Mentors
Our roster of industry mentors and instructors are all experienced, working industry professionals with backgrounds in technology, design, and entrepreneurship. They are startup founders, angel investors, venture capitalists, senior executives, creative and technical directors, interactive designers, marketing pros, and seasoned developers.
Our mentors provide feedback, expertise and connections to our community and members through program/course delivery and mentor sessions.
Jeff Archibald – Principal, Paper Leaf
Jeff is a passionate graphic & web designer who spends too much time on the internet. He’s also co-owner of Paper Leaf Design, a small but mighty Edmonton-based design firm that specializes in creating outstanding visual identity systems and websites for small and medium-sized businesses. If he’s not learning, creating, speaking or herding cats, he’s partaking in one of his many other loves: coffee, typography, whisky and the mountains.
Todd Babiak – Co-Founder, Story Engine
Todd is a principal of Story Engine, which he recently co-founded with long-tim collaborator Shawn Ohler. Story Engine helps businesses, start-ups, organizations, governments, and leaders use the power of story as the core of their strategic planning. Todd is also a bestselling novelist, an award-winning screenwriter and journalist, a producer, a consultant, and a busy keynote speaker.
Ken Bautista – Co-Founder/CEO, Startup Edmonton
Ken is Co-Founder/CEO of Startup Edmonton. He has been a creative entrepreneur in the tech space for over 10 years, founding and growing two award-winning interactive companies, Hotrocket Studios and Rocketfuel Games. Ken has been featured in a number of publications including the New York Times, and was recognized in Avenue Magazine’s “Top 40 Under 40″, earned a Horizon Alumni Award from the University of Alberta, and was named one of “Alberta’s 50 Most Influential People” by Alberta Venture Magazine in 2011.
Mark Bennett – Founder, YEGRB
Mark Bennett is an experienced software developer and owner of Burmis Studio. He has worked in the software industry for over 14 years, first as a Java and Python developer before seeing the light and making the switch to Ruby and JavaScript back in 2008. Mark has a passion for sharing his knowledge and experience with others, and enjoys seeing that moment when a student first builds something amazing. You may know him through his work with YEGrb, the Edmonton Ruby Meetup, or from his presentations at various meetups. Connect with Mark on Twitter @MarkBennett or his website, http://markbennett.ca.
Blaine Bertsch – CEO/Creative Director, LEVR
Blaine is the founder of LEVR. An experienced entrepreneur and a designer by trade, Blaine’s focus has been rooted in the strategy planning and design of mobile apps and their online counterparts for the last three years. He has actively managed and directed the design and development of over a dozen mobile apps for the iOS and Android platforms. Apps designed under his guidance have reached the top 40 paid apps in Canada, the top 250 paid apps in the USA and have led sales in various categories. Blaine holds both Bachelor of Design and Masters of Design degrees from the University of Alberta. Most recently he was a partner in Fission Media where he oversaw both business management and strategic direction of the agency.
Veer Gidwaney – CEO, Dailyfeats
Based in New York, Veer is the co-founder and CEO of DailyFeats, a new startup that’s helping people do good things. It guides them in doing small but significant actions (or “feats”) that reflect their values and contribute to their life’s goals. Along the way, they earn points, meet a helpful community, and save money on real-life expenses, motivating them to go do good – every day. Previously, Veer was the CEO and co-founder of Control-F1, an industry leader in support automation. Under his leadership, the Edmonton-based company grew to over 50 employees, over 100 customers worldwide and was acquired by CA, one of the world’s largest software companies. Veer has invested in several new ventures and was named as one of Maclean’s Magazine’s “Top 25 Under 30″.
Sean Healy, Founder/CTO, Touch Metric
Cam Linke – Co-Founder, Startup Edmonton
Cam is a software entrepreneur and startup community activist, helping to grow Edmonton’s emerging creative and tech economy by connecting entrepreneurs, investors, developers and creative minds. In 2008, Cam formed DemoCamp Edmonton as a forum to bring the Edmonton tech community together, and has continued that with his work at Startup Edmonton and Flightpath. Cam is currently the CEO of Touch Metric, makers of business-to-business surveying software. He was recently named one of Avenue Magazine’s 2011 Top 40 Under 40 in recognition of his work to make Edmonton a thriving, entrepreneur-friendly city.
Jevon Macdonald – CEO, GoInstant
Jevon is co-founder of GoInstant, a service for people to jointly browse a website remotely without any downloads or plug-ins. Jevon is currently the Entrepreneur in Residence at Innovacorp, a Nova Scotia Based venture capital fund and High Performance Incubation organization. Most recently he was a partner at Dachis Group, a Social Business software and services firm backed by a $50million commitment from Austin Ventures where he participated in developing the company from 4 to over 150 employees, 4 acquisitions and significant revenue growth in North America and internationally. Jevon is also the co-founder of Startupnorth.ca, a community of Canadian technology startups, where he comments regularly on the Canadian venture landscape.
