Emily Smiley

Manager, Accelerator Program and Investor Relations

Ryerson DMZ

As the Manager of the Accelerator Program and Investor Relations, Emily leads the DMZ’s Accelerator and looks after the Entrepreneurship-in-Residence (EiR) portfolio. Emily connects startup founders with funders where she sees potential opportunities, helps startups with fundraising strategies, and works with investors in the DMZ network and beyond. Emily joined the DMZ team in 2017. Prior to joining the DMZ, Emily worked held several positions within the IT industry in both the corporate and startup environments.

Marcus Daniels

Founding Partner & CEO

Highline Beta

Marcus Daniels is a Founding Partner & CEO of Highline Beta where he leads visionary execution, strategic deals, corporate venture co-investment and startup funding. He has 21+ years as a serial tech entrepreneur & operating executive with a top decile pre-seed investing (34 startups) track record. 12+ years working with Fortune 1000 companies advising on corporate innovation models & building a pipeline of new corporate ventures beyond the core business. Formerly the Co-Founder & CEO of HIGHLINE.vc and Managing Director of Extreme Startups, Marcus continues to help evolve accelerator models to make corporate-startup collaboration work

Austin Hubbell

CEO & Co-Founder

Consilium Crypto

Austin is the CEO and co-founder of Consilium Crypto (https://consiliumcrypto.ai/), a big data company developing institutional grade investment analytics and liquidity access tools for the digital asset markets, helping funds find alpha and place large orders efficiently in times of thin liquidity. With a background in software development and machine learning Austin brings a skillset balanced between technology and business. He previously worked with a distributed team based in L.A./San Francisco to build predictive models for crime hotspotting in major US cities, before shifting to the world of Finance to build machine learning trading systems for currency markets.

Laith Shukri

Senior Market Development Manager

Silicon Valley Bank

Laith Shukri is a senior market development manager for SVB in Toronto, where his role is to build and strengthen relationships between the bank and early-stage companies in Canada. To this end, he consults with innovators to identify ways that SVB can best serve their needs as they scale. Laith is particularly passionate about using his background and talents to help founders move to the next opportunity; his services include providing feedback on pitches and business models as well as fostering connections between Canada’s upcoming game-changers and the most influential peers, organizations and programs in Canada’s innovation ecosystem that can help set new ideas in motion.

Prior to joining SVB, Laith served as a senior analyst for ScaleUP Ventures, a Toronto-based VC fund. Outside of work, Laith volunteers on the leadership team of the Diversity and Inclusion Small Council (DISC). This group of 10 high-level industry representatives is dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in VC funds and in the broader VC community.