About the Hall of Fame
The BC Innovators Hall of Fame recognizes the key role of innovation to BC’s economy and the leaders that have left a legacy on this province, enriching our technology and innovation ecosystem and building a stronger BC economy. Presented in partnership with the Government of British Columbia.
For 10 years, Laurie Schultz was the president and CEO of Galvanize that builds security, risk management, compliance and audit software. Following the April 2021 sale to Diligent Corporation, she became the first female CEO in Canada to lead a technology company to unicorn status. Schultz is currently a board director of UserZoom, a UX solution designed to help teams gain actionable insights into customer behaviour.
Among the many accomplishments John Seminerio has achieved and accolades received in the Western Canadian high-tech space, an interesting one being an Entrepreneur in Residence at VentureLabs since 2012. A technology business accelerator program delivered by SFU, he brings his sector-specific expertise to coach and mentor the next generation. Seminerio is a co-founder of Yaletown Partners, an early-stage venture capital group, as well.
Appointed as the B.C. Innovation Commissioner in 2020, part of Gerri Sinclair’s duties is to facilitate partnerships and promote innovation across the province. Prior to the role, she was a managing director at Kensington Capital in charge of the $100 million BC Tech Fund aimed at mitigating the local Series-A gap. Founding web content management vendor NCompass Labs in 1996, it was sold to Microsoft in 2001 for $36 million USD.
A partner and information technology lawyer at international business law firm Fasken, Keith Spencer’s passion for tech started early having worked as the in-house counsel for both the Wireless Data Group of Motorola and quantum computing experts D-Wave Systems. An author of many articles in multiple areas like outsourcing, e-commerce and intellectual property law, he is often found lecturing at the Peter A.…
After graduating from UBC with an electrical engineering degree and PhD, Ken Spencer embarked on a career as a design engineer at Macdonald Dettwiler and Associates in 1971. By 1979 he became vice president and general manager. Moving on to co-found Creo, initially an optical tape recorder device manufacturer eventually sold to Eastman Kodak in 2005, Spencer was also heavily involved in post-secondary education and taught a management course at SFU in the 1980s.
Born in Derbyshire, England, Jim Spilsbury moved to B.C. as a child in 1907. Finding wireless technology fascinating as a young boy, he put together primitive crystal radio sets using mail-order catalogue parts that led to a career in marine radio telecommunications. Having traveled up and down the coast installing and maintaining radios in logging and fishing camps, Spilsbury co-founded Queen Charlotte Airlines in the 1940s to better service customers.
Morgan Sturdy served as the president of Dees Communications Engineering, which provided call centre solutions, from 1985 until being acquired by Israel-based NICE systems in 1997. At the time of his joining, Dees was a 10-person operation supplying telecom peripheral equipment to BC Tel (Telus) evolving into a major player in USA call centre markets. Since 2016, he has been on the Discovery Foundation board overseeing the delivery of educational support to several tech organizations.
Studying computer science at UBC before taking on roles with Sydney Development, the first publicly-traded software company in Canada, Motorola’s Mobile Data Division and medical devices specialist Xillix Technologies, David Sutcliffe assumed the position of CEO at Sierra Wireless in 1995. He led the IPO of the multinational communications equipment designer on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the public listing on the Nasdaq, and grew annual revenues to $200 million.
