Top 50 Health Care Angel Investors in Canada

Originally trained as a medical doctor, Dr. Ray Muzyka cofounded BioWare, a video game development studio focusing on story and character, in the early 1990s. He practiced emergency/family medicine for two years full time, with medicine transitioning to part-time over the following decade as he focused on his role as BioWare’s CEO. BioWare wasacquired by Electronic Arts in 2007, and Dr. Muzyka took on the roles of Senior Vice President at Electronic Arts and General Manager of EA’s BioWare division, which grew over the next five years to span eight development locations worldwide with about 2000 staff (1400 full time). He retired from video games in October 2012, with his third “career chapter” at ThresholdImpact, where he focused on sustainable, profitable impact investing: mentoring and angel investing in information technology, new media, and medical innovations with social entrepreneurs. An active angel investor and entrepreneurial mentor, Dr. Muzyka is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, the A100, the Ashoka Support Network, and the Board of Governors of the University of Alberta (serving as Chair of the Human Resources Committee and on the Learning and Discovery Committee and as a member of the University of Alberta Advancement Council). He is Chair of the University of Alberta’s entrepreneur Venture Mentoring Service, a venture advisor at iNovia Venture Capital, and a member of the Alberta Research and Innovation Advisory Committee and the Alberta Premier’s Advisory Committee on the Economy. He also serves on a number of private company boards. He previously served on the board of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences from 2001-2008 and was on the Board of Trustees of the Stollery Children’s Health Foundation from 2012-2015. He was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the International Game Developers’ Choice Awards 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Muzyka received the inaugural Alumni Innovation Award in 2015 from the University of Alberta. He additionally was named as the 2017 Allard Chair in Business at the MacEwan University’s School of Business and as an Honorary Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary Club International in 2016, in recognition for his philanthropic efforts. Other awards include entry into Canada’s Top 40 under 40 and Ernst and Young’s 2001 Entrepreneur of the Year (IT, Prairies).He obtained his Bachelor of Medical Science from the University of Alberta in 1990, his Doctorate of Medicine from there in 1992, and his MBA from the University of Western Ontario (Ivey School of Business) in 2001.

Paul Geyer, a successful Medtech Entrepreneur and experienced Board member. Over the past 20 years Paul founded and led two companies through their growth phase, in one case to a successful private exit and in the other case through growth as a public company with numerous acquisitions. Both companies have grown to be anchor medical devicecompanies in the Vancouver area, employing more than 350 people.In 1991 he founded Mitroflow International Inc., a tissue heart valve company. Paul grew the company from 9 employees to more than 125 employees in 1999. In 1999 Paul sold Mitroflow to Sulzer Medica, for more than $50 mil. Paul's leadership resulted in Mitroflow growing to more than 200 employees, making it one of the largest medical devices companies in the Vancouver area. In 2001 Paul started Medical Ventures, a new specialty vascular device company where he is currently Chairman of the Board. From its inception to June 2008, Geyer held the position of CEO at Medical Ventures (now Neovasc) and was responsible for raising over $40 million in Equity financing and growing the company’s product portfolio through internal development and the acquisition of 3 other companies. In 2008 Paul began focusing on sharing is expertise to assist other Entrepreneurs to build successful businesses, through his involvement as a mentor or Board member. He also focused on building the local community through his involvement as a Board member of BC technology industry association, along with a number of non-profit community based organizations. Paul is actively engaged as a Philanthropist, as Chairman of the Board of Social Venture Partners Vancouver, involved with Science World, Entrepreneurship at UBC, Project Somos Children’s Village and other organizations.Paul is currently the CEO of LightIntegra Technology Inc., a spin-off from Canadian Blood Services which has developed the ThromboLux technology, used to determine platelet quality for blood transfusions.

