Dr. Brian Penney, Chairman  

Brian has more than 15 years of experience in advising emerging growth companies. He possesses a thorough knowledge base of what it takes to raise capital as both an investor and investee, from pre-seed stages all the way through to selling successful start-ups or taking them public. Dr. Penney has been an angel investor (in over 50 companies), a business founder and owner, the CEO of several companies, an executive in medium and large corporations, a member of several investment boards, the chairman of several public and private companies, a member of several academic boards, and an accomplished seeker of investment capital.

Dr. Penney was appointed as CEO of three ‘turnaround’ companies since 2001, in each case turning them from a loss position to a profitable one.  The most recent appointment was as CEO of Abridean Inc, in which the company was transitioned from losing $4M per year, to making a profit of nearly $1M in 2007.

Dr. Penney was Chairman of Skystone Systems Inc. in Ottawa, which was acquired in late 1997 by Cisco Systems for $89M (US).  He also was appointed Chairman of SiGEM Inc. in 1998, when the company was still raising money each month to meet payroll requirements. Within 18 months, company management raised $20M of investment capital, was on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and had a market capitalization of $160M.

Dr. Penney was also the founding CEO of TARA in Halifax and attracted over $10M of investment support from major telecom companies, and from Federal and Provincial Governments. Dr. Penney holds a PhD in Physics and is licensed as a Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) in Nova Scotia.  He is also licensed as a commercial pilot.