Vancouver-based Unbounce led another wave of executive turnover in Canadian tech, replacing CEO Felicia Bochicchio with Steve Oriola, the company announced on its Medium page at the end of January.
According to her LinkedIn, Bochicchio had worked at Unbounce for over five years, starting as its chief revenue officer in June 2018 before becoming its president in June 2020 and moving to the CEO role in October 2021, replacing co-founder Rick Perreault, who departed the role to focus on his health.
The company said incoming CEO Oriola brings two decades of experience in scaling B2B SaaS platforms, adding that the company plans to “leverage his extensive experience and fresh perspective to drive both growth and innovation at Unbounce.”
Bochicchio’s departure comes shortly after Unbounce’s chief marketing officer Peter Housley left the company, according to his LinkedIn. Housley joined the company in May 2022 as part of a leadership expansion which saw the addition of a chief product officer and vice president of engineering. Unbounce laid off 20 percent of its staff in August 2022, shortly after the leadership additions.
Unbounce declined to provide comment to BetaKit on the departures of Bochicchio and Housley.
Ready-to-eat home-delivered meals company WeCook has seen its own leadership shakeup this month. The company appointed COO Michel Gagné to serve as president and CEO on February 1, shifting its co-founder and now-former CEO Étienne Plourde to vice chairman of the board. Plourde said the promotion recognizes Gagné’s operational and leadership skills while allowing the founding CEO to focus on WeCook’s broader vision.
Plourde led WeCook to secure a $40-million equity investment from Claridge Food Group in May 2022, telling BetaKit at the time that WeCook secured the capital because “[fundraising] markets will be dry for the next two years.”
Gagné joined WeCook in January 2023, having previously held the position of COO at cannabis company The Green Organic Dutchman and various operational roles with Canadian food companies, such as Maple Leaf Foods, BCI Foods, and Cargill.
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Last week, Aifred Health CEO Marina Massingham announced in a LinkedIn post that she would no longer be acting as the company’s CEO, but added she would remain a board member. The company said in a LinkedIn comment that it has no immediate plans to hire a new CEO, adding that Massingham will be a “tough act to follow.” Aifred Health also said Massingham will be available for the team as needed in her role as a board member.
Massingham says during her tenure at Aifred Health, which offers clinical solutions for mental health treatments using AI, the startup raised $6 million in equity funding, over $2 million in non-dilutive funding, and two top three placements in IBM AI’s XPRIZE competition.
Finally, Calgary-based Stream Systems, which provides simulations and AI-powered insights to help the mining industry, made some additions to its leadership team. Greg Lake is joining the company as COO, where he will be responsible for overall operational execution of Stream’s software product delivery and deployment roadmap, while overseeing the company’s intellectual property protection program.
The company also added Mark Sawyer as vice president of mining. Sawyer, who has been working with Stream for over two years on a consulting basis and joined Stream full time in June 2023, will directly report to Lake and lead Stream’s management consulting practice in mining and support the company’s product development and R&D teams.
This week, Catherine Gentilcore took over for François Borrelli as president and CEO of Numana, a macro-accelerator for technological ecosystems based in Québec. Numana is currently leading a quantum telecom testbed project, for which the federal and Québec governments committed $7.6 million in October 2023.
Toronto-based Foxquilt, which offers online insurance solutions for small businesses, added Scott Boston as its CFO, while Montréal-based AI-data-interpretation firm HumanFirst added Maeghan Smulders as its COO.
BetaKit has noted an unprecedented tidal wave of executive leadership changes in 2024, with MindBridge, ActiveState, AnalytixInsight, Acuity Insights, Volaris Group, Flashfood, NowVertical, Top Hat, Untether, Cinchy, and Alida all experiencing transitions at the executive level so far this year.
UPDATE (02/14/24): This story was updated to note executive level changes at Numana, Foxquilt, and HumanFirst, as well as commentary from Aifred Health.
Image courtesy Unbounce.
