Altruistic by nature. Successful
through nurture.

Our Philosophy

The word “alacrity” means brisk and cheerful readiness. Propelled by this definition, we help existing B.C. businesses either digitize or build. Alacrity works with local and global strategic partners to connect entrepreneurs and startups in Western Canada with investors. We also invite startups from outside Canada to relocate to B.C. to further stimulate and amplify economic growth in the region.

We’re driving the Local Ecosystem

Alacrity Canada has contributed to B.C.’s technology ecosystem by offering innovative initiatives that address the ever-evolving needs of the world’s tech economy. Alacrity has collaborated with governments at all levels to empower business owners and entrepreneurs and has helped many gain recognition globally for contributions in their fields. This recognition has helped to establish B.C. as a hub for technology, research, and development on the international stage. The organization continues to focus on the fields of Internet Security, Data, Clean Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Digital Adoption, in alignment with observed global needs and trends.

Tap into the global ecosystem

Alacrity Canada's Economic Impact

Meet Our Players

Inclusive and diverse, Alacrity relies on the ingenuity and intuition of its bright and hungry team, and encourages its players to explore ideas and opportunities that they’re passionate about. This organic approach has proven to produce unique and exceptional programming.

Alacrity’s experienced mentorship team and our extended network of business leaders around the world provide nuanced feedback to Alacrity’s incubating companies.

All

Alacrity Canada

Board

Canada Digital Adoption

Cleantech

Digital Adoption

Digital Marketing

Startup Visa

Richard Egli

CEO

As CEO, Richard manages the operation and strategic direction of the Alacrity Foundation. As a team member, he advises multiple portfolio companies by contributing to investment decisions and connecting them to potential partners and investors.

Richard is one part visionary, one part diplomat. His role requires him to turn his attention forward, in search of meaningful opportunities and partnerships. Focussing on those that add value to Alacrity’s portfolio of companies, and evolve Alacrity’s scope and goals. In parallel, Richard hones in, sourcing and working alongside the next generation of tech leaders. He has shown great success in assembling teams, and leading them into strategic alignment, through pitfalls, over hurdles, and into the light.

Over the past few years Richard has also led the effort behind the Alacrity Investor Readiness Program, which has brought more than $220M CAD of investment into the B.C. technology ecosystem; and spearheaded the initiative behind opening Alacrity’s Shanghai office, meaning cross-border opportunity and investment.

Richard holds a B.Com in Entrepreneurship from Royal Roads University and a MBA from the University of Victoria with a specialization in real estate, venture capital and finance. He has also spent 10 years involved in real estate development in various capacities: as a builder, project manager, and investor, across Western Canada and the USA. Beginning in 2005, he began managing a $40M+ budget for a 74 lot subdivision project in Kelowna, B.C. to successful completion. He continues pursuing real estate projects in Victoria by developing and providing unique work spaces to the growing local technology community.

While Richard is immensely proud of the results and impact his team has achieved in the last decade, for Richard, Alacrity is just getting started. Being an entrepreneur at heart means that he is invigorated by newness and being ahead of the game.

Alongside his work at Alacrity, Richard is a founding investor and managing partner of Cindicates Investment Fund , is on the board of Directors for Capital Investment Network, among others; and volunteers for the Power to Be Charity and Hero Work.

Burak-Evren

Program Manager - Alacrity Canada

Burak works with Alacrity’s Cleantech portfolio companies to address challenges in target markets (Mexico, Singapore, India and Northern Europe), and facilitates their marketing and business development efforts.

Burak leads our Cleantech program’s strategy, managing and overseeing all activities relating to the Cleantech portfolio. He is dedicated to turning the Cleantech industry into a field investors recognize and are excited to invest in so that environmental results and commercial results can be achieved in parallel. He has both a BA of Business Management from the University of Istanbul and a MA of Global Management from Royal Roads University. He is a seasoned professional with over 25 years of marketing, product development, and digital transformation experience.

He started his career at British American Tobacco Holland and became a brand manager for BAT in Central Asia. Through the years, he has taken on different roles in local and global organizations; working for McCann Erickson Worldgroup, Fox International Channels, Motorola and a few local giants in Turkey like Turkish Telecom, Dogan Holding and Boyner Holding. He managed to set up sales and marketing operations, stewarding projects worth over a hundred million USD and more. Under his management, Turkey’s first IPTV platform Tivibu got many rewards and achieved a healthy market share. In the last decade, he was holding senior and C-level positions in marketing and digital product development.

