Scaling Up Canadian Business: Providing Entrepreneurs with Access to Patient Capital

Sandra Stuart was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer for HSBC Bank Canada in June 2015. She is a member of the Board of HSBC Bank Canada, and is also Chief Executive Officer, and Chair of the Board of HSBC Global Asset Management (Canada) Limited.

Ms Stuart joined HSBC in 1982 and has held a number of senior positions within the bank. Previous roles include: Chief Operating Officer, HSBC Bank Canada; Senior Vice President and Head of Operations, HSBC Bank Canada; Chief Information Officer, Head of Information Technology for Group Personal Financial Services, HSBC North America; Senior Director, Distributed Networks, HSBC North America; and Senior Manager Call Centre Operations, HSBC Brazil.

Ms Stuart is Chair of the Women's Leadership Advisory Council and member of the Faculty Advisory Board of the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.

George Rossolatos has over 20 years’ experience as an investor, entrepreneur, and leader. At CBGF, he is responsible for the strategic direction and management of the Fund.

George joined the CBGF as its founding CEO in 2018, bringing a passion to help entrepreneurs across Canada grow their companies and ‘think bigger’. Before joining the Fund, George was CEO of Avante Logixx Inc. (TSXV:XX) from 2010 -2017. As an investor and operator at Avante, his mandate was to determine the company's strategic direction and vision and execute the go forward plan which included an operational turnaround

Prior to Avante, George worked in the private equity industry for 10 years. He was a partner and co-founder of TorQuest Partners Inc. a mid-market Canadian private equity fund from its inception in early 2002 until 2010. George’s previous roles included experience as an investment principal at Harrowston Inc., a publicly traded merchant bank, and five years with Ernst & Young LLP managing a group focused on middle market companies.

As a Fellow of Chartered Public Accountant (FCPA - Ontario), George holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a B.Com. (Honours) from Queen’s University and was born and raised on Ottawa. He was recognized in 2007 as one of Canada's Top 40 under 40 and is a member of the Young Presidents' Organization.

Bill Tam is recognized as one of the pre-eminent leaders of the BC tech sector. A lifelong entrepreneur, Bill has been actively involved with tech and startups as a founder, executive, investor, advisor and board member for the past 20 years.

Bill co-led the development of the Digital Technology Supercluster and currently serves as Chief Operating Officer. The Supercluster is an initiative undertaken in partnership with the Government of Canada to develop economic clusters at scale by fostering ambitious, collaborative R&D projects that will drive the digital transformation of Canadian businesses and improve Canada’s competitiveness globally.

In 2018, Bill was appointed to the Steering Committee of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor initiative – a cross-border partnership linking British Columbia, Washington and Oregon as a cohesive, globally recognized hub of innovation and commerce.

Bill works to promote entrepreneurship in driving economic opportunity while forging partnerships across business, government and post-secondary institutions to design new approaches for accelerated, inclusive growth. He launched the largest tech accelerator in British Columbia – the BC Tech Innovation Hub – and led the creation of The Cube – an accelerator focused on emerging startups in Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality. During his term as CEO of the BC Tech Association, Vancouver was recognized among the top 15 Startup Ecosystems globally and the #1 ecosystem in Canada in 2017.

Bill received his MBA from the Ivey Business School and his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Summa Cum Laude from McGill University. In 2018, UBC awarded Bill the Applied Science Dean’s Medal of Distinction for his contributions to the engineering and tech community.