Advisors

Adam Schlesinger is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in transformation and revenue growth leadership roles across the banking and technology sectors. He currently advises startups in the FinTech, Payments, and AI spaces and serves as an independent board director for a federally chartered U.S. Bank.

Adam has successfully built and exited startups to major companies like Zoom and Bumble and taken others public on the TSX, Nasdaq, and NYSE. As the former Chief Transformation Officer at First Republic Bank, he developed client-focused technology offerings and innovative solutions that challenged industry norms. Prior to this role, he led Breakout Ventures at the National Bank of Canada, creating $1B+ revenue streams and spearheading digital and data platform transformations.

With a decade-long tenure at Microsoft, Adam managed significant financial services relationships and drove over $1.5 billion in revenue. His diverse expertise includes investment banking, M&A, and software sales.

Adam holds a Master of Engineering from MIT and a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University. He splits his time between Miami, Los Angeles, and Montreal.

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.

Donny is passionate about developing products that harness healthcare data analytics and machine learning to promote healthier living in a sustainable and responsible way. Currently, he leads engineering for the Healthcare and Life Sciences AI product portfolio at Google Cloud, including generative AI applications like Google’s MedLM.

Prior to this, Donny was a senior scientist at a Toronto-based medical device startup, focusing on medical imaging device design and image reconstruction algorithms. He holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, where his research centered on quantum computing.

Driven by a commitment to continuous learning, Donny is excited to tackle complex challenges in healthcare data understanding.

Felicia Bochicchio has been a passionate advocate for SaaS technology since 2000, leveraging her expertise to navigate the full lifecycle of SaaS companies—from inception to scale. She began her career during the dot-com era, building and leading a high-performing sales organization at Active Network. Under her leadership, Active Network transformed from a startup into a $400M NASDAQ-listed company.

Relocating to Vancouver in 2008, Felicia immersed herself in the dynamic early-stage tech ecosystem, mentoring founders, consulting on growth strategies, and advising executives on scalable growth engines. Her contributions as a VP of Sales at seed-stage technology companies have supported fundraising efforts and established solid foundations for growth.

In 2018, Felicia joined Unbounce, a mar-tech SaaS leader, as Chief Revenue Officer and later CEO. During her tenure as CEO, she spearheaded the development of generative AI tools designed to empower digital marketers with higher campaign ROI.

Today, Felicia channels her expertise as an advisor, consultant, board member, and investor, working with businesses that are shaping the future of technology. She is particularly committed to championing women-owned businesses, supporting women in tech, and fostering innovation in small businesses driving economic progress.

CORE EXPERTISE
Revenue Development & Optimization | Operational Maturity & Scaling | Strategic Planning & Market Expansion | Executive Leadership & Team Building | Culture Building & Employee Engagement | Customer Journey Activation & Growth Strategies | Sales, Marketing, & Customer Success Leadership | Early-stage Board Development & Governance | Fundraising & Investor Relations

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.

Françoise Brougher is a senior executive and board director with decades of experience in technology, engineering, finance, operations, and sales. Throughout her career, she has specialized in both strategic and operational roles, helping to scale organizations from dozens to thousands and creating marketing, sales, and services models for new innovative technologies. She has extensive expertise in building end-to-end go-to-market functions and corporate strategy: Sales, Marketing, Biz Dev, Corp Dev Customer Success and driving Corporate Strategy.

Françoise most recently served as Chief Operating Officer at Pinterest, where she grew revenue, increased the advertiser base, expanded operations to 20 countries, and helped take the company public. Prior to joining Pinterest in 2018, she was the Global Business Lead at Square where she built and ran go-to-market functions, including sales, marketing, account management, business intelligence, customer success, and business development, and assisted with Square’s IPO.

Françoise previously worked at Google for eight years, most recently as Vice President of Global Sales and Operations. She was formerly Vice President of Business Operations in the late 2000s during a time of exponential growth for the company. Prior to joining Google, she was Vice President of the Business Strategy Group at Charles Schwab.

Françoise currently serves on the board of Sodexo, a French multinational food services and facilities management company operating in over 70 countries, and is a member of their Compensation and Nomination Committees. She also serves as a member of the board of Velocity Global, a private international Professional Employment Organization, and an advisor at both The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Venture Growth Fund and Inovia Capital.

