GUS Canada Technology Transformation & Innovation Council
GUS Canada Technology Transformation and Innovation Council encompasses leaders from across GUS Canada institutional brands and C-Level tech industry representatives. The Council explores topics including the role of education to help alleviate the labour & skills shortage, key roles and skills required over the next years to support the digital economy, the role of reskilling and career pathways, how to advance innovation – intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship in Canada, and how these can enhance programming to GUS Canada institutions.
Kenshi Arashi
CEO, A Thinking Ape
Kenshi Arashi is the CEO and Founder of A Thinking Ape Entertainment, a gaming company that has produced some of the top free-to-play mobile games. It was recently acquired by the Embracer Group. He is an angel investor and web3 enthusiast and is the primary author behind US patent 8918725 for systems and methods to support real-time chat on mobile devices.
Lori Aizer Bryenton
VP of Marketing, Carbon Cure Technologies
Lori Aizer Bryenton is Vice President of Marketing, responsible for developing and executing CarbonCure’s marketing strategy designed to accelerate global expansion. Lori is a strategic marketing executive who has spent over 25 years leading global marketing organizations and developing go-to-market strategies for technology companies across many industries including wireless, software, IoT, fintech, and cleantech.
Based in Vancouver, Canada, Lori has worked with the local technology sector providing advisory services to technology start-ups, and also founded and runs a local Executive Women in Tech networking group.
Felicia Bochicchio
CEO, Unbounce
Felicia Bochicchio is the Chief Executive Officer at Unbounce, the leading Conversion Intelligence platform for small and midsize businesses. With more than 25 years in software sales and leadership, Felicia has a rare talent for developing high-performance teams and transforming tech startups into aggressive-growth companies. As the former Vice President of Sales and Strategy at the Active Network, Felicia supported the company’s expansion from its early startup days to becoming a $400 million dollar company trading on the NASDAQ. At Unbounce, Felicia’s focused on putting conversion intelligence tools into the hands of marketers and growing a people-first, fully distributed team. As a mom, successful SaaS executive, and ex-entrepreneur, Felicia has a deep commitment to building diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams.
Hussein Halak
CEO, Next Decentrum
Hussein Halak is the Founder and CEO of Next Decentrum, the launchpad for the world’s most iconic NFT products. Creative Director of Crypto Pharaohs, a collection of 7006 majestic collectibles inspired by the rich history of ancient Egypt.
In 2016, he joined Launch Academy as General Manager. Launch is one of North America’s top tech hubs and startup incubators which helped over 6500+ founders and 500+ startups raise over $1 billion. In 2019, he joined 3 tier logic as VP of Products & Strategy, working with some of the world’s most valuable brands including Universal Studios, P&G, and Kimberly Clark.
Recognized in 2019 as one of 30 Vancouver tech thought-leaders and influencers to follow, Hussein writes and speaks about startups, blockchain, and NFTs, and advise blockchain and tech startups including Ami Pro, Gigr, Mobile Art School, Fintrux, Majik Bus, Traction Health, Cloud Nine, and Peace Geeks.
Chris Hobbs
CEO, Two Tall Totems
Chris Hobbs is the Co-Founder and President of Two Tall Totems (TTT) Studios, a Digital Innovation Studio working with industry leaders to solve their problems through technology.
Through Chris’ leadership, TTT has grown to become a powerhouse in the Vancouver tech community. Chris always puts the team first and thus never fails to surround himself with amazingly talented people who create ground-breaking software.
Chris hosts a business and technology podcast called that focuses on the unique journey of the founders of Canada’s most interesting and successful companies. He also serves as the President of Vancouver’s largest iOS enthusiast group with over 3500 members.
Through Chris’ leadership TTT has grown to become a powerhouse in the Vancouver tech community. Chris always puts the team first and thus never fails to surround himself with amazingly talented people who create ground-breaking software.
Chris hosts a business and technology podcast called that focuses on the unique journey of the founders of Canada’s most interesting and successful companies. He also serves as the President of Vancouver’s largest iOS enthusiast group with over 3500 members.
