CAIN – About us

Mission + Vision

Be an impact-driven network that supports the growth of accelerators and incubators across Canada through collaboration, education, connection, and national and international stakeholder strategic exchanges.

A network of sustainable and successful accelerators and incubators across Canada, marking Canada as an international leader in values-driven innovation and ecosystem growth.

CAIN's Story.

Stacey started the Canadian Accelerator and Incubator Network (CAIN) while in her role as the Director of Venture Programs at the BC Tech Association. CAIN emerged from the small group of accelerators and incubators (including BC Tech) that received funding through the Canada Accelerator and Incubator Program. Stacey worked with this initial group of leaders and other stakeholders to build CAIN as a not-for-profit association with an inclusive national network of over 165 Canadian accelerators and incubators. Throughout, CAIN has been an equal opportunity network with free membership to allow all sizes and types of incubators and accelerators to participate.

Our vision, to make Canada an international leader in values-driven innovation and ecosystem growth, requires a long-term plan. We started back in 2019 with monthly meetings to build a sense of community and channels of communication across the new network. This led to the co-creation of regional membership councils and seven working groups with our members, based on the top priority areas they had identified. Based on their findings and other internal research conducted by CAIN, we are now entering a new phase: building solutions.

We are really proud of how far we’ve come as a national community and are excited about what's increasingly possible when we work together!

OUR TEAM

Manager - Stakeholder Relationships
Johanna Lau

Founder and Board Chair

Stacey Wallin

Stacey Wallin is the Founder and Board Chair, with a background in founding and growing companies and in the investment banking industry. Through her role as Director of Venture Programs for the BC Tech Association, she led the team developing accelerators for companies in BC with a mandate of solving the largest ecosystem and policy-related challenges facing growth and scale stage technology companies.

Stacey herself has founded three organizations, including CAIN. The first was LifeBooster, a tech startup now helping Fortune 100 clients detect and proactively respond to workplace injury risks. Stacey was also the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Numinus, a publicly traded company on the TSX-V creating an ecosystem of health solutions centred around developing and supporting the safe, evidence-based, accessible use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and at the forefront of addressing the growing prevalence of mental health issues and the desire for greater wellness.

CEO

Chris Diaper

Chris has a wealth of experience in startup ecosystem development. In his previous role as Managing Director at CAIN he developed the startup tracker service and established CAIN’s lead role in the Business Accelerator and Incubator Performance Measurement Framework, a multi-year data project between CAIN, MAIN, Stats Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and Canadian incubators and accelerators. Prior to that, he was the Director of Strategic Partnerships at TEC Edmonton where he built and ran their international startup programming and secured $15M in funding.

Chris started his career by obtaining a PhD in chemistry and working in the pharmaceutical sector. He ran the medicinal chemistry program for a Canadian startup before transitioning to business development, covering sales in European and North American markets for a Canadian contract research organization.

Advisor & Research Lead

Matt Mayer

Matt has extensive experience applying systems-thinking, facilitating strategy and advancing leadership in all sectors across North America. Unifying people and fostering collaboration is his specialty in the pursuit of evolving organizations into those that the future requires of us. Matt has founded and grown 2 consulting firms in the last 10 years working with organizations across all sectors, company sizes (mostly with mid-market companies) and various industries (many in the natural foods and energy sector) to strategically move towards a sustainable future, including facilitating collaboration and innovation between them. Examples of the latter include accelerating an energy transition in Canada (Energy Futures Lab), creating a circular economy in the packaging sector in Ontario (Circular Economy Innovation Lab), engaging citizens in Red Deer on climate leadership (Climate Leadership Lab), increasing the adoption of regenerative agriculture in Alberta, and more.

Matt has a MSc in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden, a BComm. degree in General Management from University of Victoria and is currently working towards a Doctor of Business Administration degree at the University of Calgary. He is a sessional instructor at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University on business courses related to strategy, innovation and sustainable development.

:[email protected]

Manager - Stakeholder Relationships

Johanna Lau

Johanna Lau is the Manager of Stakeholder Relations at CAIN, where she supports strategic initiatives to share ecosystem learnings and strengthen member relations.

Johanna is pursuing a BCom degree at McGill University, with a triple concentration in Sustainability, Operations, and Social Enterprise Strategy. Originally from Edmonton, she has always focused on giving back to her community – whether it was through serving as a Student Trustee to provide student voice on policy decisions in her school division, or advocating for youth citizenship as a United Way Youth Ambassador. At McGill, she was the Editor in Chief for ESG McGill, a youth-founded business club that publishes articles on ESG topics. She has also worked as a research fellow on studying the financial sustainability of fair trade organizations and social enterprises. Johanna deeply believes that business innovation can be a force for social good, and aims to be involved in the developmental shift toward sustainable business.

:[email protected]

Data Analyst

Mirai Fukushima

Mirai Fukushima is CAIN’s contract Data Analyst specializing in visualizing and managing data. She aggregates data related to startups, incubators, and accelerators in Canada from various sources and creates easy-to-understand visual deliverables for future analysis.

