strengthen existing client relationships and also provides advice and guidance on new markets and business development opportunities.

Colleen has extensive experience building successful companies and valuable brands. She is a respected business leader with senior management experience in financial services, technology, business and web-based services. Colleen has held a variety of corporate leadership positions and has a deep understanding of business development strategy in the services sector.

Colleen has had a long successful career in the financial services industry that spans over 20 years. She began her career at Merrill Lynch and CIBC. Colleen was a co-founder and President of E*TRADE Canada — building the firm from its pioneering roots as an e-commerce start-up to its position as the largest independent on-line investment firm in Canada. She also served as Vice President and General Manager of E*TRADE Financial Global Corporate Services. In her role as President and CEO of Nexient Learning, Colleen successfully restructured and recapitalized this company, transforming it into Canada’s leading corporate learning and skills development provider. As Entrepreneur in Residence at the private equity firm Signal Hill Equity Partners she worked to identify and evaluate new Canadian mid-market investment opportunities and also assisted portfolio companies with strategy execution. Colleen is a Board member of Merrco Payments Inc.

Since 1981, Dan Freedman has founded, grown, sold, integrated, managed, and financed software companies, primarily in the networking and security sectors. Dan served as VP of Security Products at anti-virus giant McAfee Corporation, and has established successful companies in the networking, security, financing, and Internet Telephony spaces. Dan joined Inovia Capital in 2008 as a member of our Investment Committee, and has since moved into an advisor role. His leadership roles today include executive coaching, corporate governance, strategy development, negotiation, and advising on complex sales/marketing scenarios.

François Gauvin is a CPA, CA with over 35 years of experience in mergers and acquisitions, international tax planning and venture capital. He has provided Inovia Capital steady, diligent leadership for over more than a decade, ensuring that transparency and rigour remain core to the Firm’s reputation.

Prior to joining Inovia in 2007, François was the Investment Director at the Fonds de Solidarité FTQ (FsFTQ), a $16B Montreal-based labour-sponsored fund, where he was responsible for FsFTQ’s investments in venture capital funds. After investing in Inovia’s first fund on FsFTQ’s behalf, he joined the Firm as Partner-CFO and has been involved in every single transaction Inovia has ever done. He is a board member of Réseau Capital and an active member of the CVCA CFO task force.

Jan Peeters is the President and CEO of Olameter, which he founded in 1998. Olameter is a leading meter service and data management company in North America. Jan was also the founder (1988) of ƒONOROLA Inc., a highly successful long distance telephone company, and the main developer of inter-city fibre-optic-based networks in Canada and northern United States. The company was sold to Sprint in 1998. He has served on the Board of Intersil Corporation (2000-2016). He is a Governor Emeritus of McGill University, having served on that Board from 1999 to 2008. While there, he helped launch MSBi (now Inovia Capital). Jan is a graduate of McGill University with degrees in Engineering and Accounting.

Kristine Steuart is the founder of Allocadia, a Vancouver-based marketing planning, budgeting, and performance management software company. As the company’s CEO, Kristine led Allocadia from a start-up to a global organization with hundreds of customers – including Unilever, Philips and ServiceNow – and partnerships with industry leaders including Oracle, IBM and Adobe.

In 2021 Kristine led the company to a successful transaction for its customers, shareholders, and 150 employees by bringing together Allocadia and BrandMaker. The combined company has more than 350 people around the world, a broader suite of complementary products, and the full backing of a global PE firm. Kristine and her twin sister co-founder Katherine Berry hold the distinction of one of the largest exits by a female founded company in Canada. Kristine was named one of the “Top 10 Women in Tech to Watch” by inc. magazine, and one of B.C.’s top 35 most influential women in business. Kristine currently serves as director on the board of the BC Tech Association.

She has a bachelor of arts degree from Simon Fraser University.

Manon is Chairman of the Board of Hydro-Québec (largest producer of renewable energy in northeastern North America), former CEO of Verizon Consumer Group (U.S. telecom operator – revenues of $95B – 120M customers, 65000 employees) and former President and CEO of Videotron (Canadian telecom and cable operator – revenues of $3.5B – 7500 employees). She has a strong background in transformation in contexts of rapid growth and market disruption, where she acquired in-depth experience in digital transformation and in the development of omni-channel and multimedia customer experiences. She is recognized for building strong brands, generating high levels of customer satisfaction. 

Manon has overseen a number of major strategic and technological deployments, including Verizon’s entry into 5G and the launch of its flagship products “5G Home” and +Play. Previously, she oversaw Videotron’s entry into wireless. She led the complete digital transformation of cable TV and was behind the creation of Canada’s first Subscription Video On Demand service, Club Illico. In 2018, she launched the first 100% digital Telecom operator known under the FIZZ brand.  Under her leadership, Videotron has earned the title of Canada’s most admired and fastest-growing telecom company.

Manon also has extensive experience in corporate governance. She has served as a corporate director on various boards of international, private and public companies, including the National Bank of Canada (TSX:NA), French telecom SFR (ATC.AS), U.S.-based Altice USA (NYSE:ATUS) and Sonder Holdings (SOND.NA). She currently sits on the boards of Lightspeed POS (NYSE:LSPD, TSX:LSPD.TO) and Beauty For All Industries (BFAI). 

