Driving sustainable and profitable business growth requires the right mindset, strategy, and capabilities.
The BC Tech Dragon 1-on-1 program matches up-and-coming companies with experienced Dragons to help accelerate their success through connection, mentorship and thought-sharing.
BC Tech Dragons are industry experts, innovators and seasoned entrepreneurs, who are committed to helping BC Tech members to grow and scale.
Learn more about each of our BC Tech Dragons in the directory below.
A Senior Executive in entertainment, focussed on driving strategic growth of video games in the sports category, Dan believes strongly that the worlds of sport and video games are converging rapidly, and growth will come from leveraging advancements in technology to deliver the next generation of interactive sports experiences. Before EA, Dan was the founder of his own technology firm for 12 years in London, after working in a leadership position for Rolls-Royce.…
Cam is an experienced venture capitalist, operator and advisor. He combines knowledge of operations, go to market strategies, M&A, and capital markets advisory. Cam is a versatile operator with a strong track record in accelerating growth and scaling companies from concept to exit. Over the past 15 years, he has co-founded and exited two tech companies, and scaled another to IPO.…
Keith Cerny is the former CTO/CPO at Galvanize where he helped create a Canadian tech unicorn growing the business to US $1b valuation with a successful exit in 2021. He has been published in Fast Company and has a passion for building high performing teams and growing leaders that deliver results while staying healthy. He focuses now on investing in and helping coach technology startups so they can effectively scale their business.…
Within Finning Dave leads the global digital and technology functions, including the teams working on technology performance solutions, information systems, and operations excellence. He is also an independent director and currently serves on the board of the Canadian TSX listed Company ATS Automation. Dave is passionate about the possibilities of technology. His focus is bridging technology and the talent that creates it, with the opportunities within traditional business models.…
Jesse Dougherty is a Vice President with Amazon Web Services (AWS) where he leads the Network Edge Services. He has over 20 years’ experience as a software engineer working on projects such as productivity software, collaboration, development frameworks, security technologies, and cloud services. Originally from Vancouver, he previously spent nine years working at Microsoft in Washington, before returning to his hometown in 2013 to lead the growth of Amazon’s Vancouver office.…
Prem Gill is Chief Executive Officer of Creative BC. The organization is designated by the Province of British Columbia to focus on uniting, sustaining and growing British Columbia’s dynamic and diverse creative sector including motion picture, music and sound recording, interactive and digital media, and magazine and book publishing. Prem has been named one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women, Vancouver Magazine’s “Power 50” and received the Community Catalyst award from the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.
Rob is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years experience founding and running private and public software and hardware companies in telecom, marketing tech, SaaS & financial services. Rob is an advisor to technology growth companies, and speaks on marketing technology trends. He is also the founding director of the BC Tech AI C-Council.
Ian is a tax partner based in Vancouver who serves as our National Tax Technology Industry Tax Leader and was formerly our BC Incentives Practice Leader. Since 1995, Ian has provided tax consulting and compliance services to organizations that are entrepreneurial and growing. He has extensive experience with emerging and scaling companies that are expanding globally, and specializes in transactional work, whether it be business expansion, financing, acquisition or exit.…
David is a software entrepreneur who has spent much of his career building mission-driven companies in the healthcare and Cleantech industries. In 2006, after 12 years in the energy/cleantech space as a geophysicist, a part-time world cup windsurfing racer, a strategy consultant, and a director of policy to a Canadian cabinet minister, he co-founded Pulse Energy, shepherding its evolution into the world’s leading energy intelligence software company for businesses at the time of its sale in 2014.…
Simran Kang is a leader in the North American family office space. She has a decade of experience advising UHNW families and their family-owned enterprises at PwC, where she was a trusted advisor to inter-generational members of many prominent families. Recognizing the under-utilization of technology in the management of family offices and the limited access to Family Office Methodology, Simran co-founded MyFO.…
Miranda Lievers is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur devoted to the intersection of small business and technology. As co-founder & COO of Thinkific, she’s helped over 50,000 business owners earn over half a billion dollars with online courses to date while educating tens of millions of students around the globe.
Prior to Thinkific, Miranda helped scale a team from 40 to 1600 before jumping ship from corporate life, grew her own side hustle to 7 figures, and earned her MBA just for fun. …
As one of a handful of women leaders in the Canadian tech space, Sarah brings drive and a sense of humour to her role at Delta-Q. Sarah has been key to Delta-Q’s success, inspiring and guiding finance and operations teams, while navigating through periods of growth and transformation.
Prior to joining Delta-Q, Sarah held senior finance roles in several successful BC based technology companies, providing insight into the financials and driving results, leading to successful acquisitions and exits.…
Andrew is the Location Managing Director of Accenture’s business in British Columbia. Andrew brings his 25+ years of experience from across North American along with his experience leading Canada’s Communications, Media, and Technology sector to support BC organizations innovate, transform, and deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Andrew is a passionate advocate for embedding sustainability and responsible business into the core of every business. …
Sam is a stoic tech entrepreneur – He speaks passionately on topics relating to diversity, inclusion, technology, entrepreneurship, grit, leadership and humility. As a CEO, Sam led FreshWorks Studio to the Top Agile Application Development studio in Canada. The team grew from 2 employees in 2016 to 95+ by Feb 2022 (and growing).