At Alacrity Cleantech, he has helped achieve its 2018-2020 targets which resulted in a new program that will bring in new export potential and investment to BC, and through the Program, has helped over 10 founders raise funds and grow their companies. He diligently serves entrepreneurs so they are at the cutting edge of tech, and service development for the improvement of the community environment that we all share.

Burak established a reputation as a professional and academician. He worked as a lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and teaches at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC, on intercultural studies, digital entrepreneurship, innovation management, e-commerce & m-commerce. Burak is a keynote speaker in tech events about new media, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and he is also one of the founders of the Turkish Digital Transformation Association.

He is currently an associate faculty at Royal Roads University, and has been teaching there for the last 2 years. He has also been a mentor at Turkish Telecom’s Acceleration Program Pilot for 3 years.

Golriz Fattahi

VP of Operations

As Vice President of Operations, Golriz works with internal and external stakeholders to support access to funding for programming and education. She also acts as our head recruiter, and is our culture enthusiast, providing a safe space for collaborative efforts.

Golriz holds a BA from Simon Fraser University and is a seasoned Operations Manager with over 15 years of experience in Retail, Recruitment, Research, Non for Profit, Fundraising, Small Business, and Entrepreneurship. Her areas of expertise are People Management (HR), Recruitment, Government Relations and Grant Writing. Something Alacrity Canada does a lot of in order to fund our Programs and Initiatives. Before Alacrity, Golriz worked in research within the recruitment industry as a Project Manager. Prior to that, she worked as a junior estimator in a construction company as well as a store manager for Starbucks – where she first realized how good her people skills were.

Golriz is a dedicated project manager, delivering exceptional programs through various Alacrity initiatives, including the launch and expansion of the Entreprenurship@Alacrity program in 2009. Currently, Golriz works with the Digital Marketing Bootcamp team and the BC Cleantech Initiative group on a number of program offerings, including the delivery of the Recycled Plastics Manufacturing Stimulus Fund. Golriz is also in charge of reporting to the government and funding partners for the above mentioned programs.

She is actively involved in building and growing the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion principals at Alacrity, bringing that focus to all portfolio companies, and is a member of Canadian Accelerator Incubator Network.

Sofia-Rizzo

Project Coordinator - Start-up Visa Program

Sofia has completed Alacrity Canada’s Digital Marketing Bootcamp and holds a BA in Administration, for both Business and Theatre Management. With her experience in Event Planning, Project Coordination, and Administration, she has fine tuned the ability to communicate and multi-task. These skills developed by managing various programs, events, shows, festivals and workshops for non-profit organizations across Canada.

Sofia helps oversee the Start-up Visa Program, supporting tech startups from around the world establish their businesses in Canada. She has assessed and supported over 100 international tech startups entering the Canadian market. She has also had the opportunity to support the Launch Online Program team in administering $42 million in grants to small businesses.

Sofia was attracted to Alacrity Canada due to its culture, work environment, its community, and how innovative she found the projects Alacrity Canada runs. She means to continue to expand her own skills and knowledge within the tech industry and support the success of Start-up Visa companies from start to finish. Her ultimate goal is to build opportunities for women in tech to succeed.

Alongside her career at Alacrity Canada, Sofia supports Power To Be by doing grant research and processing data from fundraisers and campaigns. This charity works to remove cognitive, physical and social barriers to the outdoors.

Simon Adnams

Controller

Simon manages Alacrity Canada’s financial and operational matters. His nine years of experience in taxation, assurance, infrastructure and energy, non-profits, and start-ups has led him to develop a wide spectrum of skills, which he contributes to Alacrity and its associated entities.

After completing a Bachelor of Commerce, specializing in Finance, at University of British Columbia, he subsequently completed a CPA designation. Previously, Simon provided financial services to large-scale infrastructure projects with assets in excess of $100M. Simon now sits as controller of the Alacrity Foundation and a number of the portfolio companies with which it is involved.

He also acts as the administrator of multi-million dollar Federal and Provincial government programs by allocating these funds to Alacrity Foundation and unrelated third parties, subject to government criteria.

Simon has found his home here at Alacrity, not only because of the interesting projects and companies which require his tactical diligence, but also because of the people with whom he gets to work with daily.

Peter Van der Gracht

Senior Advisor, Canada

Peter Van der Gracht is a senior mentor for Alacrity Canada’s Cleantech program, supporting portfolio companies with market penetration, business model development, and alternative financing solutions. Based in Canada, Peter also works closely with in-market advisors and cleantech companies pursuing opportunities in the India and Northern Europe markets.

