Alec Saunders

Summary

I am a seasoned Chair, Trustee, Board Director, Advisor, Founder, and CEO with over 20 years of board experience across the commercial, startup, and not-for-profit sectors. My expertise includes corporate ESG strategy, governance, leadership, and strategic partnerships, with a strong focus on delivering measurable impact. I have driven growth, transformation, and innovation in organizations by building ecosystems around shared technologies, leading strategy, and optimizing go-to-market approaches. At the board level, I ensure organizations achieve their goals while maintaining regulatory and ethical standards. I provide strategic guidance to help executive teams make critical decisions, while also overseeing management to protect stakeholder interests. My board contributions include launching new business entities, overseeing mergers, hiring CEOs, and sitting on audit committees. I have played a pivotal role in navigating organizational transformations, such as business downsizing and re-structuring. As Senior Director of Global Sustainability Partner Strategy at Microsoft, I developed a global partner strategy and led a global virtual team that identified and generated $400M in sustainability ecosystems revenue around Microsoft’s platforms in one year. Previously, as Vice President at BlackBerry, I led the launch of Project Ion, BlackBerry’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, attracting over 1,000 companies to its beta program, and led the launch of BlackBerry the BlackBerry 10 application ecosystem building a catalog of 265,000 applications. As Co-Founder and CEO of Iotum Inc., I led the company through multiple strategic pivots, growing revenues from zero to millions, securing $3.5M in funding, and facilitating successful roll-ups of several businesses. I hold a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and a Directorship Certification from the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). My career has spanned key technology waves, including the PC revolution, the rise of the Internet, mobile computing, the digitization of voice and media, the Internet of Things, cloud, and AI, where I consistently drove product and business growth, reshaping industry landscapes. Decarbonizing our global economy will make all these prior technology shifts seem insignificant. Dual Canadian / British Citizen and US Permanent Resident (Green Card holder).