Meet the Speakers

Joe Costello

CEO, Inpho

Joe led Cadence Design Systems to be the number one EDA company in the world with revenues of nearly $1B, making it one of the 10 largest software companies in the world. In 1997, Chief Executive Magazine named Costello the top performing CEO of all publicly traded companies in North America. Costello has served on the boards of Oracle, Macromedia (Adobe), Mercury Interactive, and dozens of early technology companies. Joe is now leading Inpho to become the world leader in photonic chips for computing.

Jim Keller

CEO, Tenstorrent

Jim Keller is CEO of Tenstorrent and a veteran hardware engineer. Prior to joining Tenstorrent, he served two years as Senior Vice President of Intel's Silicon Engineering Group. He has held roles as Tesla's Vice President of Autopilot and Low Voltage Hardware, Corporate Vice President and Chief Cores Architect at AMD, and Vice President of Engineering and Chief Architect at P.A. Semi, which was acquired by Apple Inc. Jim has led multiple successful silicon designs over the decades, from the DEC Alpha processors, to AMD K7/K8/K12, HyperTransport and the AMD Zen family, the Apple A4/A5 processors, and Tesla's self-driving car chip.

Sonya Shorey

President and CEO, Invest Ottawa

Sonya Shorey is president and CEO for Invest Ottawa, Bayview Yards and Area X.O. She is a strategy executive and management consultant with more than 22 years of leadership experience with private and public organizations. Sonya has expertise in regional, national and global technology and has worked with entrepreneurship, economic development and innovation-based organizations. She specializes in corporate and communications strategy development and execution. This includes investment strategies to secure new cash and in-kind contributions from public and private sources. Since 2005, Sonya has developed strategies for and led, authored or contributed significantly to successful multi-year funding proposals and initiatives valued at more than $203 million from municipal, provincial, federal and international governments.

Paul Slaby

Managing Director, Canada's Semiconductor Council

Paul Slaby is a veteran semiconductor industry professional, and Managing Director of Canada’s Semiconductor Council (CSC). His semiconductor career started with a post-doc research position at Carleton University, followed by a decade as a semiconductor R&D manager with Nortel Semiconductor and BNR. Subsequently he founded and/or ran several successful high-tech ventures including ATMOS Corp, MicroSemiX, VoIPshield Systems, Kaben Wireless Silicon, Teslonix and others. Recently, he has been devoting his time in an advisory capacity to several emerging tech startups, as well as tech venture accelerators. Paul is on a mission to elevate Canada’s semiconductor industry to global prominence.

Duncan Stewart

Partner, Deep Tech Venture Fund, BDC

Duncan Stewart is an investment partner with the BDC Deep Tech Venture Fund, bringing extensive science and technology expertise from his years of work in both private and public sectors. He was Director then Director General of the NRC Canadian national lab Security and Disruptive Technologies research centre from 2010-2019, where he led a team of more than 100 research physicists and chemists working on disruptive quantum science and technology. Prior to NRC, Duncan spent a decade at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Silicon Valley, in the flagship Quantum Science Laboratory. He has authored 60+ technology patents and 40+ scientific papers with more than 20,000 citations, including the original memristor discovery.

Keith Strier

SVP, Global AI Markets, AMD

Velko Tzolov

Director General, Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (CPFC)

Dr. Velko Tzolov joined the NRC in 2010, and is currently the director general of the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre. Prior to this, Dr. Tzolov was Ottawa's regional director of the NRC's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP), managing a significant portfolio of small and medium-sized enterprises developing innovative technologies, and key IRAP innovation ecosystem initiatives. He was also an industrial technology advisor with IRAP, and a business development officer with the Energy, Mining and Environment portfolio.Between 1995 and 2010, Dr. Tzolov was the founder and senior-level executive of several Canadian technology firms such as: Optiwave Systems, Peleton Photonics Systems and Palladium 7 Corporation. During these years, he was involved in managing industrial technology development and commercialization. He was also very instrumental in major business transactions such as: securing venture capital / debt financing, mergers and acquisitions, and IP asset transactions.

Daniel Yum

Principal, Playground VC

Daniel Yum is a Principal at Playground Global where supports the General Partners with sourcing, technical due diligence, and portfolio company support with a particular focus on software, automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. He is also a software engineer and supports the portfolio companies through architecture reviews, engineering mentorship, interviews of key hires, and strategic analysis of the technology landscape.

Daniel came to Playground Global from Intel, where he played an integral role in building and shipping the first Intel Architecture-based Android Smartphone, for which he was recognized with an Intel Achievement Award. Prior to Intel, he was part of the team that built and proved out the feasibility of crosswind kite power generation at Makani Power – before it was acquired by Google/X Labs – where he was responsible for all the software, from embedded motor & flight controls to the ground station & visualization.

Managing Partner, Cycle Capital

Claude has 22 years of operational, Venture Capital, Secondary Transaction and fund management experience of venture capital portfolios investing in high tech companies.

Having managed numerous investments and exits during his career, Claude has built a solid track record. He has, among others, been part of successful teams at both Kirchner and Multiple Capital. He has also worked at Innovatech Montreal as Vice-President Information Technology and Communication. In this capacity, he was responsible for 44 high-tech start-up companies and 5 Venture Capital Funds. From April 2004 to March 2005, he participated in the sale of Innovatech Montreal’s portfolio, the second largest transaction in a Venture Capital portfolio in Canada with its 108 companies and 15 funds. Claude has broad corporate governance experience at board level as well as on audit, HR, strategic and M&A committees. He has occupied numerous board functions and duties as a director and chairperson on more than 30 company Boards over the past 15 years.

Andrej Zdravkovic

CSWO & SVP, G&E Software, AMD

Andrej Zdravkovic is senior vice president of GPU Technologies and Engineering (G&E) Software and Chief Software Officer, managing the global G&E Software team and driving AMD’s software development strategy and processes.  With more than 30 years of industry experience and deep software expertise, Zdravkovic rejoined AMD in November 2015 as corporate vice president of Global Software Development. Since then, Andrej has delivered a clear software vision that drives differentiated features and supports critical customer programs as well as improved end-user ratings and performance of AMD Radeon software.

Prior to AMD, Zdravkovic was senior vice president at Giesecke & Devrient, leading worldwide Software Solutions from 2009-2015. Before Giesecke & Devrient, Andrej was senior director of software for graphics and multimedia, product integration, customer engineering and customer project management at AMD, which he joined in 1998, then known as ATI.