Peter, a Master of Electrical Engineering and Applied Sciences by trade, is a powerful resource for cleantech company development. He currently serves as a member, chairman, or director of a significant number of boards and provides independent financial and management advice to multiple companies at Alacrity and through other organizations.

With more than forty years of business experience in a variety of industries ranging from natural resources to technology and telecommunications to retail and cleantech, he has a wealth of business acumen and established relationships with a diverse and expansive global network of business leaders.

Peter excels at making connections between companies, finding new customers, pitching investors, and folding in partners, connecting very valuable dots for companies both small and large. He also has experience managing operational build-outs, acquisitions, and buy-outs and has successfully led and exited multiple technology companies headquartered across North America with global footprints.

Peter works with Alacrity because he values giving back to the business community and to the environment. “Working with a not-for-profit that works to support entrepreneurs and inventors and green the planet at the same time feels like a pretty worthwhile calling to me.”

Cec Primeau

Senior Advisor, Canada

Cec Primeau is a senior mentor for the Alacrity Canada Cleantech Program. Based in Canada, Cec works closely with Federico to pursue opportunities for cleantech companies in the Mexican market. He spends his time with multiple portfolio companies to provide advice on business modeling and financial modeling, as well as market discovery and business development.

Cec currently serves as Principle of Solutions Plus Consulting in addition to his role with Alacrity Cleantech. Cec is a true business veteran, with decades of strategic information technology and financial and management experience in a vast array of industries. He has served in senior management positions such as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, and Chief Innovation Officer in a number of sectors. In his role as an eBusiness Principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the late ’90s, he was a thought leader who helped his firm understand how the business world would be impacted by emerging internet and web-based technologies.

More recently, Cec served as CFO of a clean technology company and helped take the company from startup to profit generation within just a few years. He also oversaw the successful sale of a telecom software company as COO and CFO.

Cec’s work with Alacrity Cleantech’s portfolio companies centers primarily around providing business strategy and fundraising consultancy. He is integral to Alacrity’s ongoing work to evaluate and bring on new companies for the portfolio, as well as managing relationships with partners and Provincial and Federal Government stakeholders.

Tuck Wai Lee

Singapore/ASEAN Advisor

Tuck Wai Lee is Alacrity Cleantech’s in-market advisor for Singapore and the ASEAN region. Tuck is currently the Managing Director of Upconverge and is particularly knowledgeable about the water industry, climate adaptation, clean energy, and sustainability.

Tuck brings twenty years of technical experience involving delivering strategy, engineering studies, master planning, concept design for detailed engineering and construction projects, and operations optimization. He also has considerable business experience in client service management, business development, consulting operations, technology management, and talent development and management.

Tuck chooses to work with Alacrity Cleantech because of the broad and exciting range of technologies, services, and solutions that he gets to learn about and help improve. While the context for each portfolio company is always a little different, he finds that the work taps into his broad industry knowledge and experience, pushing him to continue thinking creatively and strategically about how to advance new technologies and businesses. He is passionate about introducing new companies to the Singapore and Southeast Asian markets and loves that his role involves both learning and teaching.

Munish Saini

India Advisor

Munish Saini is Alacrity Cleantech’s in-market advisor for India. Munish is formally educated in Electronics and Communications and has held manager and director roles at a variety of technology and electronics companies throughout his career.

Munish has played a crucial role in many technological advancements in the Indian cleantech industry, including designing and developing a variety of technologies or introducing innovations to the Indian market. His concept promotion and performance optimization skills have been key to streamlining businesses and elevating technologies of all sorts. Munish’s work on developing the world’s first Vehicle Black Box designed to safeguard vehicles from theft highlights his visionary and strategic skills.

Munish brings to Alacrity his rich history of results-driven, innovative, and strategic business development. He loves to work on improving products and services and enjoys diving into new partnerships with companies and clientele around the world. He highly values his work with Alacrity because it brings him closer to new technologies and companies as he finds ways to bring their products to new markets.

Federico Goroztieta

Mexico/Latin America Advisor

Federico Goroztieta is Alacrity Cleantech’s in-market advisor for Mexico. Federico is a Civil Engineer by trade and is interested in any industry that helps advance and improve human societies and lives. Federico has started and scaled a variety of companies over the course of his career, including a construction company, a furniture manufacturer, a data processing firm, a creative studio, and a golf academy. His guiding belief is that all failure teaches resilience and that resilience is the character trait that leads people to success.

