As Grand Challenges Canada’s Chief Investment Officer, Annie is leading the organization’s effort to expand its financial product offering. Annie also works closely with the organization’s most promising portfolio companies and those of the Every Woman Every Child Innovation Marketplace, an initiative also supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and NORAD, on their growth and financing plans.

Annie is an experienced investor and lender across multiple sectors and stages who also chairs the investment committee of The Big Push, an accelerator for women-led tech companies, and is an advisor to the CEO of FrontFundr, a Canadian fintech company. She gained her experience as a lender while consulting with a US-based fintech company specializing in accounts receivable financing and term loans to CPG companies and as a senior executive for Grenville Strategic Royalty Corp., a Toronto-based publicly traded royalty finance company focused on revenue-based financing in the technology and technology-enable services sectors. Prior to focusing on debt products, Annie built a strong track-record as a venture capitalist as a senior investor with two venture capital teams, first with Northwater Capital Management’s Intellectual Property Funds and subsequently with Export Development Canada’s venture capital team where she was an instrumental lead investor and board member/observer for portfolio companies she helped raise multi-million dollar rounds of debt and equity financing. Annie spent her early career in capital markets primarily focusing on quantitative products and traded assets.

Annie obtained her Ph.D. in Management from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is a CFA Charterholder and holds the ICD.D designation. She also earned a Master’s Degree in Business Economics from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours in Chemistry from Mount Allison University.

When not solving business challenges, Annie can be found doing messy science experiments with her daughters, or skiing and hanging out by the pool with her family.