WeaveSphere (formerly Evoke) held its awards gala at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre on Wednesday night with a new award to recognize the top 20 technology leaders in the country.
After two years of cancelling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s conference also saw the return of Developer 30 Under 30.
Named Tech Titans: Top 20 of 2022, this new award honours people in the tech ecosystem that have disrupted the industry through technology, led a digital transformation to deliver business value, and enable growth in client relationships.
See the full list below:
Andrew Dolinski
Title: co-founder and CEO
Company: Jetdocs
Bio: Andrew Dolinski is a Canadian entrepreneur as well as the co-founder and CEO of Jetdocs (backed by Y Combinator)—a collaborative ticketing and workflow solution for internal teams. Prior to Jetdocs, Andrew co-founded and was COO of Clutch.ca.
Ashish Agrawal
Title: founder and CEO
Company: Eon Media Corp.
Bio: As a streaming industry pioneer, Ashish Agrawal has led teams that launched multiple video streaming services globally for content providers including AT&T, FOX, Rogers and Bell. Ashish is proud to continue the hustler, innovator and entrepreneurial spirit by challenging the status quo as he rolls out the next-gen technologies behind Eon Media to a global audience.
Chhavi Singh
Title: co-founder
Company: Flyte
Bio: Chhavi Singh started his career in enterprise technology, then went on to join a venture capital firm, and mentor tech startups at Microsoft Ventures, Founder Institute and Techstars. He also did investment banking in New York for a few years before realizing that his passion for entrepreneurship supersedes everything.
Chhavi completed his MBA from Tuck School of Business and has experience working in multinational corporations across the globe.
Chris Dolinski
Title: founder
Company: Vibehut.io
Bio: Chris Dolinski is a Canadian born tech entrepreneur. He is the founder of Vibehut.io, the video-first online networking platform. Vibehut brings together those who want to talk about a specific topic in small group video conversations. Chris previously founded UseHappen.com and Clutch.ca.
Dean Skurka
Title: president and interim CEO
Company: WonderFi, Bitbuy
Bio: Dean Skurka was formerly the head of finance and compliance for FLC, and is currently the president and interim CEO at WonderFi, a publicly-traded company that operates Bitbuy and Coinberry.
Prior to FLC, Dean spent over five years working in corporate restructuring and insolvency, acting as a financial advisor to secured lenders and financial institutions. Dean holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Ryerson University, having majored in finance, and minored in accounting.
Demetrius Tsafaridis
Title: president and CEO
Company: CareGo Tek
Bio: With over 30 years of experience in the steel industry, Demetrius Tsafaridis is an entrepreneur who has had the opportunity to start and operate his own steel warehousing and logistics company in the GTA. Since then, Demetrius has divested his interest in the warehouse and logistics end of the business and now focuses solely on the technology, named TELIA.
Fay Arjomandi
Title: CEO
Company: Mimik Technology USA
Bio: Fay Arjomandi is the founder and CEO of Mimik. From 2016-2018, she was the executive chairman of H2 Wellness, a software company based in Los Angeles. Between August 2014 to October 2016, she was the CEO of digital health company NantMobile and led its augmented reality platform (iD), several digital/genomics health initiatives, and WiGig fabless semiconductor company, Tensorcom.
Prior to NantMobile, Fay was the CEO of Vodafone xone, which was the innovation brand for Vodafone. Fay was also the co-founder and CEO of three technology startups that built location-based services (L3 Technology), mobile quality of service improvement platform (Mobidia), and Mimik.
Harish Pandian
Title: vice president of product
Company: Alcumus
Bio: Before joining Alcumus in 2018, Harish Pandian worked as senior product owner at Sensibill. He was also an investor and advisor for meal delivery startup Lunchify.works. Additionally, Harish founded sports and entertainment site Sportz.Me in 2017.
Harpreet Gill
Title: director of engineering
Company: Pollin
Bio: As the director of engineering, Harpreet Gill runs Pollin’s technology division overseeing its global staff and technology team. His daily operations involve the management of teams from Toronto, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia.