Manon is the recipient of numerous distinctions, including the prestigious Femmes d’Affaires du Québec award, and has twice been named one of Canada’s top 100 most influential women. She is a graduate of Université Laval, where she was awarded the prestigious Gloire de l’Escolle medal in 2013, and of the Robert Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Melissa Dominguez holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence with a focus on computer vision.  She has been an engineering leader for a decade, leading mobile apps teams for Gmail, Google Wifi, and Google Home, and the Partner Experience team for Stadia.  

Additionally, Melissa  helped define the culture and diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy for the Google Waterloo office, and has regularly spoken publicly (including TV, radio, and print interviews) on both technical and diversity issues.

When brands like Google, Starbucks, Shopify and GE want to leverage technology to better connect with their consumers, they call Mitch Joel. He has been called one of North America’s leading visionaries and the Rock Star of Digital Marketing by Strategy Magazine, but he is much more than that. Mitch Joel is Founder of Six Pixels Group – an advisory, investing and content producing company that is focused on commerce and innovation (although he prefers the title, “Media Hacker”). Prior to Six Pixels Group, Mitch spent close to two decades building, running and (eventually) selling his business. He was President of Mirum — a global digital marketing agency operating in 25 countries with close to 3000 employees. Mirum is owned by WPP.

Mitch has been named one of the top 100 online marketers in the world, and was awarded the highly prestigious Top 40 Under 40.

Mitch’s first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon. Mitch is frequently called upon to be a subject matter expert for publications like Fast Company, Strategy, Forbes, The Globe & Mail and many others. He is a columnist and journalist for the Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, The Huffington Post and many other magazines and newspapers.

Mitch speaks frequently to diverse groups like Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Microsoft, Procter and Gamble, Twitter, Unilever and every organization and association in between. Since 2005 he has given anywhere between 40-60 keynote presentation a year.

Mitch is also the host of Groove — The No Treble Podcast, where he is slowly trying to build the largest oral history of electric bass players in the world.

Mohamed Musbah joined Inovia Capital in 2023 as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR). He previously served as Vice President of Product at Maluuba, a renowned AI research startup focused on natural language understanding, until its acquisition by Microsoft for $160M. Following the acquisition, Mohamed took on the role of Director of Product at Microsoft Research, where he led the development of machine learning technologies across Microsoft products, including Xbox, Bing, and Microsoft Office. After dedicating time to travel, Mohamed has set out on a new journey to help build companies with a lasting impact.

Mohamed earned his Bachelor’s in Software Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Rasool is a serial entrepreneur with experience in the software, healthcare, and organic grocery industries. He continues to maintain his passion for technology as an active angel investor with a focus on b2b, consumer SaaS and health tech. Rasool maintains an active role with CEO’s as a board member, mentor and advisor. He currently serves on the boards of the Victoria Foundation, VIATEC, and Checkfront Software.

Robin Bienfait was the chief enterprise innovation officer and senior advisor for Samsung, responsible for building strong partnerships with large global customers to deliver enterprise class services. Robin joined Samsung with over 30 years of experience in mobility, security, business development, enterprise sales, wireless network operations and engineering. As a global intrapreneur, Robin launched Samsung Business Services and advised on the B2B investment strategy. Now as CEO for Emnovate, Robin is advising and providing software solutions to emerging businesses. Prior to Samsung, Robin served as chief information officer for BlackBerry, where she led the enterprise business unit and software development team, end to end product security, tier 3 technical customer service, global network services, corporate security and corporate IT. For the majority of her career, Robin held senior leadership positions across AT&T including Bell Labs, Global Network Services/GNOC, business continuity and disaster recovery, and compliance. As an officer at AT&T, Robin’s last role was leading global network services and chief compliance officer, environment, health and safety.

Robin holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Central Missouri State University and a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with a master’s degree in management of technology. A global influencer holding 15 patents, she is the recipient of several awards and was named as one of the top 100 CIO’s in STEM. Robin currently serves on multiple boards as an independent director, Empower Retirement, Putnam Investments, GW Lifeco and MUFG.

Sarah has over 20 years of executive leadership experience in large-scale Operations, Customer Experience, and Technology roles within the Financial Services and Telecommunications industries, most recently as Chief Operations Officer at Manulife and SVP, Digital, Product & Service Delivery at Shaw Communications.  Sarah provides deep expertise in building resilient and effective operating models, customer success strategy, go to market strategy and execution, digital transformation, organizational design/culture, and leadership development.  She is a passionate proponent of transforming great vision and strategy into exceptional execution to drive successful outcomes.  

Sarah holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business and a BA in Social Science from York University. 

Simon Leroux is an entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and coach. He is passionate about Big Data, AI, B2B SaaS, and growing and scaling teams, companies, and products. 

Simon co-founded of Gazelle.ai, the first application designed to use AI and Big Data consistently to identify companies poised for growth and expansion. Gazelle utilizes artificial intelligence to access vast pools of data across multiple sources, and their algorithms are trained to rank companies based on their likelihood to expand.

In March 2023, KKR acquired Gazelle and integrated it into their portfolio company Lightcast.io, a leading provider of labor market analytics.

Simon began his career in the private sector at Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), where he held senior management positions in business strategy, sales, and marketing. In 2009, he became the co-owner and partner at ROI Research on Investment, a management consulting firm specializing in international business development and attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), which is where the idea of Gazelle originated.