A recognized leader in the Canadian innovation community, Usha Srinivasan has built some of the sector’s most unique service offerings for startups over the last 15 years. Usha Srinivasan was recently the Founding Director of Brampton Venture Zone (BVZ) at Toronto Metropolitan University. In this role, Usha was responsible for developing and leading this new TMU-led incubator in the downtown Brampton Innovation District supported by the City of Brampton. She also founded the BReady Talent platform that supports BIPOC and immigrants to find meaningful employment. Through this program, she has developed strong partnerships with chambers of commerce across Ontario to support their employers in finding talent through the BReady platform.
Before BVZ, she was VP of Partnership and Talent with Elevate Tech Fest. She has also co-founded many startups, including one in the foodtech space, “Hauschef”, a main street French bakery and a vintage reggae record label. She is also a recent Angel investor and LP on a fund focused on BIPOC entrepreneurs.
As an early MaRS Discovery District member, she became VP of Venture & Talent Programs, leading teams dedicated to nurturing and developing Canadian entrepreneurs' talents through diverse programs. Before MaRS, she was a Research Manager with the global market intelligence firm Frost and Sullivan, working with multinationals in the Environment, Water and Building Technologies space.
She is also a certified Canadian Appraiser and familiar with the online auction business specific to food processing, manufacturing, industrial machinery & restaurant equipment market. Over the course of four years, she has been part of the “Turn around management” association of trustees, lawyers and accountants and supported Studio 1 asset management, an online auction and logistics business, with their marketing, appraisals and online auctions through BidSpotter and HiBid - two leading online auction portals.
Usha is a graduate of Stanford’s LEAD Corporate Innovation program. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental microbiology from the University of Bristol and a PhD in environmental sciences from Abertay University in Dundee. She was an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the USEPA and an NSERC Fellow at the University of New Brunswick.