Federico has enjoyed an influential career as a Business Advisor to institutions and corporations of all sorts, focusing on enabling them to optimize their performance as they grow and strengthen their competitive position in their market. He has honed his business diplomacy and high-level project management skills over many years of identifying emerging opportunities in diverse sectors and his intimate understanding of both Canadian and Mexican business culture and society makes him a perfect aid to any Canadian company looking to explore opportunities in Mexico or Latin America.

Federico served as Head of Economic Affairs at the Consulate General of Mexico in Vancouver, BC from 2001 to 2010 and served as CEO of TechBa Vancouver, an international business accelerator funded by the Mexican Federal Ministry of Economy, in 2010. Federico is the founder and acting president of Derivative Integrated Solutions Society and Malabar Studio. Over the course of his career, he has supported and advanced more than two hundred small to medium sized Mexican companies, more than thirty Central and South American companies, eighteen Canadian companies, five American companies, and two Spanish companies, altogether selling more than $750 million in USD.

Federico takes inspiration from the legacy of Sir Terry Matthews and appreciates Alacrity Cleantech’s focus on leveraging relationships, new and established, to connect Canadian clean technology companies with new opportunities and revenue streams.

Federico Goroztieta

Mexico/Latin America Advisor

Martijn Schouten

Northern Europe Advisor

Martijn Schouten is Alacrity Cleantech’s in-market advisor for Northern Europe. Martijn is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands and brings decades of valuable experience in business development in the marine industry.

Born on a boat and raised in a maritime family, it is perhaps unsurprising that Martijn has spent such a great deal of his career working in the marine sector. Through his work with one of the leading maritime equipment companies in the world (their work focus involves dredging, mining, offshore renewables, and oil and gas), he has gained experience organizing global shipbuilding activities and overseeing acquisitions and the launch of new offices on each continent as the company’s Director of Mergers and Acquisitions. Martijn has also served as global sales director, putting him in charge of managing half a billion dollars worth of revenue, and has served as CEO/CFO of a subsea contractor focused on renewable markets and technologies like autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and artificial intelligence (AI).

During his career, Martijn also established a dredging and offshore mining equipment company called IHC Mining. The company had offices in The Netherlands, South Africa, and Australia and brought in annual sales of 20 million euros. Through that experience, he was introduced to Canadian subsea technology companies and learned that many Canadian companies are ahead of what is available on the global market. Today, Martijn serves as CEO of a corporate start-up which he launched himself and which has developed some of the most sophisticated subsea equipment in the world.

Martijn chooses to work with Alacrity Cleantech as an advisor because he is obsessed with technology and Earth’s oceans and is convinced that technology holds the key to a better and cleaner world.

Martijn Schouten

Northern Europe Advisor

Devon Delarge

Cleantech Coordinator

Devon’s areas of expertise lie in entrepreneurship through team supervision and leadership, government relations, and incident command. With experience in logistics and project management, Devon handles our Cleantech Progam’s administration. This includes managing data collection and reporting, sourcing and consulting with potential Clean Tech program candidates, as well as established portfolio companies.

Devon has a Bachelor’s of Science degree from the University of Victoria with a Major in Psychology, Minor in Biology, and a Diploma of Art and Science in Psychology from Camosun College. At the beginning of his career, he applied his education to Emergency Medical Response, leading a ten person team in Mountain Rescue and First Aid. Further, Devon branched out as an entrepreneur, launching his own retail athletic company as well as a consulting and web development agency.

Devon moved into working in legislative governance where he was involved in the writing of legislation for the CleanBC program and Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day in British Columbia.

He was attracted to Alacrity because the foundation is consistently on the leading edge of environmental, social, and governance trends, enabling him to utilize his skills and drive forth more positive change.

Devon Delarge

Cleantech Coordinator

Altruistic by nature. Successful
through nurture.

Our Philosophy

We’re driving the Local Ecosystem

Meet Our Players

Richard Egli

Burak Evren

Golriz Fattahi

Sofia Rizzo

Simon Adnams

Peter Van der Gracht

Cec Primeau

Tuck Wai Lee

Munish Saini

Federico Goroztieta

Martijn Schouten

Devon Delarge

Altruistic by nature. Successful through nurture.

Our Philosophy

We’re driving the Local Ecosystem

Meet Our Players

Richard Egli

Burak-Evren

Golriz Fattahi

Sofia-Rizzo

Simon Adnams

Peter Van der Gracht

Cec Primeau

Tuck Wai Lee

Munish Saini

Federico Goroztieta

Martijn Schouten

Devon Delarge

Altruistic by nature. Successful
through nurture.