Originally from Japan, she has been in Canada since 2022 to pursue a Data Analytics diploma. Mirai used to work as a newspaper writer (police beat) in Japan for 3 years. During that period, she once got the scoop on a traditional gender issue in the Japanese wrestling world with thousands of public opinions, which was top national news. Her interest in numbers and visualization led her to change her career path. In addition to CAIN, she is a Data Journalist, writing data analytical articles for Toronto-based Japanese people.

As a contract intern at CAIN, she created a networking and acquisition map of Canadian startups using Tableau’s visualization tool. Data is constantly changing. Her goal is to deliver meaningful and accessible dashboards to CAIN’s members.

Email:[email protected]

CAIN Board

Board Vice-Chair

Tom Ogaranko

Tom Ogaranko leads transformational change with high performing teams focused on complex challenges. Over his 26-year career, he has founded, built and exited multiple technology companies in advanced technology industries. He has advised the Governments of Canada and France and several Canadian Provincial Governments on innovation policy and has been involved in structuring the three crown agencies involved in research, innovation and technology development. Tom has assembled and structured $1B of investment funds for stimulating and growing innovative capacity for public and private clients. Tom is a frequent advisor to the Government on policies to grow ICT, biotechnology, genomics and cleantech sectors. Tom has also actively advised some of the leading innovative companies in Canada’s pharmaceutical, energy, mining, telecommunications and technology sectors.

Tom is presently involved in the development of a test and demonstration centre in Edmonton for bio industrial innovations, advises the Foresight Cleantech Accelerator Centre in Vancouver on its Industrial Challenge Program advancing pre-commercial innovations to market faster and serves as the Chief Innovation Officer for TrustBIX, a Canadian Agrifood Traceability and Sustainability company, with operations in Canada, USA, Mexico and China.

Tom is a Practitioner for the Challenge Dialogue System® (CDS®) Network — http://www.challengedialoguesystem.net/. The CDS Network is a community of practitioners – a community of practice – that is trained, accredited and have the rights to use the CDS® methodology for their own professional work or offer it as a service to their own clients. The CDS Network is overseen by a Practice Council that provides guidance to the Network on foundational values and principles, learning, accreditation, and the evolution of CDS. The Network also develops and makes available marketing and practice support materials. The Practice Council includes Keith (Victoria), Tom Ogaranko (Edmonton) and Don Simpson (Toronto).

Board Chair

Stacey Wallin

Stacey Wallin is the Founder and Executive Director of CAIN with a background in founding and growing companies and in the investment banking industry. Through her role as Director of Venture Programs for the BC Tech Association, she led the team developing accelerators for companies in BC with a mandate of solving the largest ecosystem and policy-related challenges facing growth and scale stage technology companies.

Board Member

Carl Schmidt

Carl Schmidt is a seasoned technologist and entrepreneur with over thirty years of experience in various hands-on and leadership roles within the fields of software development, consulting, and networking.

He has a knack for “leading but not bleeding” when it comes to adopting new technology. As the co-founder and former CTO of Unbounce, Carl was the technology visionary behind the Unbounce platform, a Vancouver-based SaaS platform that lets marketers build, publish, and test landing pages. He led Unbounce’s efforts to build scalable and reliable software in the cloud and also spearheaded Unbounce’s strategy around Artificial Intelligence, positioning Unbounce as an early leader in the use of machine learning and AI in marketing. This led to speaking opportunities in Canada, the US and Brazil.

Outside of technology, Carl has also served as the board chair of Hope Lutheran Christian Church and School, a non-profit organization that offers high quality K-8 education to roughly 300 students. Hope serves both Christians and the unchurched alike, creating an open and caring environment for all. He led the organization through a number of significant changes, which included ending the school’s unsustainable high school programming and beginning the process of launching the school as an independent society.

Carl is currently working on a soon-to-launch podcast on climate change, focusing on amplifying climate success stories and normalizing dialog around a topic that’s tricky for many yet essential to our collective future.

Board Member

Jennifer Davis

Jennifer Davis is a management consultant focused on deepening collaboration and innovation to drive the equitable transition to a low carbon economy. Over her 20-year career, Jennifer has advised and provided practical support to the Government of Canada on innovation policy and program design and implementation; helped structure and implement private sector innovation consortia and sustainability programs; and facilitated a range of complex dialogues with Indigenous rightsholders and stakeholders.

Now President of SystemShift Inc, and a member of the Board of Directors of CAIN, Jennifer was previously a partner at ERM and Stratos Inc. Jennifer holds a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Environmental Science Degree, as well as a professional certification in change management.

Board Member

Steve Currie

Steve combines his love of startups working with Graphite VC with his passion for strategy and innovation. He works with leaders on how to develop an innovation culture, explore new growth engines, and transform their businesses into future ready organizations.

A tech industry veteran, Steve has been a startup founder & CEO, and worked in senior leadership roles in large organizations for more than 25 years in industries such as enterprise information systems, automotive dealer management software, sports data analytics and surgical robotics & tracking systems. He has led teams in Asia, Europe and North America.

As a global leader in company growth and corporate innovation, he ran the world’s largest corporate open innovation hub with clients such as GM, Mattel, TD Bank, Canon, Manulife, Canadian Tire and Globe & Mail. In addition, Steve also led Communitech’s startup program overseeing coaching and mentoring to 500+ startups each year in Waterloo Region, which has the 2nd highest density of startups in the world next to Silicon Valley.