Awane Jones
CEO, Phenomena
Awane Jones is the CEO of Phenomena, a VC-backed VR Gaming company that develops original free-roam games in our VR eSport Arena platform for the location-based entertainment market.
In the past, he was the General Manager of Zone3, one of Canada’s largest producers of TV, VR & Film. Prior to that, he founded a company in 2009 that pioneered the AR and VR sector. Awane has raised over 4 million dollars throughout my startup career and had one acquisition and a successful exit. He is a bilingual keynote speaker and has presented at several international conferences including SXSW, C2, G20, etc.
His award-winning companies have built immersive experiences for a number of high-profile global brands such as Twitter, Universal Pictures (50 Shades of Grey Darker, and The Mummy).
These last 10 years of experience have led to the birth of Phenomena, the best eSport VR ROI attraction for amusement parks, family entertainment centers, and theme parks.
Tiffany Jung
COO, Commit
Tiffany Jung is the COO of Commit. dev, the first professional network founded by software developers that put the career needs of Startup Engineers first. Previously, in her professional life, Tiff was a corporate/commercial lawyer who provided practical advice on legal and strategic matters in the tech space. Tiff was most recently General Counsel & Strategic Advisor to Buyatab Online Inc., a leader in digital gifting that was acquired in December 2018. Tiff holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a minor in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Western University and is a non-practicing member of the Law Society of British Columbia.
Samiksha Khanna
COO/CFO, Uberflip
Samiksha Khanna is a Senior Executive with a background in Finance and Operations working in Tech companies over the last 20 years. She is one of the founding members of Fuel the Vision, The Big Push, and currently the COO at Uberflip.
She has worked with international organizations driving operational maturity, collaborating cross-functionally on organizational effectiveness including financial frameworks, tracking key metrics, optimizing internal processes, developing policies that promote company culture and vision, and establishing go-to-market plans.
Roy Meleniclis
Vice President of Branch Technology, Insurance and Loyalty at Scotiabank
Rory Meleniclis is currently Vice President of Branch Technology, Insurance, and Loyalty at Scotiabank. His team supports all aspects of the bank’s 980 Branches across Canada including 10,000 ABM machines. In addition, his portfolio supports the bank’s Insurance and Loyalty platforms delivering the technology to enable this business capability to Scotiabank customers.
Rory and his development teams have delivered multiple applications using modern software practices of DevOps and have used Public Cloud extensively to run and host these mission-critical applications. Part of building modern applications is having the right team who measures themselves on stability, reliability, and deployment frequency whilst having an agile engineering mindset in everything they do.
In Rory’s previous role as Chief Architect of Canadian Banking for Scotiabank, he is no stranger to software engineering and is deeply passionate about engineering trends and keeping at the forefront of emerging technology and how this can be applied to Financial Services to bring differentiating business benefits. Originally from Johannesburg South Africa, He has been involved in numerous Banking Transformation projects within large retail banks across Europe, North America, APJ, and Africa. His experience reaches from Mortgage Account Origination, Central Customer Information Management, Person to Person Mobile Payments, Retail Lending and Deposits, Loyalty and Rewards, Finance, Corporate Treasury, Liquidity and Risk Management, Analytics, and Regulatory Reporting.
Nigel Stoodley
Chief Customer Officer, Visier
Nigel Stoodley has over two decades of experience building teams that focus on customer success in the Business Intelligence industry. After starting his career as a Naval Officer in the Canadian Navy, Nigel discovered his love for software and data analysis. He joined his first software company in 1992. Since then, Nigel has led teams at Crystal Decisions, Business Objects, SAP, Tableau, and most recently at Visier. At Visier Nigel has served as a senior executive reporting to the CEO and completely revamped Visiers service model to include partners and System integrators into our service business model and expanded our operations from an exclusively Vancouver-based to include teams across Canada as well as Europe and India.
Nigel has deep experience in all aspects of a technology company’s operations having worked and led in finance, technical support, development, product management, sales, pre-sales, services, training, and customer success. He is a strong advocate for the customer and has always held that customer success and value are the measures of the success of companies. It is this success that is the key driver of the long-term success of technology companies.