Mr. Bryan W. Kerdman is Partner of Venture Fund at EdgeStone Capital Partners Inc., EdgeStone Capital Venture Fund I, L.P. and Bryker Fund I, L.P. Mr. Kerdman has served as Partner of Venture Fund at EdgeStone Capital Venture Fund II, L.P. He was a Partner of Bryker Technology Partners. He has twenty-five years experience creating, building andrunning high technology companies that specialize in mission-critical, high-volume transaction applications as well as enterprise software solutions. Mr. Kerdman is the founder of Bryker Data Systems Ltd and served as its President and Chief Executive Officer. He served as Chief Executive Officer of a number of other technology companies including Technolabs Canada and E-route. He served as Chairman of Datawire Communication Networks Inc. He serves as a Director of Datawire Communication Networks Inc., and SC Txlink LLC. He served as a Director of Varicent Software Inc. He served as a Director of Workbrain Corporation since December 2000, Solace Systems, Inc., and CiRBA Inc. since February 1, 2006. He served as a Director of Protus IP Solutions, Inc., INEA, Workbrain, Shoplogix, Inc., RSS Solutions, SlipStream Data, Pvelocity Inc. and Time Industrial.

Nadav Ben-Chanoch - Partner @ Pareto Holdings

Bootstrapped Debt Financing

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

Daniel is the Vice President of Product (Demand) at Shopify. He previously worked as an SVP at Salesforce.com, where he drives marketing for Salesforce Work.com, a sales performance management solution that helps Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, and other innovative companies align, motivate, and drive the performance of their sales teams. Prior tojoining Salesforce, Daniel was co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, a social performance management platform acquired by Salesforce in 2012. Prior to Rypple, Daniel was on the founding team of Workbrain, which provided workforce management solutions to Wal-Mart, Citibank, and other large enterprises. Workbrain grew to $100 million in annual revenues before being acquired by Infor in 2007.A sought after speaker on how social media is changing the workplace, Daniel is a contributor to Fortune.com and the Huffington Post. He’s been widely quoted in Wired, the Financial Times, the Economist and Bloomberg Businessweek. Daniel holds a JD/MBA from the University of Toronto and an LLM in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford University.

Dr. Fong is a Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary. He was formerly the Head of the Department of Radiology at the University of Calgary and the Calgary Health Region. Dr. Fong is active in funding and nurturing start-up companies. Over the past two decades, he funded over 50 companies in diverse technology sectors,with an emphasis in medical devices. Dr. Fong is the co-founder and board member of Calgary Scientific Inc. and is also on the board of Clarius Mobile Health, Cohesic Inc. and Innovere Medical. In addition to seed investing, Dr. Fong is active in the Calgary community sitting on six charitable boards and foundations.In 2015, Dr. Fong joined the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) at the University of Toronto business school as a mentor. CDL helps young entrepreneurs to shape or pivot their nascent ideas. He is widely credited with launching CDL at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, bringing together seasoned business leaders from Alberta, Canada and the US to grow budding companies. Dr. Fong is on the Strategic Advisory Board of CDL and a Fellow of CDL in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. In 2017, Dr. Fong was named to the Order of Canada for his contribution to medical technology innovation and philanthropy.

Edward Lando is the Founder of Pareto Holdings. He previously worked at Horizons School of Technology as a Co-Founder. Edward Lando attended the Wharton School.

Jevon MacDonald is the Co-Founder at StartupNorth.

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

Jon Oringer is the founder and chairman of Shutterstock.

Marc Altshuller is the President and CEO at Varicent. He attended Schulich School of Business - York University.

Nadav Ben-Chanoch - Partner @ Pareto Holdings

Eric Wellwood (born March 6, 1990) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and current head coach for the Flint Firebirds of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). He played parts of three National Hockey League (NHL) seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers. He is the younger brother of Kyle Wellwood.

Founder and CEO of Optimity. Proactive Health Evangelist; Data Science Nerd; Authentic Leader #Anomaly #WonderWoman #Pioneer

Founder & CEO. Entrepreneur, passionate about transforming investment management.

