Krystle Chow’s Online Portfolio

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper and website.
Feb. 4, 2008 (Feb. 7 on OttawaBusinessJournal.com)

Click here to view this article on OttawaBusinessJournal.com.

BTI Photonics CEO Lance Laking and VP Franca Marinelli say the company’s own network of contacts played a key role in finding and hiring a new vice-president of global operations.
Photo by DARREN BROWN for the Ottawa Business Journal

Everyone’s been talking about the talent crunch in Ottawa and elsewhere, but fast-growing optical networking company BTI Systems had no problems finding a new executive to oversee its global operations.

BTI’s management team got a little help from its friends to identify former BreconRidge president John Haydon as the ideal candidate for its senior vice-president of global operations role, and he joined the company earlier this month.

Franca Marinelli, BTI’s vice-president of global organizational development, and CEO Lance Laking shared with the OBJ some of the elements to consider for an equally smooth ride in the executive recruitment process.

OBJ: Could you describe John Haydon’s role in the company?

LAKING: Global operations … includes our overall manufacturing strategy, it takes in our customer care, customer service organizations. It also includes our information management systems, our IT strategy as being a critical deliverable for the senior operations executive. In that, we have John Haydon working very closely with our sales organization to help drive the business scaling, and with that there’s an extension to his involvement both with our customers and supporting them from the operations side, and our channel partners. It’s a pretty multi-faceted and involved position that is certainly part of our senior executive team.

OBJ: And why did you decide to hire for this particular role at this particular time?

MARINELLI: The company, having sort of focused in the last couple of years on development, was at the juncture where (more…)

By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published in the Ottawa Business Journal newspaper.
Feb. 4, 2008

The value of venture capital investment in Ottawa fell by 31 per cent year-over-year in 2007, despite a pick-up in activity during the fourth quarter, according to a new report by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation.

Disclosed venture capital investments in Ottawa-based businesses totalled $184.5 million for all of last year, down from the $266.1 million seen in 2006. The number of deals also fell to 14 from 19.

However, the fourth quarter of 2007 saw somewhat of a revival of VC investment compared to more sluggish activity earlier in the year, with five local deals worth a total of $84.4 million. Although the dollar figure was 2.3 per cent lower than the same quarter a year earlier, the fourth quarter of 2007 was the largest of the year and more than triple the $23.2-million investment seen in the third quarter.

“There was nothing new in 2007; it’s been (more…)