Prior to working at Pollin, Harpreet was the associate director of technology at Plastic Mobile where he led the team that successfully launched web applications for PizzaPizza, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Royal LePage and first-of-its-kind mobile technology for brands such as Rogers, Scene, Realtor.ca and RBC.
Iman Bashir
Title: founder
Company: Craftly.AI
Bio: Iman Bashir is a search engine optimization specialist and full-stack developer. Additionally, Iman has worked on a number of successful tech ventures including Western University’s Women in Leadership Organization, co-producing Elevate Tech Festival, and now founding AI-powered copywriter assistant Craftly.AI.
James Stewart
Title: CEO
Company: TrojAI Inc.
Bio: James Stewart has a background in computer science with experience in cybersecurity as a former crime analyst and auxiliary police officer. He was previously the CEO and founder of EhEye, an automated video surveillance SaaS company that was acquired by Patriot One Technologies in 2018.
Len Covello
Title: CTO
Company: Engage People Inc.
Bio: Len Covello oversees the long-term technology vision of Engage People. He started his first technology company at the age of 18 and most recently was the director and CTO at Access (formerly LRG Rewards).
Manav Gupta
Title: CTO
Company: IBM Canada
Bio: As CTO at IBM Canada, Manav Gupta leads the technical sales team helping clients in their hybrid cloud and AI infrastructures.
Manav has been awarded more than 40 patents in the fields of distributed computing, wireless communications, and machine learning. He has also written several books on cloud computing, big data & analytics, and blockchain.
Marcel Mitran
Title: CTO, Cloud Platform zSystems and LinuxONE
Company: IBM
Bio: Marcel Mitran helped build and grow the LinuxONE platform. As an IBM Fellow, Marcel will lead an integrated cloud strategy across the System z portfolio by collaborating across IBM Cloud, IBM Software, IBM Consulting and Red Hat.
Michelle Joliat
Title: senior managing director, product and delivery
Company: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan
Bio: Michelle Joliat is the senior managing director, product and delivery at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Previously, Michelle was the managing director and head of wealth digitization, robotics and process transformation at BMO Financial Group.
Dr. Mohamad Sawwaf
Title: founder and CEO
Company: Manzil
Bio: Dr. Mohamad Sawwaf is the founder and CEO of Manzil, which claims to be the only Canadian-Islamic FinTech platform that offers halal financial solutions. Mohamad holds a doctorate degree in Islamic Finance, focusing on the “determinants and likelihood of Islamic banking and financial services among Canadian Muslim customers.”
Omar A. Butt
Title: founder
Company: Infaque
Bio: Omar Butt is an advisor and entrepreneur with a couple of decades of cross-sector digital transformation, data & analytics, and automation experience. Omar stepped away from his career as a consulting Partner to launch Infaque, with his co-founder Fahad.
Peter J. Zwicker
Title: founder
Company: Henon.io
Bio: Peter Zwicker is the co-founder of henon.io, a provider of corporate finance and investment banking software.
Peter is an entrepreneur with close to 2 decades of experience working in asset & investment management and is currently focused on leading his team to democratize the world of investment banking, making it more inclusive, transparent, and fair.
Ryan McDonald
Title: head of engineering
Company: ShopThing
Bio: Ryan McDonalds has over 20 years of experience developing applications and building development teams. Some key projects along the way are brand management tools used by Fortune 500 companies world wide, award winning mobile applications, and changing how restaurants work through iPad POS systems.
Dr. William Cherniak
Title: founder and CEO
Company: Rocket Doctor
Bio: William Cherniak is an emergency physician with training in family medicine and global public health. He is a co-founder and board chair of Bridge to Health Medical and Dental Canada & USA, as well as the founder and CEO of Rocket Doctor Inc.
Bill has had research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Academic Medicine, PLOS ONE and given numerous speeches in Europe and North America on global health and development.
