2011 Mentors

Independent Board Member and Advisor

Charlotte Burke is a business leader, corporate director and advisor with 25 years of experience building and operating high growth businesses in the Internet, mobile and personal computer industries.  She spent over a decade as a senior executive and officer with Bell Canada where she lead three major technology transformations: launch of digital cellular, wireless data services and the roll out of broadband Internet. Formerly the Senior Vice President and leader of Bell’s Consumer Internet business unit where she was responsible for the expansion of Canada’s largest ISP and Portal from less than a quarter billion to over $1 billion in revenue. She has held senior executive positions with Asurion Corporation, Sony and HP/Compaq helping them scale their operations in Canada and across North America.

Charlotte’s passion is mentoring high potential talent and driving innovative high growth businesses.  Under her leadership Bell Canada’s Mobility business received the CDG Award for Most Innovative Wireless Carrier (2000) and the Internet business received both the Top Ten Places to Work (2006) and the North American Safety Leadership Award (2007) for programs launched to protect the abuse of children on line. Over the past three years she has been an Advisor with the MaRs Discovery District, a member of the venture capital group with the Business Development Bank of Canada and an advisor to Next 36 where she has helped early stage companies accelerate innovation, raise capital and scale commercial operations.  Charlotte has been an active board member for over a decade and held director positions with the Canadian National Ballet, Canadian Women in Communication and numerous early stage companies. She currently serves on the Boards of Postmedia Networks, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, Acadia University and is an Advisor with Polar Mobile.

Ms. Burke holds a business degree in accounting from Acadia University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer,
Assante Wealth Management; United Financial Corporation

Joseph C. Canavan was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Assante Wealth Management and United Financial Corporation, an affiliated asset management firm until November 2009. Assante is a national wealth management company with $27 billion in assets under administration, for over 300,000 clients across Canada.

Prior to joining Assante, Mr. Canavan was the President and CEO of Synergy Asset Management, a wealth management company he founded in December 1997 – an organization which quickly became known as one of Canada’s most innovative mutual fund companies. Synergy was acquired by CI Financial in October 2003.

In 1994, he launched GT Global (Canada), which became the fastest-growing mutual fund company in Canadian history. Under Mr. Canavan’s leadership, the company gained $2.4 billion in assets in less than 30 months. GT Global is now part of AIM Trimark. In 1989, he joined Fidelity Investments. As Vice President and Director of National Sales, he helped grow assets from $60 million to $6 billion in four years. He began his career as a financial advisor with Burns Fry Ltd.

Mr. Canavan was awarded “Person of Influence of the Decade” at the Canadian Investment Awards in 2004. In 2006, he was honoured as Concordia University’s “Alumnus of the Year.”

Mr. Canavan is Vice Chairman of the Children’s Aid Foundation, a director of the Fraser Institute and has recently retired from the Board of the National Ballet of Canada. Mr. Canavan has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Concordia University and has completed Harvard University's three-year executive management program for owners and presidents of companies.

Founder and President, Kestrel Capital Management Corp.

Charles Field-Marsham is a Canadian entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in building businesses in Africa. In 1991, he joined Credit Suisse First Boston in New York, he then lived and worked in Kenya between 1993 and 2003 where he started and acquired several businesses. In 2006, he founded Kestrel Capital Management Capital (KCMC), when he returned to Canada. KCMC provides consulting services to Charles’ businesses outside of Canada. Charles owns and is chairman of: Kestrel Capital, the leading investment bank and broker in Kenya; Panafrican Group, the distributor of Komatsu equipment in five countries across East and West Africa; and Kenya Fluorspar, one of the largest and lowest cost producers of fluorspar in the world.

Education Innovation Lead & Senior Advisor, ICE, MaRS Discovery District

Krista has been a passionate innovator and builder of technology-based businesses since 1988. She has worked in both large public companies and in startups. She is an engineer, entrepreneur, mentor and an expert at solving ambiguous problems. She has a unique combination of strategic, technical, operational and marketing expertise. She is known for her comprehensive knowledge of existing and emerging ICE technologies and architectures. At MaRS, Krista currently leads the education cluster, an emerging sector that applies innovative technologies, advances in pedagogy and business models to advance the global education industry.

To date, Krista has personally advised over 350 startups and worked with 1,300 ventures in the ICE industries. Krista and her husband own a children’s technology educational franchise that fosters early innovation and creativity in robotics, animation, digital art and video game design.

Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Defyrus Inc.

David F. Masotti is a business leader, corporate director and entrepreneur with extensive experience in numerous industries including telecommunications, aerospace, bio-defense, and venture capital. Currently, David is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Defyrus Inc, a life science biodefense company. David is also a Managing Director at Tancho Innovation Capital, and the President & CEO of DFM Consulting Inc. Previously David was President and Chief Operating Officer of Chemtrade Logistics Income Fund and before that President of Rogers Telecom Inc. David was a founder and Chief Executive Officer of Skulogix Inc, a business-to-business ecommerce service provider. Before that David was President of Spar Space Systems managing a business most widely known for designing and building the Canadarm in addition to numerous communication and earth observation satellites. David also held senior positions at Rogers Communications where he managed Customer Service Operations for Rogers 2.5 million cable customers and led the entrepreneurial team that developed and launched the world's first high speed internet service over cable. Before Rogers, David worked in Management Consulting, and held sales, marketing and engineering positions at Northern Telecom. David has an Electrical Engineering Degree from Queen's University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School and was a recipient of the Top 40 under 40 national business award. David is on the Board of Trustees of Queen's University and has served as a Director of several public and private companies.

Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer – Aastra Technologies Ltd.

Francis Shen is the Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Aastra Technologies Ltd. Mr. Shen began Aastra in 1983 and initially focused the company on Research & Development projects in the defense and aerospace industries. In the early 1990s, Mr. Shen redirected Aastra to focus on developing products for the telecommunications market.

By 1996, the company became a publicly traded company on a junior stock exchange. With substantial sales and profit growth, in 1999, the company moved onto the Toronto Stock Exchange. Between 2000 and 2008, Mr. Shen led a number of acquisitions of telecom business units from Nortel, Lucent, Ascom, EADS and Ericsson.

Mr. Shen was named Ontario’s 2000 Entrepreneur of The Year in the Technology & Communications category by Ernst & Young Canada.