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Previously Joanne was Vice-President,
New Venture Development at Nortel Networks where she founded
its internal venturing program. Joanne joined Nortel Networks
in September 1996 to spearhead an innovative approach to new
business development resulting from discontinuous or radical
opportunities. She was instrumental in the creation of a corporate
venturing commercialization model. It was founded on venture
capital financing principles, including a venture selection
process, a governance framework and a business incubation environment
that have been acknowledged as best practice solutions by the
Corporate Strategy Board, Rensselaer, Fast Company magazine
and others. She also championed the need for a business creation
division to foster the discovery and seeding of new business
opportunities throughout the company. Joanne chaired or sat
on the Boards of each of the ventures to oversee the investments
on behalf of Nortel and to bring her business development acumen
and governance expertise. The Ventures Program spun-off three
ventures, placed five ventures into Lines of Business, completed
one technology licensing agreement and shut down two others.
Most notably, one of the graduates of this program, known
today as BillMe Later (aka GoPIN) achieved close to a billion
dollar exit in October 2008 when it was bought by EBay/PayPal.
Click here to read an article
from Fast Company magazine
about Joanne and Nortel
- March 2000 -
Joanne's career has been punctuated
by a series of innovative roles.
In the early years of her telecommunications
career that started with Bell Canada 28 years ago, she brought
market and technology innovations to the Calling Card product
and 800/900 services in the form of product redesigns and intelligent
features enabled through new database technologies. Joanne led
entrepreneurial teams, formulated product development plans,
and designed new competitive strategies for the company, including
the strategy for Canadian long-distance competition.
When Joanne moved to Stentor, the former
national alliance of Canadian telecommunications companies,
she led the strategic assessment and implementation of international
market development and new business opportunities that resulted
in the creation of a multi-lateral telecommunications alliance
(Financial Network Association or FNA) and the formation of
Canada's first ISP (Sympatico). She also served as the FNA Marketing
Chair - Elect for this Brussels-based organization.
During the time Joanne was working
with startups, she was on the Board of Advisors of Ideas.com, a
Silicon Valley start-up that created a global marketplace
for ideas through an Internet-enabled infrastructure. She also
developed a business expansion strategy for an Atlanta-based
technology incubator and advised the founders of an e-commerce
business on its business strategy.
Joanne lives in Maine, has spent most
of her career in Ottawa, Canada and is a native of Montreal.
She graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Commerce
degree and the Marketing Medal. She is a member of the Product
Development Management Association (PDMA) and a certified New
Product Development Professional (NPDP). She received the
Ottawa Business Journal Top 40 Under 40 Award in May 2000.
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he is known for her vision, integrity,
creativity, business acumen, team-building ability and communications
skills. Most importantly, she truly believes in the value of
people, out-of-the-box thinking, equitable solutions and an
entrepreneurial culture.