Dennis Bennie is a pioneer, entrepreneur and innovator in the Canadian technology industry. Over the past 20 years, Bennie's entrepreneurial management has powered Mission Electronics, Ingram Canada and Delrina. In 1997, he founded the XDL Venture Capital Fund, focusing on information technology opportunities. The $25 million fund hasyielded exceptional returns to date. One of its most noteworthy investments was a 1997 start-up, Delano Technology Corporation (NASD:DTEC). XDL Intervest, a $150 million fund was started in 1999 and is now fully invested. Bennie currently manages an experienced team investing in private equity opportunities as the XDL Capital Group. From 1988 to 1996, Mr. Bennie was CEO of Delrina Corporation, an independent software developer and publisher, which forged the new software categories of electronic forms and PC fax communications. Under Mr. Bennie's leadership, Delrina pioneered the development of PC fax software called WinFax and became a world leader in the communication software market with annual sales revenue exceeding $130 million. Listed on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, Delrina cultivated a reputation for leadership, growth and profitability, and completed several public offerings. In November 1995, the company was successfully sold to Symantec Corporation for share consideration valued at $560 million. Mr. Bennie entered the world of technology in 1979, when he co-founded Mission Electronics. He drove the expansion of this leading British audio equipment manufacturer to become a dominant force in the high-end stereo market. In 1982 he sold his interest in Mission Electronics and founded Aviva Software, an independent, mass-market software developer. Under his direction, the company expanded its scope to include software distribution and merged with Ingram Micro Inc. in 1986 to become Canada's largest software distributor. Residing in Toronto, Canada, with his wife Laura and three daughters, Dennis is an avid golfer and runner. A member of the World President's Organization, he also regularly serves on various charitable boards including the Toronto Hospital Board.

Carol Leaman is the CEO of Axonify Inc., a Waterloo-based next generation eLearning company that combines gamification with brain science to revolutionize the way companies think about and deliver training to employees.Axonify makes learning stick with personalized, bite-sized information delivered in a fun, rewarding way that drives real learningtransfer and is saving companies millions. Carol won the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Pitch Competition in July 2012 against 4 other early stage technology companies garnering Axonify worldwide recognition as an emerging leader in the eLearning space.Prior to forming Axonify, Carol was the CEO of PostRank Inc. a social media engagement platform company that she sold to Google in June 2011. Carol is a serial entrepreneur and a Chartered Accountant who has been running and advising early stage technology companies for almost 15 years.

Jim Estill founded EMJ Data in 1979 and grew the company to $350,000,000 in sales. Jim sold EMJ to SYNNEX in September 2004 and became CEO of SYNNEX Canada growing sales from $800,000,000 to $2 Billion in May 2009. Jim was one of the founding board members of RIM where he served for 13 years.

Eric is the author of New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, and The Leaders Guide (funded by one of the top Kickstarter book campaigns of all time). He's also the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, practiced by individuals and companies around the world and the inspiration behind the LTSE. He has founded a numberof startups, including IMVU, where he served as CTO, and has advised on business and product strategy for startups, venture capital firms, and large companies across many industries.

Ajay Agrawal is the Co-Founder of Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corporation. He previously worked at Queen's School of Business as a Assistant Professor. Ajay Agrawal attended the University of British Columbia.

James Lochrie is an entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist and volunteer. He is the Co-founder of the global fintech company Wave. He is a Partner at Thin Air Labs, overseeing Thin Air Fund 1 and the Capital team. He has worked with thousands of entrepreneurs to help them scale their companies and #BuildWhatsNext.

Noel Hall is the Director of Corporate of Wellcome Trust. He is a former Board Director, Co-founder, and President of Aspreva Pharmaceuticals Corp. He attended the University of London.

Barney Pell was the co-founder, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of LocoMobi Inc. Barney has a long history as a leading technology innovator, product visionary, entrepreneur and angel investor based in Silicon Valley. Barney is known for being an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mayfield, a top Venture Capital firm, which he left to becomeFounder and CEO of Powerset, which built a natural-language based search engine that read each sentence in Wikipedia and answered user queries in plain English. Microsoft acquired Powerset in 2008 to help create its new search engine, Bing. Barney then served Microsoft as Search Strategist, Evangelist, and Chief Architect for Local Search at Bing, until leaving Microsoft in September 2011 to return to the start-up world full-time.Barney also has active investor, board member, and advisory roles with multiple start-up companies and non-profits across a variety of industries. Barney is Co-Founder, Vice Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Moon Express, a private company building autonomous robotic lunar landers to enable exploration and commercial development of the solar system. This builds on his earlier career managing advanced software technologies at NASA. Highlights of innovations during Barney’s career at NASA include mission critical software to support planning and collaboration for the Mars Exploration Rovers mission; Clarissa, the first spoken dialog system in space; and the development of the Remote Agent, the first AI system to fly onboard and control a deep space probe. Remote Agent is widely considered one of the top achievements in the history of Artificial Intelligence and was awarded NASA’s "software of the year" award in 1999. Barney is also Associate Founder and Trustee of Singularity University (SU), a new university created to educate leaders for life in a future driven by accelerating technological change.Other recent active angel investments and advisory positions include: Getaround, Robotex, Halcyon Molecular, SpaceX, and CrowdFlower. Recent start-ups that have had successful exits include: Appjet (now Google), Aardvark (now Google), Hot Potato (now Facebook), Etacts (now SalesForce.com), Movity (now Trulia), and LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social network which recently went public after acquiring its hundred-millionth member.Barney received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and his B.S. degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar.Barney is a frequent speaker at conferences and universities. These include keynote talks at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computational Linguistics, Search Marketing Expos, International Semantic Web Conference, World Wide Web Conference, the Informational Retrieval Conference, and panels at SXSW Interactive. Barney has also spoken at the NPA and IPI conferences and has been featured in all major Parking industry magazines.

