Corso Italia Market Research Initaitive

To support the Corso Italia BIA on St. Clair Avenue, Chris led a comprehensive trade area analysis to help small businesses better understand local market dynamics. The project included a detailed inventory of existing businesses, an expenditure-based opportunity analysis, and demographic profiling of the trade area.

The research identified key gaps in services—including demand for a dry cleaner and hardware store—and offered data-driven insights into consumer behavior and media preferences to inform future marketing and business attraction efforts.

Markham Economic Development Website

Chris led the design and launch of a new economic development and culture website for the City of Markham, aimed at showcasing local business success stories and attracting new investment. The site provides a centralized hub for economic resources, municipal services, and talent attraction, while also telling the story of Markham’s transformation into one of North America’s top tech and innovation hubs.

Explore the new website at MarkhamBusiness.ca

Markham Economic Development and Culture CRM

Chris modernized the City of Markham’s Economic Development and Culture Department by designing and implementing a new CRM system using the Zoho platform. The project consolidated data across teams, streamlined workflows, and improved reporting, enabling more responsive service to businesses and better tracking of economic development outcomes.

Municipal Connect Redevelopment

Chris led the redevelopment of MPAC’s Municipal Connect platform—a daily-use digital tool that provides Ontario’s 444 municipalities with vital property assessment data. After reviewing stakeholder feedback, he identified the need for a complete overhaul of the platform’s interface, functionality, and data security posture.

Working with internal teams and municipal partners, Chris spearheaded a fast-tracked redesign process rooted in extensive consultation, strong technical collaboration, and a clear focus on user needs. The new platform launched within six months—delivering improved performance, enhanced data capabilities, and meaningful annual operating savings.

Collision Technology Conference

The Toronto innovation community is one of the fastest globally - having added more jobs than Silicon Valley, New York City and Washington D.C. combined in 2017. However, helping the world understand the size, scale and diversity of Toronto’s innovation community has always been a challenge.

To help raise the global profile of Toronto’s innovation community, Chris and his team worked with Tourism Toronto, the Toronto Region Board of Trade, MaRS and Techstars Toronto, to attract North America’s fastest growing technology festival, Collision, to Toronto in late 2017 and early 2018.

At the time, Collision was hosted in New Orleans and attracted 25,000+ international attendees, 700+ speakers, 500+ investors and 500+ international media. The Toronto bid team was interested in moving Collision to Toronto not only to bring international tech leaders to Canada, but also to attract global tech media to the city in order to help tell Toronto’s story.

Ultimately, the Toronto bid was successful and in May 2018 Collision announced its move to Toronto for May 2019.