Digital Nova Scotia Board of Directors

Jason was first elected to the Board in October, 2007 and was elected President and Chairman in June, 2008.

An independent consultant with Animax Business Consulting Ltd., Jason was previously President of Keane Canada, leading the Canadian division for the multinational outsroucing firm.

Prior to his nine years with Keane, Jason worked for one of Canada's largest grocery retailers and was partners in two start-up fimrs.

Jason brings a wealth of international experience and a well-rounded perspectve from his consulting, enterprise and entrepreneurial past.

John Leahy has over 20 years experience in the IT industry. He possesses a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for creating customer value. John is the president and founder of immediaC Worldwide Inc. and leads a team solving business challenges with Internet and database technology for 250 clients across North America and Europe. immediaC has built more than 500 websites and web applications over the last 11 years.

John founded the company, originally called Stratospherei, in 1998. Since then immediaC has been working closely with customers to develop and perfect a database-driven content management application called webfront IRP for small and medium-sized enterprises. John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of New Brunswick. He is also the author of GetGoogled and the NanoSecondEconomy blog. John is a long-time supporter of the Information Technology Industry Alliance of Nova Scotia and previously served on the board from 2000-2005.

David is a Partner with McInnes Cooper in the Halifax office, working with a range of private and public sector clients to implement compliance programs for Canadian privacy legislation, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Canada), the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Nova Scotia) and the Privacy Act (Canada). He regularly provides opinions related to Canadian privacy law for both Canadian and international clients and is a frequently invited speaker on this topic. David also acts for complainants and respondents in matters referred to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. He is the author of the popular Canadian Privacy Law Blog (www.privacylawyer.ca/blog).

David has extensive experience in the area of intellectual property and information technology law. He regularly prepares and prosecutes trade-mark applications and represents clients in opposition proceedings. David also represents clients in negotiating domestic and international patent licenses. In the technology law arena, a sample of his work would be: acting for service providers and customers in outsourcing arrangements and ASP agreements; acting for clients in domain name disputes; negotiating technology development agreements and the full range of software licenses.

In addition, David is the President of the Canadian IT Law Association and the Chair of National Privacy and Access Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association.

David was honoured to be included in the inaugural (2006) and subsequent editions of The Best Lawyers in Canada in the category of Information Technology law. He is listed among the world’s leading lawyers in the Internet and eCommerce Law in the International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers. In the spring of 2006, David was a recipient of an Outstanding Young Canadian Award by the Junior Chamber of Commerce International - Halifax Chapter. In 2009, David was named as one of Canada’s “Top 40 Lawyers Under 40” by Lexpert.

David has served on the Research Ethics Board of the Capital District Health Authority. He is currently a member of the Joint Data Access Committee of the IWK Health Centre for Women and Children in Halifax, which reviews applications for research access to personal health information. In 2002, David was invited to be an associate of the Institute of Law and Technology. He is a member of the faculty of Dalhousie Law School, where he teaches Internet and Media Law, Law and Technology, and Law and Policy for Electronic Commerce. He is on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology. Active in the Halifax technology community, David is secretary and director of advocacy for Digital Nova Scotia.

Steven Carr is a Manager of Taxation with Deloitte & Touche LLP in Halifax, Nova Scotia advising clients throughout Atlantic Canada. Over the past four years in advising these clients, Steven has gain extensive knowledge in the areas of taxation related to Estate Planning and Personal Tax, Taxation and management of Trusts, Canadian Corporate Tax and Planning, Scientific Research & Experimental Development Investment Tax Credits for corporations.

Previously to working with Deloitte & Touche LLP, Steven had spent close to six years in the financial services industry, working with mostly small and medium size enterprises throughout Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI. Steven’s goal is to help his client’s grow through either corporate or personal tax strategies that maximize after tax income for a corporation’s grow, or assist an individual/family to maximize the transfer of wealth to the next generation.

SpecialtiesEstate Planning, Personal Tax, Trust taxation and management, Canadian Corporate Tax and Planning, Scientific Research & Experimental Development Investment Tax Credits for corporations, and commercial banking.

Ken Lee is a senior advisor of business ventures with Innovacorp’s mentoring team, providing advice and guidance to early stage technology entrepreneurs through Innovacorp’s High Performance Incubation (HPi)™ business model. He has over 15 years of strategic and business planning experience and has worked in market development and management consulting capacities with large corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).Ken has experience from across a broad range of industries, including insurance, telecommunications, export marketing, manufacturing, and business consulting. He was a senior corporate planner for Maritime Life Assurance and was responsible for preparing corporate business plans, strategic planning, and merger and integration.

Prior to Maritime Life, Ken was a service development and business planning manager for Aliant Telecom Mobility, where he was involved in business planning for Aliant’s wireless division. He was also involved in mapping wireless data business strategies and developing leading edge wireless data services and applications.