Kyle Wellwood

He joined McGill in fall of 2016 as Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Medicine as part of the Department of Surgery’s cutting-edge Surgical Innovation Program. More recently, he joined one of Canada’s fastest growing medical technology accelerators, Centech, as Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

Dickinson, owner and CEO of Venture Communications, a company she grew from a small, local firm to one of the largest independent agencies in Canada, is also the CEO of District Ventures and Youinc.com. Companies all aimed at helping market, fund and grow entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies. She is a two times best-selling author,accomplished speaker and is best known to Canadians as one of the venture capitalists on the award-winning CBC series’ Dragons’ Den.

Dr. Milad Alucozai is an Afghan-American neuroscientist, entrepreneur, biotech executive, and global investor with nearly two decades of experience in deep tech, primarily in life sciences. He pushes the boundaries of bioengineering and computational advancements, integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence into biology and medicine.With a strong commitment to commercializing transformative technologies and fostering startup ecosystems worldwide, he is a thought leader and formal mentor for entrepreneurs through organizations like Creative Destruction Lab and the Wyss Institute at Harvard Medical School.Currently, Milad is the head of Bio and Deep Tech at BoxOne Ventures, where he spearheads the firm’s investments in early-stage companies with breakthrough scientific ideas. With nearly 80 early-stage investments, they are recognized as one of North America’s most active venture firms. He is also a Venture Partner at Entrepreneur First, a global fund that has built over 500 companies from scratch with an enterprise value of $10bn. He supports founders with strategy, scaling, business development, securing growth capital, and leadership training, often being their first investor and guiding them from startup inception to IPOs or acquisitions.He started his career in translational neuroscience and multiphysics laboratories before transitioning into founding roles at biotech startups. He is part of the founding team at Mekonos, a San Francisco-based company creating a proprietary cell-engineering platform to support the future of cell and gene therapies. He was also part of the founding team at Corstem, which specialized in machine learning and artificial intelligence software and was later acquired by Circle Cardiovascular, a platform in over 1000 hospitals and more than 40 countries. At Accenture, Milad directed teams of data scientists, designers, and engineers in developing artificial intelligence platforms for global pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks.Milad serves as a Fellow in Healthcare Engineering at the Regenstrief Center. In 2020, he served as an External Advisor to AstraZeneca. He was recognized as a National Science Foundation Scholar and Macklin Fellow at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Neuroscience from Purdue University’s Honors Program. As a George J. Mitchell Scholar, he completed his master’s in Immunology and earned his doctorate from the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health.

Ajay Agrawal is the Co-Founder of Sanctuary Cognitive Systems Corporation. He previously worked at Queen's School of Business as a Assistant Professor. Ajay Agrawal attended the University of British Columbia.

Karamdeep previously served as a subject matter expert at RBC on a variety of cross enterprise software architecture initiatives, concentrating on strategies to maximize flexibility and reuse. Karamdeep also enjoyed project and engineering roles at Platform Solutions Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA and Fidelity Information Services in Toronto. Karamdeep madethe transition to venture capital after completing his MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

Jacky is dedicated to angel investment and has built up a portfolio of more than thirty startup companies in Canada and the US. His target investments are the early-stage B2B companies with disruptive technologies and business potential in enterprise software, information technologies, MedTech, and Advanced Manufacturing.Jacky has acquiredconcrete business experiences as a successful founder in the startup ecosystem and an executive of Fortune 500 companies over two decades. His remarkable accomplishments range from building startups from scratch to leading a billion-dollar business with the leverage of 14,000 enterprise channel partners. The unique journey has shaped Jacky's outstanding of investing in early startups.Jacky holds the degrees of Mater's E.E. and MBA, and he graduated from CEIBS and The Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jeff Fettes is Founder and COO at 24-7 Intouch.