Sheetal Mehta Walsh – CEO/Co-Founder, Shanti Microfinance
Based in San Francisco, Sheetal is a champion of microfinance both in developing and developed countries. Sheetal is the founder of Kuuja.com (a new social enterprise that acts as a marketplace for microfinance recipients to sell their products and services online thereby scaling their businesses and becoming bankable), and Shanti Microfinance (a social enterprise and UK Charity that provides access to technology and capital for entrepreneurs in slums and villages in India). Sheetal is also the UK Deal Maker (by appointment) for the UK Trade and Investment’s Global Entrepreneur Programme and advises MetaCert, a company that specialises in content classification and protects children from inappropriate content on the web. Previously, Sheetal was Director VC Relations at Microsoft and has received several awards including: Asian Women of Achievement Award (Prince Charles and Cherie Blair), “One to Watch” in Asian Woman Magazine’s Power 100 list, Success Magazine’s Top 5 Most Powerful Asian Women in the UK, and an Alumni Award of Excellence from the University of Alberta.
Jack Newton – CEO, Clio
Jack is CEO & Co-Founder of Clio, a practice management system specifically designed for solo practitioners and small law firms. Clio’s core functionality encapsulates the needs of most solos and small firms: calendaring, time tracking, note-taking, document management, trust accounting, managing retainers, and billing. As an experienced business leader, software developer and entrepreneur, Jack provides strategic vision for Clio, and is helping to raise the profile of cloud computing in the legal profession.
Aaron Pedersen – 3TEN
Aaron Pedersen is an editorial photographer and filmmaker, known for his uncomplicated setups that let the lens absorb his subjects’ personalities. He has worked on behalf of many leading Alberta agencies and for magazines such as FASHION and Western Living. For a piece in Alberta Venture, he won the 2011 Best Photo award from the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. Aaron is also on the board of artsScene Edmonton and a member at large for ArtsHab.
David Quail, YouSendIt
After graduating from the University of Regina with a Computer Science degree, David co-founded Attassa with a vision to improve the way people collaborate over documents. Attassa raised investment from San Mateo based Tandem Entrepreneurs, and was recently acquired by Silicon Valley’s YouSendIt where he is now leading mobile application development. Since the acquisition, David has been giving back to the startup community – he’s spoken at numerous conferences, mentored young entrepreneurs, and has joined the C100 as a charter member.
Don Riep – Co-Founder/CTO, Yardstick
Don is the co-founder and CTO of Yardstick. Yardstick works with Associations, Licensure and Regulatory organizations, Government, and Educators to set the standards of their separate industries through online licensing and certification, training, and testing. Based in Edmonton, the company has over 300 clients from around the World and can help any size organization with our easy to deploy, fully-managed solution. Yardstick has earned several awards including Alberta Venture Fast 50 (#3 in 2011), PROFIT Magazine 100 Fastest Growing Companies, and Grand Prize at TEC VenturePrize. An enthusiastic pilot and hockey fan, Don is the sole architect and original programmer of the T2 Platform.
Galen Scorer – Interactive Strategist, RED The Agency
Galen is currently the lead interactive strategist at RED The Agency. He is a creative technologist that sits on the fence between art, design and technology. He’s contributed more than 10 years of professional experience in the field of media arts, interactive software development, and social media and has taught at a handful of post-secondary institutions across Canada. Previously, he was the Research & Technology Manager at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto.
Kevin Swan – Principal, iNovia Capital
Kevin is a Principal with iNovia Capital who is passionate about building technology companies and working with the entrepreneurs behind them. Kevin’s beginnings in the technology industry were with Nexopia.com, Canada’s largest youth social network. On the other side of the table, Kevin founded Cardinal Venture Partners out of graduate school in 2007 and began learning about investing in early-stage technology companies and working with entrepreneurs the way an entrepreneur should – by jumping in and doing it. Kevin completed a BSc. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta and a MS in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University concentrating on control systems, dynamics, mechatronics and entrepreneurship.
Ric Williams – Chief Operating Officer, Empire Avenue
Rick is the Chief Operating Officer at Empire Avenue. He is the former Senior Director of Marketing at BioWare/Electronic Arts and CMO of Edmonton based start-up Baby Gourmet. Ric has worked around the globe in Australia, the UK and now Canada. His product and marketing experience in consumer goods (Yoplait, National Foods Australia, Baby Gourmet), mobile technology (Motorola), and games publishing (Eidos, BioWare, EA) give Ric a world’s worth of experience to help local start-ups.