Dr Ian Burgess
Founder, President
Co-founder of Validere; Board member at Validere, Cquesta, NEXT Canada; VP at Pioneer Fund; Y Combinator alum (S16); Harvard PhD (Applied Physics)
An alum of University of Waterloo’s co-op program, Ian Burgess, experienced firsthand the impact of apprenticeship-based learning and strong mentors early in his career. As both an academic and as a business leader, he has seen very-early-career students achieve extraordinary outcomes when given impactful work, really high expectations, and strong mentorship.
Andrew Zhang
Solutions Architect
Solutions Architect at Ascendance Foundry; Founding Engineer & Product Owner at Retainly; Queen’s Startup Summit Winner; Queen’s University Computing (Hons)
Solutions Architect at Ascendance Foundry. Founding Engineer at Retainly. Queen’s Startup Summit Winner. Andrew is a full-stack developer and Queen’s University alum who builds at the intersection of product, engineering, and business strategy. A “Swiss Army Knife” professional dedicated to owning the product lifecycle from scope to ship.
Expert Network
Our Fellows and clients are supported by a network of experts in AI-native development, data science and business leadership who teach, mentor, and directly elevate client projects. Our Expert Network supports Fellows and our clients through:
Teaching weekly workshops, where a member of our Expert Network teaches them valuable insights from their domain of expertise.
Regular office hours to support them in their projects, learning and career growth.
Direct support on client projects, where the direct input of their expertise significantly enhances the project outcome.
Meet Some Of Our Experts
Pierre Magnan
Seasoned executive, investor. Fmr President at Parkland International & Sol Petroleum, Partner at Gowling WLG
Dr. Misha Askerka
Lead data scientist at Alpaca, built the analytics team at Validere, ClearCo; Yale PhD (Computational Physical Chemistry)
Mark Le Dain
Senior leader in finance and corporate development. Chief Revenue Officer at Fuelled, fmr VP Corp Dev. at Neo Financial
Luisa San Martin
Senior ML engineer at Waabi. Research Engineer on the autonomous vehicles team at Uber.
Adam Weinstein
Built the full software for Validere’s Y Combinator demo-day prototype as a first year co-op student. VP Operations at Validere 9 years later.
Noah MacCallum
Senior engineer at OpenAI. Fmr Founder and CPO at Eureka, PM at Forward, Microsoft.
Evan Borysko
Senior security executive. Founder of Greenbelt Advisor. Fmr security executive at Amazon, Netsuite, Bridgewater Associates
Philip Mackasey
Senior business transformation leader. Managing Partner at Attona Group. Led major digital projects at large orgs including Suncor, Devon Energy
David Grant
Senior data scientist and AI engineer. Founder at Analytik AI, AI Engineer at Kye AI. Fmr Analytics Manager at Porsche
Dr. Yinan Zhang
Chief Investment Officer at QED Asset Management. Fmr Head of Asia Quantitative Research at Morgan Stanley, Harvard PhD (Applied Physics)