Sam & his partner Rohit won the Small Business BC “Best Immigrant Entrepreneur” award in 2018, Douglas Magazine #10toWatch in 2017 and Chamber of Commerce New Business Award in 2017.…
Josh Nilson is Métis from Willow River, BC and is the GM and co-founder of East Side Games (ESG), making mobile games like Trailer Park Boys, Archer and more! Their upcoming projects include “RuPauls Drag Race Superstar” and “The Office: Somehow We Manage” coming out late 2021. Josh has been working in tech since 2002 focusing on Technology, Creative and Games.…
Rich Osborn is an experienced entrepreneur, investor and executive. Until August 2021 he was President and Managing Partner of TELUS Ventures, Canada’s most active corporate venture capital fund and was named one of the Top 100 Corporate Venture Capital Investors in the world four years in a row. Rich is a personal investor and/or Board Member in several of Canada’s most successful companies including Alayacare, Ecoation, Klue, League, PocketPills, Integrate.AI and Miovision.…
Erica Pretorius is the Global Third-Party Assurance Leader for Deloitte and the National Leader for the Technology Fast 50 program. Erica’s knowledge and vision of internal control frameworks helps companies bridge gaps between service providers and their customers to reduce friction in the sales cycle and maintain a competitive edge. With extensive expertise in assessing and improving IT governance, she works with organizations that are scaling up to manage their IT risk in order to promote efficient and innovative growth.…
Mark Radford is the CEO of LMI Technologies, a global leader in 3D inline scanning and inspection, headquartered in Burnaby, BC. LMI’s flagship Gocator and FocalSpec product lines help factories around the world achieve 100% inspection, reduce waste by optimization, and improve efficiency by simplifying automation. Trusted in the most challenging applications, our 3D solutions help customers improve control of their processes and stay ahead of the competition.…
Kathleen is blazing a trail in a sector that values trailblazing above all else since. Since founding Vancouver’s first tech-focused PR and strategic communications firm, the “Forty Under 40” award winner has gone on to build a diverse roster of clients spanning continents and growth stages. Switchboard helps multinationals to join and support the Canadian tech ecosystem; leverages strategic communications to help SMEs collaborate, grow and scale; assists startups in making names for themselves; and champions innovation at all levels of government.…
George Reznik is an entrepreneurial CFO with a track record of growing top-line, bottom-line and market share results during the build, commercialization and scale of global public technology companies creating billions of dollars in shareholder value. Balanced operational and strategic business orientation driving success during changing market conditions.
Helen Sheridan is Senior Vice President of Human Resources at STEMCELL Technologies, Canada’s largest life sciences company. She has previously held senior leadership roles in several BC technology companies. Known for her ability to build vibrant organizational cultures capable of generating exceptional business results, Helen is a creative, values-based, community-centred, and entrepreneurial leader. She holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science and a Masters in Organizational Systems.
Jason Smith is a product driven, sales and marketing centric tech entrepreneur. He has been the cofounder, investor or early employee of 5 start-ups. He’s led sales, marketing, product and services teams, advised great companies like Mobify (acquired by Salesforce.com) and Strutta (acquired by LX Ventures) and received E&Y’s Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year for the Pacific Region.…
Riz joined Cymax Group in 2015 as head of technology and was appointed COO in 2018. Riz is a genuine, high-energy leader who empowers his team with the tools they need to have fun and succeed.
His leadership has guided the company through a period of rapid growth and pivotal award-winning digital transformation across all brands, including Freight Club and Channel Gate, since becoming CEO in 2019.…
Kristine Steuart and her twin sister Katherine Berry co-founded Allocadia after experiencing the business pain firsthand of measuring marketing performance as marketers. Run Marketing is being propelled by the CMOs expanded growth mandate and the macro trend of the future of work, where productivity & automation SaaS help companies drive greater business impact. Kristine was named among the Top 50 Woman Leaders in SaaS and the Top 10 Women in Tech to Watch by Inc.…
Shahram Tafazoli is an avid inventor, entrepreneur, and angle investor in the technology space. He received all his degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He holds a PhD degree from University of British Columbia and Master and Bachelor’s degrees from Sharif University of Technology in Iran. After graduating in 1997, he started a one-man technology consulting company based in UBC.…
Murray Thom, VP of Quantum Technology Evangelism at D-Wave, has more than 20 years of experience in the quantum computing industry. A globally recognized speaker and thought leader, Murray helps businesses and organizations around the world understand quantum computing and the transformational impact it can have for them today. In previous roles at D-Wave he was responsible for the development and delivery of the Leap quantum cloud service and the Ocean open source tools.…
Christy Wyatt is President and CEO of Absolute, a leader in Endpoint Resilience solutions and the only endpoint provider embedded in 500+ million devices globally. She was recently named one of Canada’s Top 5 CEOs by The Globe and Mail in 2020. Originally from BC, and a Silicon Valley veteran, Christy has deep experience spanning cybersecurity, mobility, IoT, enterprise software, and data science.…
Justin Young is a Partner in Osler’s Vancouver Emerging and High Growth Companies practice group. His practice focuses on venture financing, mergers and acquisitions and corporate commercial matters for private technology companies. Over the last twenty years, he has acted for hundreds of technology clients across Canada and in the US, from start-ups to listed public companies, and acts for many of the leading Canadian and US venture funds.