Canada Board of Directors

Susan Anderson

Board Chair

Co-Founder, Digital Commerce Bank & DC Payments

Susan is the President and CEO of Cannonball Capital, an active institutional investor in venture companies, private and public equities, and commercial real estate. She is also Chairperson of the Board of Digital Commerce Bank, a Schedule 1 Canadian Bank focused on technology and delivering robust and secure payment technologies. Susan co-founded DirectCash Payments in 1997. The company was listed on the TSX in 2004 and eventually became the second largest ATM company in the world with revenue of $400M and a network of over 25,000 ATMs in Canada, Australia and the UK. The company was acquired in 2017 by Cardtronics for $460M. While she was scaling DirectCash Payments, Susan co-founded Digital Commerce Bank in 2007 and served as CEO until 2015. Susan serves on several not-for-profit boards including Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and the My First Bicycle Foundation.

Dr. Chen Fong

Co-Founder and Board Director, Pureweb Inc.

Chen is Co-founder of Pureweb and Calgary Scientific. He is an angel investor in over 50 companies and sits on a number of philanthropic boards in healthcare. He contributes to and is a key fund raiser for healthcare and research, especially for the University of Calgary. Chen is Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, and former Head of the Radiology Department. He was named to the Order of Canada in 2017 for his contributions to medical technology, innovation, and philanthropy.

Chris Huskilson

Interim CEO, Algonquin Power & Utilities; Former CEO, Emera Inc.

Chris Huskilson is Interim CEO of Algonquin Power & Utilities Corporation, a publicly traded renewable energy and regulated utility conglomerate with $628M revenue. He is an energy industry veteran with over 20 years of experience leading utility businesses. Until 2018, he was CEO and Director at Emera Inc., a publicly traded and geographically diverse energy and service company based in Nova Scotia. During his 13 years at Emera, he grew the business organically and through acquisitions from $3B to $30B in assets. Chris is an active mentor and investor in Atlantic Canada’s entrepreneurship ecosystem and a founding member of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster. He serves on many for-profit and not-for-profit boards and is past chair of the Canadian electricity Association, the Greater Halifax Partnership, and the Energy Council of Canada.

Jim Estill

CEO, Danby Appliances

Jim is President and CEO of Danby Products, a home appliance manufacturer. He took over as CEO in 2015 and purchased the company and its subsidiaries in 2017. While in his final year of university in 1980, Jim started his first business, EMJ Data systems, a computer product distribution company. In 2003, EMJ acquired the Canadian operations of DaisyTek and achieved a consolidated revenue of $350M. In 2004, Synnex Canada purchased EMJ for $56M and Jim took over as CEO of the newly amalgamated Synnex Canada division. From 2004 to 2009 he grew sales at Synnex Canada from $800M to $2B. Jim is also a founding board member of Blackberry/Research in Motion where he served for 13 years from 1997 to 2010. He is an angel investor in over 150 companies and an active philanthropist. In 2015, he sponsored the immigration of 50 Syrian families to Canada at a personal cost of over $1.5M. Jim was named to the Order of Ontario in 2017, and to the Order of Canada in 2018.

Joanna Harries

SVP of Expansion, Endeavor Global

Joanna is the Global SVP of Expansion at Endeavor, the world’s leading organization for high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurs. Joanna is responsible for the majority of Endeavor’s new office launches over the past decade including offices in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and North America. She is also a Kauffman Fellow and serves on the advisory board of the Lazaridis Institute.

Dr. Lindsey Machan

Co-Founder, Angiotech Pharmaceuticals

Lindsay is an interventional radiologist at the Vancouver Hospital and Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. In 1992, he co-founded Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, which developed and licensed the paclitaxel-coated stent, and was acquired in 2017 by Vivo Capital and ZQ Capital. At its height, Angiotech employed over 1,500 employees. The medical products and IP licensed by Angiotech have been used by over 40 million patients. In 2010, Lindsay co-founded Ikomed Technologies, a private company developing methods for reducing radiation dose during fluoroscopy. He sits on commercial and scientific advisory boards for multiple Canadian and US medical companies and is actively involved in clinical practice, research, and teaching at Vancouver Hospital. He is also an active angel investor.

Mike Mannix

Founder & Managing Partner, Band Capital Partners

Mike is Founder and Managing Partner of Band Capital Partners, a corporate venture capital arm of Coril Holdings. He is also a fourth generation co-owner and director of Coril Holdings, a 125-year old family business active in railway maintenance and services (Loram Maintenance of Way, Inc.), real estate development and advisory services (Triovest Inc.), real estate ownership and management (Triovest Capital), and corporate venture capital (Band Capital Partners).

Paul Desmarais III

Chairman & CEO, Sagard

Paul Desmarais III is Chairman and CEO of Sagard Holdings, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Portag3 Ventures, Co-founder and Chairman of Diagram, and Vice-President of Power Corporation. Paul is Chair of the Board of Wealthsimple and Dialogue, and a director on various other private and not-for-profit boards. Paul took the helm of Sagard in 2016, during his tenure, assets under management have increased to $13B. Paul is a board member of the Glenbow Museum and serves as Chair of the Next Canada Emeritus board of advisors. He co-founded the Black Wealth Club where emerging Black leaders go to learn about creating wealth and reinvesting it in their communities, and is a recipient of the Duke of Edinburgh Award for his work chairing the fundraising campaign for the Kenojuak Cultural Center.

Dennis Bennie

Founder, XDL Capital Group

Dennis currently operates the XDL capital group with a total of $185M in funds raised and investing in early stage technology opportunities. He has over 38 years of experience in startups, rapid growth and turnaround companies. He has built companies from scratch to over a billion dollars in market capitalization with IPOs on both the TSX and NASDAQ. From 1988 to 1996, Dennis was Chairman and CEO of Delrina Corporation. In 1995, Delrina was sold to Symantec for share consideration valued at $760M. Prior to this, he co-founded Mission Electronics in 1979 before selling his interest in 1982 in order to co-found Aviva Software, a PC software developer. Aviva merged with Ingram Micro Inc. in 1986 to become Canada’s largest software distributor. Dennis has served on several private, public, and not-for-profit boards and he is a co-founder of the Creative Destruction Lab.