Dean Hopkins is stepping down from his role as CEO of OneEleven, and will be taking on a new role as Chief Operations Officer at Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), one of OneEleven’s founding partners.
“Dean will continue to lend his considerable expertise as the chair of the board and I’m excited to see what he does with Oxford.”
As first reported by The Logic, Siri Agrell, Toronto managing director, will act as executive director of OneEleven, while Hopkins will serve as chairman of the company’s board. This announcement comes amid several months of turmoil for the Canadian tech hub, after the departure of three other executives, following the closure of two OneEleven locations, as first reported by BetaKit.
“Dean will continue to lend his considerable expertise as the chair of the board and I’m excited to see what he does with Oxford,” Agrell told BetaKit. “OneEleven is here to support our companies growth, to throw our community’s collective weight behind founders who are tackling big problems, and to prove that we are stronger together and can build an impactful, sustainable sector that’s diverse across talent and verticals for the benefit of our members and our city.”
In June, three executives, Sandy Perlman, chief marketing officer, George Eichholzer, chief technology officer, and Pearl Chiu, chief people officer, had all left the organization. This occurred about a month after BetaKit first learned that OneEleven would close down its offices in Ottawa and London, England. The Ottawa space is expected to officially close next week.
Hopkins, who was previously the CEO of Osprey Labs, joined as CEO of OneEleven in early 2018 when founding managing director and then-CEO of OneEleven, Bilal Khan, stepped down. OneEleven then announced plans to expand in April 2018, which included launches in Ottawa, Vancouver, and Boston before year’s end, with London and Berlin expected in early 2019. Hopkins told BetaKit at the time that his primary focus was to determine how to scale the OneEleven model created in Toronto to other markets.
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OneEleven stated at the time that it expected to find and procure spaces in these cities through its relationship with Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of OMERS. It should be noted that OMERS Ventures, the investment arm of OMERS, is one of the founding partners of OneEleven, along with Ryerson University and Ontario Centres of Excellence.
While the hub’s Vancouver and Boston locations did not come to fruition, OneEleven did launch its Ottawa hub in July of 2018. During that time, OneEleven also announced the expansion of its Toronto location, doubling the floor space by 50,000 square feet, as well as the addition of Agrell as its managing director.
Very excited to fully take the reins at @oneeleven_111 as Executive Director and keep building an amazing community and tech sector. In the last 10 months we’ve added 18 awesome companies, including 6 female founders, bringing us to 53 scale-ups employing 950+…
— Siri Agrell (@SiriAgrell) July 25, 2019
Agrell told BetaKit there were no plans to expand OneEleven’s locations, but there were plans to expand the hub’s presence in Toronto. She said its programming and partnership approach will be relaunched in the fall, and plans to partner with a community social impact program.
A statement from OneEleven, released last summer, said that the company planned to open an additional 10 tech hubs around the world. Fifty-three member companies are currently being incubated in the Toronto location, and two more are planned to enter, according to The Logic.
“I’m excited for what’s to come but I’m most proud of the companies who work and scale within OneEleven,” Agrell said. “We’ve added companies like GatikAI, Diversio, Fable Tech Labs, Klir, Chainvu, North One, Intelocate, OpsLevel and Wisely — all of whom are doing big things — who join the ranks of companies like Nudge, Canvass Analytics, Savvyy, Luminari, Plooto and FormHero in changing the way people do business.”
BetaKit reached out to Hopkins for comment, who did not respond before time of publication. He did however, confirm his departure in a tweet:
The word is out. I am excited to join @OxfordPropGroup as Chief Operations Officer and shift to Chair of @oneeleven_111 The membership is in great hands with @SiriAgrell at the helm, and I am proud of the momentum that we have built. #builttoscale
— Dean Hopkins (@wdhopkins) July 25, 2019
Image courtesy Dean Hopkins via Twitter