Appointee Biographies

KARIMA BAWA

Karima Bawa has been serving as a Chair since March 2022. Karima is Managing Partner at Karima Bawa Law Corporation, and Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer for 3D Bridge Solutions Inc. Karima’s community involvement includes serving as a Board Member for the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents as well as serving as a Technical Committee Expert for the IP Management Standard Committee (ISO 50505), Standards Council of Canada.

ELLIOT FUNG

Elliot has held various executive roles helping to advance the provincial innovation ecosystem. He was Vice President, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Ontario Health where he brokered relationships between health service providers and the robust tech and social innovation communities in Waterloo, evangelizing new health technologies, processes and social innovations and helping health service providers adopt and pilot new innovations. He spent seven years at BlackBerry where he held various strategic positions helping to adopt and commercialize enterprise-level technology to some of BlackBerry’s largest global partners. He has served two terms on municipal council in the Township of Wilmot and one term as the Vice Chairperson of the Waterloo Regional School Board. Currently, Elliot is the Executive Director at the Medical Innovation Xchange (MIX) where he supports domestic scaling health innovation companies. Elliot studied Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University.

MARK DALEY

Mark is the Chief AI Officer at Western University and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science with cross-appointments in five other departments, The Rotman Institute of Philosophy, and The Western Institute for Neuroscience. He is also a faculty affiliate of Toronto's Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Mark was named in the Maclean's magazine "Power List 2024" of the top 100 Canadians shaping the country and in Constellation Research's AI150, a list of top 150 top global executives leading AI transformation efforts. In October 2024, Mark was appointed the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Scholar in Residence in Artificial Intelligence. Mark has previously served as the Vice-President (Research) at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), and Chief Digital Information Officer, Special Advisor to the President, and Associate Vice-President (Research) at Western.

DAN WEBER

Dan Weber is a seasoned technology and innovation executive based in Waterloo Region. With a diverse career spanning the technology, insurance, post-secondary education, and nonprofit sectors, Dan has held leadership roles at ApplyBoard, Studentcare, Sun Life Financial, and BlackBerry. He holds a Bachelor of Mathematics in Business Information Systems from the University of Waterloo. Deeply committed to community engagement, Dan has served on the Board of Governors for the University of Waterloo, Board of Governor's for St. Jerome’s University and the Dean’s Advisory Board for the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen’s University. He has also contributed to a wide variety of local and national nonprofit organizations.

MAURA CAMPBELL

Maura Campbell, Ph.D. is the President and CEO, of the Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization (OBIO®), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing health technology innovation and commercialization. Dr. Campbell has over 30 years of commercialization experience in all key sectors of biotech, including private and public companies, universities and research institutes, and government-funded public sector research organizations. Dr. Campbell helped spin out Turnstone Biologics from Intellectual Property (IP) developed at three Ontario academic institutes and had a significant role in raising over $370 million (U.S.) through private financings and pharma-licenses. Previously, Dr. Campbell was the Director of IP at VBI Vaccines, the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), PainCeptor Pharma Corporation and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems. Dr. Campbell has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Ottawa, and an M.Sc. and B.Sc. from Queen’s University.

KAREN MCCLURE

Karen helps Canadian companies of all sizes develop and commercialize digital technology breakthroughs, by creating new intellectual property and catalyzing growth for Canadian companies. She aims to bring together businesses, academia, community, and government agencies to solve big challenges. Karen has led some of the most complex “firsts” and “never-done-before” initiatives in the information technology, healthcare, and financial services sectors. By applying her broad experience in leading complex programs at global, national, and regional scales, she brings a strategic, yet pragmatic perspective to world-class initiatives. Karen holds a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. She is a Member of the Board of Directors, Human Resources, Governance and Quality Committees of Halton Healthcare and also serves as a Canadian representative on the International Advisory Committee on TRIUMF - Canada's particle accelerator centre located in Vancouver.