Startup Weekend Toronto

Chris is a Partner at The Working Group in Toronto and has helped to bring Startup Weekend to Canada, running some of the biggest events amongst the global Startup Weekend community. He’s a product manager and tech entrepreneur. Chris has worked for 13 years in software, with startups and larger organizations focused on Business Intelligence and Performance Management technologies. His career has taken him all over the world and allowed him to live and work in San Francisco and London as well as Toronto which he currently calls home. Chris holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and sometimes gets teased about it by his techie friends and colleagues.

Sunil Sharma is a foreign service diplomat with Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade currently based in the MaRS Innovation Centre in Toronto's Discovery District.

Sunil is currently on a special assignment with Canada's Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA) where his mandate is to build strategic relationships with venture capital and private equity funds and institutional investors across the world.

In addition to this mandate representing both the CVCA and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Sunil serves on the Board of Directors or founding committees of many Canadian and international organizations which focus on the innovation ecosystem.  These organizations include the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), the Banff Venture Forum, Start-Up Weekend Toronto, the France-Canada Venture Forum, the MaRS Innovation Summit, Global CONNECT, the VerdeXchange, and the Milken Institute Global Conference.  Sunil is also a TiE Charter member and an organizer of the TiEQuest venture competition.

Sunil regularly serves as a speaker at many Canadian and international conferences on topics pertaining to early-stage venture capital attraction, private equity investment, innovation capacity-building and global trends in investment and innovation.

Since 2008 Sunil has been a Director of the Quebec City Conference - an invitation-only gathering of over 500 of the world's leading venture capital, private equity and institutional investors which takes place each year in Quebec City, Canada and which attracts the who's who of international private equity, institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds.

Sunil's last diplomatic assignment was as Consul and Trade Commissioner (Head of Consulate) in San Diego, California.

The Canadian Consulate in San Diego, which Sunil was responsible for establishing, is a diplomatic mission with a focus on pursuing trade, investment and technology partnerships, as well as general and political relations between Canada and Southern California. 

Previously, Sunil was on assignment with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) and served as Canada's representative to the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) General Assemblies in Geneva and was elected Vice-Chair of a key technical committee.

Prior to his work at CIPO, Sunil served as a Senior Investment Analyst for Technology Partnerships Canada where he completed several investment deals involving emerging Canadian high technology companies.

Sunil possesses a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Victoria and a Master's of Industrial Relations degree from the University of Toronto.