Innovation Workshop

Colin Knox serves as the Director of Product Strategy, SolarWinds, and is the founder & former CEO of Passportal up until its acquisition by SolarWinds in April 2019. With an education in software development and information technology, Colin Knox has spent the past 15 years deeply embedded in the technology field. Previous to Passportal he founded, operated, and successfully exited a multi-million dollar technology service consultancy firm.

During his closing presentation, Colin will talk about thee process his team went through in defining a need, building a proof of concept before iterating and gaining product market fit, strategic pivots to establish a competitive stance, raising money, and creating an opportunity for exit (sell) their business.

Bio coming soon.

Joel currently leads Business Development and Operations for Juniper, an eCommerce merchandising company that creates premium, custom product lines for pre-existing markets (currently focusing on influencers). Juniper offers an end-to-end turnkey merchandising solution that includes everything from design, product development, warehousing, fulfillment, website/store development, and marketing campaign (social, email, native, etc.) management for their clients. Under Joel’s leadership, Juniper has grown to $10M in annual revenues in less than 4 years and without any outside capital.

Prior to Juniper, Joel co-founded GrooveDish which was a mobile application that customized a restaurant’s menu to accommodate personal dietary restrictions. Joel has also participated in the Next36 program in Toronto which admits 3% out of 1300+ MBA, JD, graduate, and undergraduate applicants across Canadian and American universities. The program includes top tier academic instruction by faculty from Harvard Business School, Wharton, MIT, and Rotman. Students are mentored by CEO’s and entrepreneurs from Canada’s leading companies and can raise up to $50,000 in seed capital to launch their businesses.

Jacquie is a product designer who has worked with a number of Canadian-based startups in the for-profit for-good space. Formerly a design educator at BrainStation, Jacquie went on to work as the Director of Design at Inkblot Therapy – a company aimed at making therapy universally affordable and accessible. She has also worked with Novalte – an IOT startup empowering individuals with disabilities to live with greater independence. Aside from Product Design, Jacquie also runs an online business in UX Coaching helping new designers land their first role