Ken was a market development manager for Acadian Seaplants, a bioscience company producing marine plant products for plant science, nutraceutical, and food markets worldwide. While at Acadian Seaplants, he led a marketing team in market research and export marketing, and was directly involved in new product development and opening new markets.

Additionally, Ken has nine years of experience as a consultant providing business advisory services for start-ups and expansions, including seven years of experience with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He also started and operated a business consulting partnership targeted at SMEs.

Ken holds a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA from Dalhousie University

Michael McConnell is Chief Executive Officer of Digital Nova Scotia. Michael joined the board in 2005 and has an extensive background in the private sector, including operating his own scientific and engineering software development firm for over 12 years.

Michael began his career in Digital Technology in the U.S. Intelligence Community. He served in the United States Armed Forces for over six years and was assigned to units pioneering technologies in remotely piloted vehicles and airborne command and control systems that are in widespread use today.

In addition to his work with Digital Nova Scotia , Michael serves on the Industry Advisory Boards of Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia Community College and also serves on the Board of the ICT Federation of Canada and is a member of the Information and communications technologies sector committee for the Canada/Atlantic Provinces Agreement on International Business Development.

Michael is committed to promoting the growth and sustainable development of Nova Scotia's ICT Industry and enabling the industry to play a key role in the global marketplace.

Grant Sullivan is a Director at CGI responsible for designing and fielding remote IT delivery solutions for global clients.Previously Grant owned and operated his own software company building software for the utilities industry.Grant has served in Canada's Navy as a combat systems engineer and worked as a senior project manager at MacDonald Dettwiler.In 2003 Grant led a team to achieve a CMM Level 5 assessment - the first IT services firm to accomplish this in Canada.He has taught project management, information systems and informatics courses to graduate students at Dalhousie University.Grant is an Industrial Engineer and a Project Management Professional with an MBA and a Masters in Electronic Commerce.

Mike Shepherd is the Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. He was first elected to the ITIANS Board in 2008. He is currently the Vice-President of CACS/AIC, which is the association of all heads of Canadian University Computer Science programs in Canada. He is a strong supporter of industry-university collaborative R&D

He is a member of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Society for Information Science & Technology. His research areas are information retrieval and health informatics.

bio coming soon

Monica Lachance is currently Director, Blackberry Carrier Technical Support at RIM and has recently located to Halifax, Nova Scotia in December 2008 to join Research in Motion.

In Monica’s role at RIM, she directly supports technical service delivery teams in Halifax, Waterloo and Dallas, as well as the carrier partner account management teams for North America and Latin America, Workforce Management globally, and is also holds the role of site director for the new RIM building on Innovation Drive off of Hammonds Plain road. Monica has over 15 years of senior management experience with a focus on leading large multi-site global customer care and technical support service centers with a keen focus on the customer experience.

She has held positions at CIBC, Teletech, SITEL (Hewlett Packard), ClientLogic (Hewlett Packard), Westjet and most recently Call Centre Services. Monica was born and raised in Calgary, where most of her extended family still resides but has lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and most recently San Jose, Costa Rica before her recent move to Halifax late last year.

Monica is joined in Halifax with her husband, David, and her daughter, Mackenzie, who recently turned 8 and as a family looks forward to exploring and learning about beautiful Atlantic Canada.

Terry Dalton, President & CEO, Canadian Informatics Consultants Limited. “Helping others realize their potential through information technology.”

Leadership Activities:

Chair – Atlantic Canada Organization of Research Network in Nova Scotia (ACORN-NS) – Nova Scotia’s Optical Research Advanced Network (ORAN).

Co-Chair – Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education (CANARIE) Technical Committee, Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network.

Lead – CANARIE ORAN Advisory Committee representing advanced network programs, initiatives and innovation for the province of Nova Scotia.

Accomplishments:

Co-founder, Architect, Manager – Canadian Bioinformatics Resource (CBR), established 1996. Responsible for informatics design and architecture, strategic initiatives, high performance computing, distributed computing, grid infrastructure and relationships. Lead CBR to be established as a Sun Microsystems International Center of Excellence in Distributed Bioinformatics, 2002.

Co-founder – Medical Research Networks Consortium of Canada (MRNCC). Informatics Consultancy – Provided informatics consulting to research groups across Canada as well as researchers in Singapore, Malaysia, USA, Japan and Kenya.

Professional Managed Services – For 2000 delegates from 112 countries, Global Microcredit Summit 2006 headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus, World Trade and Convention Centre, Halifax. OrthoRCL - Nova Scotia Orthopedics Residency Case Log System. Privacy and security – Connecting People for Health personal health record system.

Professional Affiliations:

IEEE – 35-Year Member TechNova (SCETTNS) – 32-Year Member Digital Nova Scotia – Member Oracle - Sun Microsystems Partner Advantage Program for Independent Software Vendors – Associate Partner Project Management Institute – Member Project Management Institute Nova Scotia Chapter – Member Managed Services Vendor Alliance MSP Partners – Member

bio coming soon

bio coming soon