🔊H2i Begins 2024 With Expanded Team to Support Growing Venture Community
H2i has seen incredible growth in the past 10 years of our operations, reflecting both the rising demand for health innovation support, and resonance with our collaborative, customizable venture-first approach to entrepreneurial education.
This growth and demand can be seen clearly by the numbers. In our second year of operations, H2i served a community of 44 ventures, and hosted 9 events for 175 attendees. Fast forward—this past year, the H2i community included 210 ventures, supported with 116 hosted events for more than 3500 participants.
As our community and programming continues to grow, H2i is thrilled to announce our team of senior industry lead mentors has expanded to keep pace. As we wind down 2023, we have welcomed three remarkable new additions to the H2i Executive Team: David Latner, Fraidianie Sévigné, and Kamran Khan.
All three, who have been involved with H2i for the past few years as mentors, have now taken on leading roles as Senior Coordinating Mentors/H2i Advisors. They join H2i’s decade-long Associate Director and Mentor Lead Andris Lauris, and recently added Senior Coordinating Mentor, Neil D’Cruz, to form a team dedicated to guiding ventures through their innovation journeys. The expansion of this team, under Andris’ strong leadership, will enable H2i to meet growing demand while preserving our personalized approach.
A big welcome to our new teammates…
David Latner is the Cofounder of Advocan Law LLP, a Toronto based law firm serving clients in Canada and the USA, in the IT and medical technology space. Through Advocan, he represents technology companies, family office investors, and donors. Prior to starting his own firm, David served as General Counsel for software company BlueCat Networks, and as a partner and general counsel for Toronto-based venture capital firm XDL Capital. He is a current Board Member of CAF Canada Inc., and an advisor to the Hyatt Family Foundation. He is a U of T alum, having graduated from the Faculty of Law.
David will be a Lead Mentor to Software companies at H2i, while continuing to support the broader H2i community as a mentor.
“I was always fascinated by those that create technology but wasn’t scientifically inclined (or adept). So, I play my little role, by allowing med-tech creators to realize their vision. I love to read fine print. And so, I help creators avoid trouble, by making sure they don’t sign agreements without knowing what’s in them, and ideally, by levelling the playing field.”
Fraidianie Sévigné is the Vice President of Operations at Ripple Therapeutics. She brings more than two decades of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry, where she has served in senior leadership roles encompassing operations, quality, compliance, and regulatory strategy. She has contributed to the commercial success of several products, within Canadian, U.S. and international markets. She has supported products at various stages of development, from clinical evaluations to management of manufacturing scale-up and validation through to commercial quality operations.
Fraidianie will be Lead Mentor for Level 3 H2i International companies, while continuing her work as a FemSTEM and general H2i Mentor.
“It is an honor to join H2i mentorship team effort to educate, enable and facilitate early-stage entrepreneurs in their ventures. I am particularly excited to mentor the international program to bridge between H2i and our partners in more than 6 African countries who share the vision of building a better future in Africa. With growing and under-served health market opportunities, the future is bright for innovators and entrepreneurs collectively leapfrogging ahead into the global health innovation community. Looking forward to helping the H2i team in its noble mission!”
Dr. Kamran Khan is a practicing infectious disease physician and Professor of Medicine and Public Health at U of T. Kamran has been studying outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging pathogens for nearly two decades to lay the scientific foundation for a global early warning system for infectious diseases. His research has been published in leading scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, Science, Nature, and Cell. Kamran’s work during global health emergencies such as the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the 2016 Zika epidemic in Latin America has led him into numerous advisory roles from the World Health Organization to the White House.
Kamran is the founder of BlueDot, a biothreat intelligence company that has seen immense growth in recent years. Most recently, BlueDot was recognized by Deloitte’s Fast50 program for fasted growing tech companies in Canada and made the top 100 in Deloitte’s list of fastest growing companies. (Read more here!)
Kamran will be a Lead Mentor to Software companies at H2i, while continuing to support the broader H2i community as a mentor. Kamran further assists H2i in his capacity as a Temerty Health Nexus Chair in Healthcare Innovation and Technology.
“I’m delighted to be supporting H2i’s mission to foster a deeper culture of healthcare entrepreneurship in Canada. As a physician, professor, and entrepreneur, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to treat patients, contribute to scientific discovery in academia, and drive technological innovations that have scalable, real-world impact. I’m excited to now draw from those experiences to help aspiring and early-stage health innovators and entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life.”