In response to the pandemic, Chris worked with the Canadian Urban Institute and the Economic Developers Council of Ontario to develop and launch My Main Street.
My Main Street is focused on helping revitalize main streets in Ontario through a focus on community economic development and placemaking investments.
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris worked with his teams at the City of Toronto and Digital Main Street to design and launch ShopHERE, a program focused on quickly building e-commerce stores at no cost for independently owned main street businesses.
The program quickly grew from just serving businesses in the City of Toronto to supporting small businesses and artists across Canada, helping to launch over 50,000 online stores in less than a year.
In order to help Toronto technology companies access global markets, Chris worked with a number of local incubators and post-secondary partners, including MaRS, DMZ at Ryerson, the University of Toronto and York University, to create the WeWork Toronto Startup Pass.
The program allowed Toronto technology companies to access a WeWork monthly pass at no-cost for one-year. The pass provided participating companies the ability to use WeWork’s global coworking network to access new markets.
Over 500 companies used the program in its first year of operation and the program is being expanded to support companies in Montreal, Ottawa and Waterloo.
Working partners at Code for Canada and the Centre for Social Innovation, Chris helped create Civic Hall Toronto, an organization dedicated to working with government innovators to solve community challenges.
Launched in May 2018, Civic Hall Toronto works with government teams on technology and policy related challenges, facilitating meaningful engagement with the broader community to collaboratively create solutions issues facing local, provincial and federal governments.
Chris was part of the founding team that launched Elevate Tech Festival, Canada’s leading tech and innovation festival.
Hosted annually in September, Elevate is founded on the belief that diversity is our strength, that we’re stronger when we disrupt together, and that it is Canada’s time.
Attracting a worldwide audience, Elevate invites a global audience to collaborate with Canada’s thriving innovation ecosystem.
Working with the Mayor’s Office and Bloomberg Philanthropies, Chris helped lead the creation of the City of Toronto’s Civic Innovation Office. Focused on disrupting City Hall from the inside out, the Civic Innovation Office is a bridge between outside innovators and the City. The goal of the office is creating a more responsive government, one that acts quickly and meaningfully on behalf of the people it serves.
Launched by the Province of Ontario in 2014 to support young people aged 18 to 29 to start their own businesses, the Starter Company Program provided training, mentorship and a grant of up to $5,000 to launch and run their business.
The development and delivery of the program in Toronto was led by Chris and his team at the City's Small Business Centres. Through Chris' leadership, the team at the City of Toronto exceeded its targets and assisted 275 young people to start businesses.
Chris' management of the program involved developing the programming, overseeing its delivery, administering a grant fund of over $1 million, and developing a back-end technology platform on Salesforce to manage the program.
Working with his team, Chris worked to develop the Digital Main Street Lab - an testing ground for new retail technologies in Toronto.
Leveraging Toronto's diverse and vibrant main streets, the Digital Main Street Lab connects retail technology companies with local business improvement areas allowing them to pilot new technologies.
The purpose of the Lab is to assist Toronto's main street businesses in adopting new technologies, while also encouraging the growth of Toronto's retail technology sector.
Looking to connect Toronto's entrepreneurs with networks of mentors and advisors, Chris led an initiative to develop a mentoring platform in partnership with other business support organizations in Toronto.
The StartUp HERE Toronto Cafe facilitates connections between entrepreneurs and mentors through online engagements, in-person coffee meetups and monthly group mentoring events.
The StartUp HERE Toronto Cafe has a membership of over 2,000 entrepreneurs and mentors - and grows every week - that results in over 500 coffee meetups between entrepreneurs and advisers each month.
Responding to the need to assist main street businesses adopt technology, Chris led the development of Digital Main Street Program.
Focused on helping main street businesses grow their businesses through technology, the program provides a number of supports, including:
A web platform that allows entrepreneurs to complete a digital assessment and get recommendations to improve their digital adoption.
A digital service squad that assists main street businesses in setting up basic technologies (i.e. Google My Business, etc.).
A range of training programs aimed at helping entrepreneurs build their digital literacy skills.
Digital Main Street was funded by a number of key partners, including Yellow Pages, Mastercard, Rogers, Google, Shopify, Microsoft and Canada Post.
