Meet British Columbia's 9 Top Partners in the CleanTech Space

At Best Startup Canada we track over 100,000 Canadian startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.

This list showcases the top British Columbia based Partner operating in the CleanTech space. If you think a Partner is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.ca.

The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:

Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.

Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.

Omid Toub

Head of Corporate Development & Partnership of Creative Destruction Lab (CDL)

Omid Toub is the Head of Corporate Development and Partnership at the Creative Destruction Lab – Vancouver. He holds two degrees from the University of British Columbia; first an MSc in medical genetics and second an MBA from the Sauder School of Business.

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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL): Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a no-fee/no-equity mentoring program for the founders and executives of pre-seed stage ventures.

Mike Chapin

Partner & Managing Director, Development and Resource Planning of Twenty First Century Utilities

Mike Chapin is an accomplished energy executive with over 35 years of transactional experience in power markets, domestically and internationally. He was previously President of Capstone Power Development Corp. in Vancouver, B.C., and Founding Shareholder and Executive Vice President at GreenWing Energy Management Ltd. Over his career, Mike has led the development and acquisition of more than 6 gigawatts of clean energy (wind, solar, and thermal natural gas) projects in North America, including the 100MW St. Leon Wind Energy Project in Manitoba, the 99.5MW High Plains Wind Energy Project in Wyoming, and the sale of a 1,400MW portfolio of wind projects located in California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and North Dakota. He began his career with electric utilities TransAlta and ATCO Power, as an engineer in the power plants. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science Engineering Degree from the University of British Columbia.

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About Twenty First Century Utilities: Twenty First Century Utilities, LLC is working to transform regulated utilities with a twenty first century model.

Marty Reed

Partner & Co-Founder of Evok Innovations

A longtime Silicon Valley executive and investor, Marty Reed moved to Vancouver in 2015 to launch Evok Innovations, a cleantech fund that accelerates the development and commercialization of solutions to the most pressing environmental and economic challenges facing oil and gas sector. Some of the companies invested are Expeto, Harbo Technologies, Kelvin Inc., Opus 12, Mosiac Materials, Dark Vision Technologies, Institute for Breakthrough Technologies. Marty Reed spent the last 5 years as a Partner with The Roda Group, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on clean technology. Having served in operating roles at multiple Roda Group portfolio companies, he joined the firm in 2010. Over the last few years, Marty has served on the Boards on numerous cleantech ventures. Most recently Marty served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of mOasis, the creator of a soil amendment product that allows farmers to increase crop yields while reducing water and fertilizer applications. He also served on the Board of Directors of Inventys, the developer of a low-cost method for capturing carbon dioxide from industrial sources, Gridtential, the developer of high-performance, low-cost energy storage systems and Axine, the creator of a low-cost, chemical free solution for treating toxic wastewater. Prior to joining The Roda Group, Marty was the CEO of Cardstore.com, a Roda Group portfolio company. Under his leadership, Cardstore grew to become a leading online retailer of greeting cards. The company was acquired by American Greetings in December of 2010. Marty has held senior management positions at Roda Group companies, CoolSystems and Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com). At CoolSystems, he launched Game Ready, a top brand in orthopedic rehabilitation, growing the company from start-up to $20M in annual revenues. With Ask Jeeves, he helped the company navigate through an IPO and the dot-com bubble bust to emerge as a profitable enterprise, ultimately acquired by IAC (NASD: IACI) in 2005 for $1.85 billion. Marty is a Director with the Alliance of Chief Executives, the largest organization for CEOs in Northern California. In that capacity he mentors a group of CEOs in the Bay Area. He also serves on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee for Save Mount Diablo, an organization whose mission is to preserve, defend and restore the vast unprotected lands on Mount Diablo. As a Masters of Business Administration student at John F. Kennedy University’s School of Management, Marty received the Avice M. Saint Award for Leadership. Marty received his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2013, he was presented with the Entrepreneur of the Year award by the Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership. He began his career as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy, serving as the Supply Officer on the USS Elrod.

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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), Evok Innovations, InterGen Capital: Evok is a cleantech & energy transition fund leveraging with a world-class team of technologists, company builders and climate investors.