Mara Rada
Principal. Namer. Chief Strategy Officer





Mara is a global strategist, namer, and category design expert with over 25 years of experience in the field. She worked across multiple top-tier agencies (Ogilvy/Mindshare. Grey/Mediacom, OMD) with Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 brands in Europe and North America.

As a branding and media strategist, she worked with multiple Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies and with some of the world's most iconic brands: Dove, Heineken, Tuborg, Kraft, Milka, Toblerone, Cadbury, Gilette, Telekom, Nokia, HVB Bank, UniCredit, GSK, Pfizer.





In the past three years, her work developed to include startups and innovation commercialization. She wants to bring her deep understanding of global corporate marketing strategies to the sphere of entrepreneurship. She helps today's startups grow into tomorrow's behemoths and today's corporations develop startup agility.


Mara is a Global Startup Mentor with Techstars, Newchip, Founder Institute, and North Forge East in the US, Canada, Brazil, Europe, and the UK, where she guides thousands of startup founders through naming, branding, and positioning strategies, helping them shine in highly competitive markets and increasingly crowded verticals.





Valentin Ionescu
Creative Director. Visual Identity





Valentin has had a long creative stride in advertising and dedicated branding agencies such as Brandology, 121 Communication, EGGO, Mediaconsulta, Digital Contrast, and Arena Communications.





Valentin has been the artisan of numerous branding, rebranding, and brand architecture creation and expansion for prestigious clients such as The Romanian National Theatre, ASIROM, ARDAF, Financial Week, The National Journal, and CEC Bank.


A creator at work and heart, Valentin is an accomplished painter and holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Design from the University of Arts and Design, Cluj Napoca, Romania. A member of the Art Directors Club Romania, Valentin has received several national and international awards for his work in advertising and the creative arts.





Tom Megginson
Creative Director. Brand Strategy





As a Senior Creative Director and Brand Strategy copywriter, Tom brings over 30 years of agency experience in branding and strategy for numerous corporate, not-for-profit, and government clients in Canada, The United States, as well as globally.





Tom's work passion is social and behaviour change marketing. His ideas are informed by a layperson's interest in psychology, sociology and neuroscience and inspired by a love of learning about other people and their cultures.





Ryan Paul Gibson
Customer Research





Ryan has 20 years of marketing miles and worked with dozens of businesses of all shapes & sizes. He is most passionate about Customer Research, Content, Thought Leadership and Brand Story.





Ryan worked for large companies responsible for million-dollar budgets and bootstrapped startups. These days, he runs content lift, which helps B2B marketing teams run better customer research. He conducted buyer research to understand why pharma companies choose to work with third-party innovation consultants and informed new messaging, personas, and content marketing.


His research maps complete buying journeys and informs new messaging, personas, and sales scripts. He also works with Invest Ottawa - an Economic Development Agency coordinating municipal, provincial, and federal initiatives for campaigns generating millions of social media impressions.





Ghayath Janoudi
Health Sciences Advisor





Dr. Janoudi has comprehensive experience in conducting and evaluating clinical and health research for regulatory purposes in North and Latin America, Europe, Africa, and The Middle East. He is also a Health Tech startup mentor.





Dr. Ghayath Janoudi is Vice President, Regulatory Affairs and Quality for Platform Life Sciences. He has dedicated his career to bringing innovative therapies to patients who need them the most. He has over a decade of clinical, research, market access, and regulatory experience working with numerous CRO and HTA organizations, regulatory bodies, biotech companies and medical devices developers across North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. He was in charge of the assessment, evaluation, and management of submissions for new and repurposed therapies from biopharmaceutical companies, including Novartis, Biogen, Roche, Vertex, Alexion, GSK, Gilead, Pfizer and emerging biotech.


Ghayath received his Medical Degree in 2010 and started his career as a physician. He became involved in clinical research and acquired a Master’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences (2015), then a Ph.D. in Epidemiology (estimated completion 2023). He frequently gives lectures on Public Health and Epidemiology to medical students at the University of Ottawa and has numerous peer-reviewed publications.


Ghayath also teaches Regulatory Affairs, Quality Health Systems, and Health Technologies Reimbursement (Drugs and Medical Devices) to health tech startups in San Francisco and Boston enrolled in various innovation commercialization and startup accelerator programs.