Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Ottawa WISE Annual General Meeting 2010

Fighting Market Hurricanes in High Tech
Dr. Sue Abu-Hakima, M.Eng., Ph.D.

Download the event poster.

Date and Time: Monday, April 26 at 5:30 PM
Location: Carleton University Campus, 2014 Minto Centre (MC). (Parking is available in lot P2-Pay & Display).
Price: $10 for WISE members, $5 for students. Light dinner will be provided.
RSVP: Seating is limited. RSVP banu_ormeci@carleton.ca by Thursday, April 22.

Abstract:

This speech will focus on my experiences as a young Engineer, a Senior Researcher, a Lab-head at NRC and finally a 2-time entrepreneur. It will describe some of the myths I have encountered on this amazing journey as well as the encouragement that I received. It will also focus on the ecosystem needed to nurture more scientists and engineers in High Tech. It will also focus on what we are doing right driving innovation as well as what we need to do to improve the journey for a new generation of entrepreneurs that will be needed to drive Canada into the future.


Speaker Profile:

Dr. Sue Abu-Hakima is co-Founder, President/CEO of her second start-up Amika Mobile launched in 2007 focusing on emergency mass notification broadcasts to any network and on any device – wired or wireless. Over her 28-year career, Sue has been widely recognized as one of a handful of women technology CEOs, and has built businesses for 12 of those 28 years, based on a reputation of excellence and innovation. Sue is the driving force behind Amika Mobile. As a two-time founder/CEO, she has formed boards of directors and directs business strategy, ensuring that product development matches customer pain points. Her leadership is pivotal in securing private financing and forming strong business and technical teams. She sold the compliance business unit from her first company to Entrust (Entu on NASDAQ) in 2004. Sue transitioned the products and team as VP Content Technology at Entrust until Dec 2006. She has 20 patents and 4 more pending. Sue serves on a number of boards including OCE as well as the Private Sector Advisory Board of the NCEs at NSERC. She has created over 150 high tech jobs which OCRI multiplies by a factor of 4 for 600 service spinoff jobs. She has a B.Eng. from McGill, M.Eng. and Ph.D. from Carleton. She is an adjunct Prof at University of Ottawa. Her companies have won 19 awards and she was named CATA’s National Advanced Technology Woman Entrepreneur of 2007. In November 2008, the National Angel Capital Organization recognized Amika Mobile as a Top 5 in Ontario and a Top 10 company nationally that is angel backed for its management and results. IDC picked Amika Mobile in its Top 10 to watch in 2009, Branham in its Emerging 25 on the Branham 3000 and most recently the Security Summit in the US judged by top agency officials from NATO, US Navy, DRDC, etc. picked Amika Mobile as the Most Innovative Company of 2010 for Emergency Communication Interoperability over competition from US, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia.