James Fierro
Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors
Mr. James Fierro is an international businessman and social entrepreneur. He founded HomeGrocer.com, the first company in the world to provide fully integrated Internet grocery shopping, warehouse and delivery services. HomeGrocer was sold three years' later in a merger transaction for approximately $1.2 billion. Mr. Fierro has been involved in the identification, development and financing of emerging growth companies. He has over thirty years' experience as the Founder and CEO to a range of start-up ventures and is the visionary behind industry innovators in RFID technology, Strategic Planning, Event Marketing, Internet Commerce, Electronic Trading Systems, Online Travel, and Life Safety. Mr. Fierro began his career as a planning and business strategist, consulting to leading companies in the packaged goods sector including Kraft General Foods, H.J. Heinz, Nabisco, Nestle and Campbell Soup. Mr. Fierro was a long-standing active member of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization and served as both the President of the Vancouver Chapter and a member of its Board of Directors.
Adrian Saunders
President
Mr. Adrian Saunders has had 30 years' experience as a global sales and services leader in the IT industry. His most recent appointments have focused on Cloud, Big Data and Application Software solutions for the Enterprise / Corporate sector as Senior Regional Director with EMC Corporation, and previously as Global VP for Professional Services and Channels with Micro Focus. Cumulatively, Mr Saunders has managed sales and revenue targets in excess of $3 billion. Mr. Saunders began his career with IBM where he spent 10 years' in Business Management and Sales. He went on to run a number of global sales & services teams as Vice President at BT Global Services and then Managing Director at Colt Technology Services. His industry verticals knowledge includes Financial Services, Oil & Gas, Automotive, Pharma/Life Sciences and Telecommunications. Mr. Saunders has worked across Asia Pacific, South America, North America, South Africa and Europe. He holds an Honours Degree in English Literature & History and an MBA from Warwick Business School.
Phillip Straley
President, ECO World Alliance
Mr. Phillip Straley joined the company after a 25-year career in management consulting focused on the financial services industry. He was most recently a Partner of PwC where he led the firm’s Risk Management and Regulatory Consulting practice across Asia Pacific. Mr. Straley was previously a regional Managing Partner of both EY and Accenture - having led risk, regulatory, finance/CFO function and analytics consulting practices. Mr. Straley has particular expertise in financial institution capital management, trading risk management, financial regulation, Board risk oversight and operational risk management. He has been based in Asia-Pacific for the last 20 years, having been based in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. He has worked across all the major Asian economies with financial regulators, and with leading global and regionally based financial institutions. Mr. Straley has an LLM in International Financial and Commercial Law from the University of Edinburgh and a BA in Economics and History from the College of William & Mary, Wiliamsburg, Virginia.
Rikki Chow
Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Rikki Chow was the President and CEO of the clearinghouse for futures and options traded on Canadian financial exchanges (CDCC), where he was appointed after moving from Europe to Canada. A Swiss/Canadian dual citizen, Mr. Chow was previously with Euroclear in Brussels where he led initiatives to develop ancillary services in support of revenue diversification and was head of Financial Reporting & Analysis. Before Brussels, Mr. Chow had an extensive career with JP Morgan in Switzerland during the 1980s, where he was successively Director of Systems Development, Head of Finance and Vice-President of Cross-Divisional Projects. Prior to his career as a financial services executive, Mr. Chow served as commanding officer of an artillery battery. He was also a teaching assistant in Mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and at the Université de Lausanne where he had obtained his degree in Pure Mathematics.
Kurt Hoffman
Managing Director, Social Development
Mr. Hoffman has a solid track record over three decades as a pioneering architect of scalable and sustainable market and enterprise-based solutions to major social and environmental problems in both mature and emerging economies. Early in his career, Mr. Hoffman spent 10 years as a Senior Fellow in International Economic Development at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. From the mid 1980s through the mid 1990s, he independently advised many governments, foundations and international agencies on how to best promote small business development in poor countries and successfully launched a social enterprise and two venture-funded, commercial start-up businesses. From 1997 to 2008, Mr. Hoffman designed and then directed the Shell Foundation – an innovative global corporate social investment vehicle. During his tenure, Mr. Hoffman was responsible for five different social investment platforms, deploying $40 million of Shell’s social risk capital and triggering $1.4 billion of investment. One of these platforms, Grofin Capital, was one of the most successful African SME financing facilities, with over $400 million investment capital under management. Following on for four years through 2011, on behalf of The Hewlett Foundation, Mr. Hoffman was Director of TransFarm Africa – an influential independent finance and policy change initiative targeting the equitable commercialisation of small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. In parallel and still ongoing, Mr. Hoffman and a Mozambican partner launched a specialist commercial services company in Mozambique now valued at over $1 million. More recently through November 2012, Mr. Hoffman was Chief Executive of the Institute for Philanthropy (London and New York) – a global leader in providing bespoke training to leading philanthropists to help them maximise the social value of their philanthropy and catalyse sustainable social change. In the ten months prior to joining ECO Capacity Exchange, Mr. Hoffman became a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Innovation Management at the University of Brighton from whence he published a series of articles on the state of philanthropy and social enterprise in the UK and conducted a strategic review of opportunities to deploy innovative financing techniques and products and for harnessing market drivers to move, on a large scale, the developing world’s most vulnerable communities onto market-based routes towards long term economic sustainability.
Ken Foxcroft
Member of the Board of Directors
Mr. Ken Foxcroft was Deputy Chairman for TD Securities and Executive Vice President, Corporate and Investment Banking, at Toronto Dominion Bank. He has over 35 years of experience in the international banking and money market arenas. Mr. Foxcroft is a well-known and respected leader with senior relationships within the Canadian and provincial governments, as well as with significant institutional investors, supra-nationals and Central Bank clients.
Barry Davenport
Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors
Mr. Barry Davenport was previously head of the Capital Markets Division at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), the Canadian federal regulator of financial institutions. Prior to being a regulator, he had extensive experience in capital markets and international banking as Senior Vice President, Global Treasury for Bank of Montreal, and spent several years managing the foreign exchange activities of Wood Gundy Ltd. a leading Canadian investment dealer.
Serge Janowski
Managing Director & Regional Head, MENA
Mr. Janowski has over 28 years of senior level experience in the banking industry. He was recently instrumental in the development of an independent private equity investment boutique connecting Asian investment needs with European business opportunities, before which Mr. Janowski’s professional positions included that of CEO, executive committee member, business manager, and various risk management and project management responsibilities. Mr.Janowski was the former Head of Institutional business for Asia and Middle-East for Julius Baer (Hong Kong); CEO Private Banking Asia for Credit Agricole (Hong Kong); CEO Private Banking North Asia for BNP Paribas (Hong Kong); CEO Middle East BNP Paribas (Dubai); and Global Head Risk Management BNP Paribas (Paris). Mr. Janowski has also held various positions in Project Financing at BNP Canada and was Head of Inspection Generale at BNP Paribas Head office in Paris. He was educated in France and holds a Master’s Degree in Finance.
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