Jonathan is the Founder of Torch Capital. A long time entrepreneur and investor, he has spent his career at the intersection of the media, technology and entertainment industries. He is the Co-Founder of digital media company InsideHook and has spent a decade as an active early stage investor and advisor to a number of New York and LA's topstart-ups.

Rasool is a serial entrepreneur with experience in the software, healthcare, and CPG industries. He continues to maintain his passion for technology as an active angel investor with a focus on b2b, consumer saas and health tech. Rasool maintains an active role with CEO’s as a board member, mentor and advisor. He currently serves on the boards ofthe Victoria Foundation, VIATEC, and Checkfront Software.

Scott Lake is a startup entrepreneur, tech investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as the cofounder of Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), then later as founder of Source Metrics.Currently, Scott is a general partner at Hello Ventures, where he leverages all the learning from his entrepreneurial journeys to invest in and advise early-stage techcompanies.Scott also plays an active role with his wife Jess as philanthropic funders of diverse social and public health causes.In his past lives, he has been a bike messenger, a university lecturer, a driver at NATO, and a political science PhD.

Victoria Treyger is the General Partner and Managing Director at Felicis Ventures. Victoria is passionate about building great brands and scaling revenue through innovative sales and marketing. She joined Kabbage because she loved the opportunity to leverage technology and data to transform how financial services are delivered to customers.

Grace Chou is a Partner at Maveron.

Joshua Landy - Founder & Chief Medical Officer @ Figure 1

Tom Williams

Alexandra is the Founder and CEO of HopKidz.com, Mompreneur, Public Speaker, Author, Community Leader, Supporter of Women Empowerment movement, Parent's advocate, Women of Influence 2018' Nominee. Alexandra has a Business Management Degree and background in Computer Science, she is has 10+ years of hands-on experience in Business withthe focus on Business Development, Operations Management, Project Management, and Business Analysis. Alexandra is a Serial Entrepreneur, she thrives in high-paced environment and enjoys the buzz of Technology Startups.

Andrew Wilkinson is the founder of Flow. Andrew Wilkinson attended Ryerson University in 2004.

W. Brett Wilson was the Co-Founder of FirstEnergy Capital. He currently worked at Canoe Financial as the Chairman.

Kerry Liu is an Executive Vice President, Product Management & Innovation at Kinaxis.

Niels Gron

Over the course of the last decade, first as a graduate student at Harvard University in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology with PhD advisor Professor Stuart Schreiber and then as an independent postdoctoral fellow at the Lewis-Sigler Institute at Princeton University, Dr. Ethan Perlstein developed an approach to studying old drugs anddiscovering new drugs in model organisms called evolutionary pharmacology. Ethan is an author on 19 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, including the discovery of a novel mechanism of action for the antidepressant Zoloft based on studies in yeast cells.

Robin Knox is the Founder and CEO at Boundary.

Daniel Schwartz is the Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of British Columbia. Attended University of Toronto.

Fred has served as our Chief Executive Officer since April 2016. As CEO, he has led the transformation of IMV into a leading clinical-stage immune-oncology company with world-class collaborators and a strong scientific foundation. He has more than 21 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, having served in several managementpositions encompassing business development, intellectual property, strategic planning, pre-marketing, and communication. Before joining IMV, Fred spent 14 years at Medicago serving in many roles of increasing responsibility, most recently as Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Planning. He had been an integral part of Medicago’s success, including securing more than $300M CAN in non-dilutive funding in revenues and future milestones from licensing agreements and government contracts, and the $357M CAN deal acquisition by Mitsubishi Pharma in 2013.Fred is also a Director of CQDM, a biopharmaceutical research consortium and served as second Vice-Chair of the Vaccine Industry Committee of Biotech Canada between 2012 and 2016. Prior to Medicago, Fred was Licensing Manager at the University Paris VII-Denis Diderot, one of the largest sciences and medical university in France. He owns a BSc degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Biotechnology and Business Management from the University of Angers (France).

Eric Wetlaufer is the Managing Partner at TwinRiver Capital.Eric Wetlaufer attended Wesleyan University.