Three executives including chief technology, marketing, and people officers have recently departed from Canadian tech hub OneEleven.
Sandy Perlman, chief marketing officer, George Eichholzer, chief technology officer, and Pearl Chiu, chief people officer have all left the organization, according to The Logic.
“Our business in Toronto has grown significantly in the last 24 months and we are only just keeping up with demand.”
The personnel changes come less than a month after BetaKit first reported that OneEleven was closing down its Ottawa and London, England offices as of July 31. The decision to cut down on its executive team and the office closures are stated as part of the hub’s plan to refocus the organization’s efforts in Toronto.
It is not clear if the three executives were asked or decided to leave the hub, but Dean Hopkins, CEO of OneEleven, told The Logic that the decision for Perlman, Eichholzer, and Chiu to leave was made collectively by OneEleven’s management team. He also stated that the decision included the three departing executives themselves.
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Eichholzer joined the OneEleven team as CTO just less than a year ago, bringing with him more than 20 years experience leading engineering teams at tech companies in the healthcare, education, and financial services sectors. Chiu also joined the OneEleven team in 2018, with Perlman coming on as CMO in January of this year. At the beginning of this year, OneEleven also added John Stamler as managing director for now-shuttered London office.
The majority of these team members came on just as OneEleven announced its intentions to expand in April 2018 to Ottawa, Vancouver, and Boston before the year was up, with London and Berlin to be launched in early 2019. Hopkins told BetaKit in the summer of 2018 that his primary focus was to figure out how to scale the OneEleven model created in Toronto to other markets.
More recently, following the Ottawa and London office closures (Vancouver and Boston locations never materialized), Hopkins told BetaKit, “Our business in Toronto has grown significantly in the last 24 months and we are only just keeping up with demand.”
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The CEO said that OneEleven is looking to replace the executives with entrepreneurs-in-residence and mentors in order to focus on operational functions such as marketing.
OneEleven has seen a number of staff changes over the past year starting with founding CEO Bilal Khan who left in April 2018, replaced by Hopkins. In April of this year, OneEleven let go of COO John Mavriyannakis who was in the role for just over a year. Hopkins pointed to the executives that would be taking over the COO responsibilities at the time in an email sent to OneEleven tenants obtained by BetaKit.
“We have had a great year at OneEleven, especially in Toronto where we have more than doubled in size,” he wrote. “However, after careful consideration and consultation with our Board, we have decided to reevaluate our growth strategy and renew our focus on our base business in Toronto, which is booming…Given the renewed focus on Toronto, we no longer require a COO focused on global operations.”
He stated that (now departed) Chiu would pick up financial and administrative services, as well as talent-related services. Remaining executives, director of finance and operations Emma Jing and executive director Siri Agrell were set to take over financial and community business, respectively. Marketing and communications manager Elana Ziluk also left the same month.