Dave Armon, Vice Chair
Dave Armon has been a driving force in the use of online communications tools for marketing and public relations.
Dave began his career in the early '80s as a wire service journalist at United Press International. He jumped to the PR side -- to Saatchi & Saatchi -- in 1988 before joining PR Newswire, where he had responsibility for sales, marketing and product development.
While Dave was president and COO, PRN expanded to Europe, Asia and Latin America and broadened its portfolio to include widely used tools like ProfNet and multimedia news releases.
Dave left PRN in June, after serving 20 years, and has been mentoring young PR professionals in addition to serving as a board member at a number of social media startups.
Howard Gwin, Vice Chair
After spending 13 years in senior sales, marketing and operations roles in IBM Corporation and Xerox Corporation, Howard joined PeopleSoft Inc. From November 1994 to January 2000, Howard held a variety of executive management positions including; VP and General Manager Canadian Operations, VP and Managing Director European Operations, SVP International Operations and EVP World Wide Operations. During his last role at PeopleSoft Howard managed a 3000 person team, responsible for all company revenue streams. During his tenure, the company grew from <$100M in revenue to $1.3B.
Starting in January 2000, Howard was President of Solect Technology Group, a global provider of billing, customer care and service management software for the telecommunications industry. In April 2000, Howard helped orchestrate the sale of Solect to Amdocs Inc. a world leader in customer management billing systems. The transaction (US$1.2B) was the largest ever for a private Canadian software company.
Howard serves on the boards of; Longview Solutions Corp. (Chairman), Marqui Corporation (Chairman), Cirba Inc., Kinaxis Inc., MKS Inc., Taleo Corporation (Lead Director) and Blast Radius Inc.
Howard has previously served on the boards of seven private and public companies in the high technology marketplace. Howard has served on both Audit and Compensation Committees for TSX and Nasdaq listed companies and is considered an expert in board governance and board effectiveness.
Howard has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
Kevin O’Neil, President and Chief Operating Officer
Kevin brings over 15 years of finance and operational experience to his role as CFO and COO at dna13. He remains a founding partner of Sapient Capital Partners, a firm dedicated to advising mid-market, private companies on issues such as business strategy and growth management, mergers and acquisitions, raising capital, turnaround and cash management.
From 2000 to 2005, Kevin was the President and CEO of World Vintners Inc, where he oversaw business growth from a small local organization into the largest retailer of consumer made wine in the world. During his tenure, he also managed the business through a merger with a manufacturing business and a series of “tuck-under” acquisitions.
Kevin currently sits on the Board of Directors of CSDC Systems Inc, a software company focused on delivering solutions to local, county and state/provincial government agencies. Kevin started his finance career with Ernst & Young LLP and then moved over to Ernst & Young Corporate Finance Inc. Kevin graduated from the University of Western Ontario, is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Business Valuator.
Thomas Birch
Thomas Birch has over 22 years of entrepreneurial experience operating enterprise software companies and managing product lines within large corporations in the contact center, CTI, CRM and eCommerce markets.
Prior to joining Propulsion Ventures in 2006 as a Managing Partner, Thomas was CEO of angel-financed GoodContacts (P2P contact verification software) in Ottawa from 2002 to 2005 until sold to Reunion.com of Los Angeles. From 1998 to 2001, Thomas was CEO of venture-financed Pyderion Contact Technologies in Montreal until sold to Intecom of Dallas. Pyderion was the market leader in software for managing networked multi-vendor contact centers.
Thomas’ background also includes founding a CTI product marketing consulting company, being regional director of sales of a start-up PC leasing business and being the call center product manager at Nortel.
Thomas currently sits on the boards of the following software companies: Moda Solutions (internet payments), ShopIt.com (P2P transaction platform for social networks) and Ivara (reliability centered maintenance). Thomas’ previous board experience includes: TelWeb (internet payphones), SatCop (satellite PBXs), NetCorp (QoS routers), BabyTel (VoIP carrier), Excendia (Outlook-by-Phone ASP) and N-Dimension (open source security appliance).
Thomas holds a B.A. of Mathematics from Queen’s University, a B.Sc. Honours in Computer Science from Queen’s University, and a MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business University of Western Ontario.
Pierre-André Meunier
Pierre-André Meunier is a partner at Celtic House Venture Partners, a recognized leader in Canada's venture capital industry. Prior to Celtic House, Pierre-André was a general partner at GTI Capital where he was involved in venture capital investments in the technology sector. He began his career as an entrepreneur in his own e-commerce start-up and has been involved in the entrepreneurial community ever since.
Pierre-André has been instrumental in building strategic partnerships while actively involved in a full range of company building activities by serving in senior executive roles including President & CEO of Codagen Technologies, and Executive Vice President of ISR Technologies. Through his various venture capital and operational background, Pierre-André has developed an astute knowledge of the challenges that today’s entrepreneurs are facing.
Pierre-André holds an Industrial Engineering degree from École Polytechnique Montréal and is a Member of the Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec.
