OUR STORY
Who I Am
I’ve spent fifteen years in sustainability, the last decade building Slate Strategies into a commercialization consultancy for climate-tech companies navigating buyer environments where no single person can say yes. My work sits at the intersection of climate innovation, industrial systems, and the built environment. I help founders turn pilots into revenue by mapping the full stakeholder system and building the coordination that makes adoption possible.
How I Got Here
I was born and raised in Toronto to parents who emigrated from Sri Lanka in the mid-70s. My mom worked for the airlines my whole life, which meant I grew up traveling: Germany, the UK, Australia, across the US, and beyond. I had family in a lot of these places, which meant I wasn’t passing through. As a kid, I was getting corrected on recycling by my aunt in Germany and meeting the wealthy professor who rented my aunt’s attic instead of buying. Things I’d never thought to question stopped being universal pretty quickly and being exposed to different systems became normal early.
Eventually, I ended up in Costa Rica where I fell in love with the rugged natural beauty, and ended up staying six years. It’s where I came across CRDC Global, a company turning waste plastics into a mineral/polymer hybrid building material. That relationship led to a series of decisions (including one regarding my old dog not doing so well in the heat) that brought me back to Canada to help CRDC grow its presence across North America. That work led to a seat on CRDC’s North American Board of Directors.
The relationships from that period are ones I still operate in today: across government, waste management, the built environment, NRC, architects, engineers, and concrete companies. It solidified something I’d already started to see: commercializing a new material isn’t a sales problem. It’s a coordination problem.
Where I Sit Now
- Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Foresight Canada: Commercialization strategy and market entry for cleantech founders.
- Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Spring Activator: Business model development and growth planning for impact ventures.
- Board of Directors, CRDC Global (North America): Circular construction materials. Waste-to-value commercialization.
- Founder, BC Innovation Coalition: Cross-sector collaboration on housing affordability and built-environment innovation. Early days.
Where It Started
I grew up fishing, hunting, and camping with my Dad, which gave me an early appreciation for the outdoors and a simple rule that stuck: leave things a little better than you found them. This really got brought home by a river we used to play in as kids. Over the years the water got dirtier and dirtier as development moved in around it. It happened gradually, a little worse each year, until one year it had gone too far and we lost it.
That ethos, leaving things a little better than I found them, is a lot of the reason I do the work I do now, helping companies that are building something genuinely worth adopting find the path to make it happen.
Personal
Based in Victoria, BC with Rusty, my 16-year-old pound mutt who I’m pretty sure is the real reason I moved back from Costa Rica. When I’m not working, I’m usually sailing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hosting too many people for dinner, or making a trek to one of the provinces many natural hotsprings. I’m a big believer that the best business relationships start the same way the best friendships do: good food, honest conversation, and nobody looking at the clock.