McGill University’s centre for entrepreneurship to host Techstars CEO, technology and media leaders

McGill University is set to host a series of technology leaders today at its centre for entrepreneurship. 

The workshop will take place on Thursday, September 26th starting at 11am EST. The goal is to help student and alumni entrepreneurs in areas such as leadership, growth, media and more. 

Speakers include David Cohen, CEO of Techstars; Deborah Leff, SVP at SQream, Mahesh Raja, Chief Growth Officer at Ness Digital Engineering; Mark Coatney, Editor at Inc. Magazine, and Sissa Cao, Editor at The Observer.

Following the presentations, students will be involved in a question and answer session.

Mentors at the event to include:

David Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder at Techstars

David Cohen is the Co-Founder of Techstars and returned in May as CEO of the organization. Techstars which was founded in 2006 helps entrepreneurs and those willing to learn to succeed by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to help build thriving startup communities. The company has made 2,000+ startup investments.

In 2023, 469 Techstars portfolio companies raised a total of over $2.4B, with 322 of them raising rounds of $1M or more. Applications to its programs doubled between 2022 and 2023.

Deborah Leff, SVP Data Science & Machine Learning at SQream

Deborah Leff is the Chief Revenue Officer of SQream, a company at the forefront of the data revolution that provides organizations with the most rapid, cost-effective, petabyte-scale big data analytics SQL database available on the market.

The company has raised over $100 million in funding. A leader in business development and an expert in data science, Deborah also serves as a board member for Recruiter.com and was earlier the Global Leader and Industry CTO for Data Science and AI at IBM.

Mahesh Raja, Chief Growth Officer at Ness Digital Engineering

Mahesh Raja is Chief Growth Officer at Ness Digital Engineering, a 4,000-person software engineering firm owned by KKR, one of the largest private equity firms globally. Manesh previously worked as the Senior Vice President and Sector Head of the Banking and Financial Services Business and has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the financial sector.

He also contributes to the Forbes Finance Council, an invitation-only organization for senior-level financial services executives and leaders.

Mark Coatney, Editor at Inc. Magazine

Mark Coatney is an Editor at Inc. Magazine, one of the world’s leading business news brands that collates one of the most important annual business rankings, the Inc. 500.

Mark has a long history in journalism and was previously the Vice President of Digital News at Forbes, an Editor at TIME Magazine and Newsweek, and a Senior Vice President of Digital at Al Jazeera. He also worked as a Media Evangelist at the social networking site Tumblr. Mark has started his communications consulting firm, where he helps established companies and startups create compelling content. He has worked with organizations such as UNICEF, PBS, and Open Society Foundations, among many others.

Sissi Cao, Editor at The Observer

Sissi Cao is the Business News Editor at The Observer, one of New York City’s most storied business news publications.

She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism program and has also worked for Voice of America, Trusted Insight, and other publications.