Françoise earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Masters in Engineering from Institut Catholique d’Arts et Metiers in France. Originally from Marseille, France, she came to the United States in her mid-twenties. She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and three children.

JF Cote joins Inovia Capital as an Executive in Residence, bringing over 25 years of business experience, including 15 years dedicated to scaling tech companies.

As a two-time winner of EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year award, JF’s leadership style has been recognized by his relentless focus on innovation, scalability, and growth.

His contributions to adtech have made waves in the industry, including co-founding Montreal-based startup District M in 2013, securing over $50M in funding, and orchestrating the merger-acquisition with Silicon Valley-based Sharethrough in 2020. Under his leadership as President & CEO, he led one of the world’s largest ad exchanges while steering the company through an IPO process. This journey culminated in a nine-figure exit to Equativ in 2024, where he now serves on the Board of Advisors.

JF has served on multiple boards, and currently sits as Chairman of the Board for the travel tech company Stay22. Currently enrolled in Harvard Business School’s Executive Program, JF holds an Executive MBA, a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce, specializing in Finance, and is a CPA by training.

JF brings to Inovia a wealth of experience in building profitable, cash-flow-positive businesses, navigating complex markets, fostering unique cultures with high-performing teams, and delivering value to investors and stakeholders.

Beyond his professional achievements, JF is an active philanthropist, supporting children’s education and promoting youth sports through active board memberships and hands-on charity work. In his personal life, he is passionate about travel and exploring new cultures with his family.

JP Chauvet, with over 25 years of technology leadership experience, is Inovia Capital’s new Executive in Residence. He played a pivotal role in transforming Lightspeed Commerce into a global tech leader. JP joined Lightspeed in October 2012 as Chief Revenue Officer, became a board member in September 2013, and was named President in April 2016. He served as CEO from February 2022 until February 2024, guiding the company through significant milestones, including strategic acquisitions, listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange, and the launch of Lightspeed Payments.

Under JP’s leadership, Lightspeed grew to employ nearly 3,000 staff worldwide and became a one-stop commerce platform for merchants globally. Before Lightspeed, JP held various leadership roles at Atex Group, Nstein Technologies, and IXIASOFT Technologies.

Now, as an Executive in Residence at Inovia, JP brings his wealth of experience and strategic insight to support portfolio companies, offering guidance on growth, M&A, and sales strategies.

Mike has 20+ years of industry experience working as a Staff Engineer.  He has worked most of his career at Google building scalable and reliable SAAS solutions.  His contributions to many domains include Observability, Experiments frameworks, Ads and CI/CD.  He is really passionate about delivering scalable solutions that exhibit operational excellence.

Mike holds a BMath from Waterloo University with a Double Honours degree in Combinatorics & Optimization and Computer Science.  Outside work, he enjoys spending time with family, hiking, fishing and camping.

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.

Nithum has almost a decade of experience in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. At Google, he contributes to efforts to better understand Machine Learning, Responsible AI, and Large Language Models. Prior to this, he worked on Perspective, one of the world’s first content moderation systems in use by global content platforms like the New York Times and taught Natural Language Processing at the UC Berkeley School of Information as well as working for and advising a number of startups.

Nithum has over 40 publications at venues like NeurIPS, JMLR, EMNLP, and ACL. He holds a PhD in Mathematics from McGill University and an MBA from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes scholar.

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.

Shyam is a seasoned Product leader with 25+ years of experience across enterprise, consumer, telco and Google infrastructure products.  Most recently, he was at Google where he led efforts to protect users from malicious ads and built on-device counter-abuse infrastructure for Gen AI applications.  He has a history of applying a pragmatic approach to solving complex interdisciplinary problems that require navigating product, engineering, regulatory, privacy, legal and PR concerns.

He previously co-founded Fixmo (backed by Inovia), built a R&D centre in Pune (Redknee, India), and started a Product Management consulting practice.

Shyam lives in Waterloo with his wife and three kids.  He holds a BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.  When not working, he can be found coaching baseball or hiking with his family.