Mr. Cohenour previously served as President, CEO, and Director at Sierra Wireless, Inc. (TSE: SW; NASDAQ: SWIR) from 2005 to 2018. While CEO, Mr. Cohenour led a successful business turn-around, resulting in revenue growth of nearly 800% to an annualized run rate of over CAD $1 Billion. He also led a multi-year business transformation, pivoting the company from a mobile computing pure play to the global leader in intelligent wireless solutions for the IoT. Prior to being appointed CEO, Mr. Cohenour held several executive positions at Sierra Wireless from 1996 to 2005, including Vice President of Sales, and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Cohenour also serves on the boards of CalAmp (NASDAQ: CAMP) and RF Industries (NASDAQ: RFIL).
Barbara Holzapfel is a passionate executive with 20 years’ experience driving growth through marketing and innovation in startups and large enterprise businesses, and across B2B and B2C. She is currently the Chief Marketing Officer of Genesys, responsible for accelerating the company’s market expansion in the Experience as a Service® category.
She previously served as Vice President, Education at Microsoft, responsible for the marketing and growth strategy for a multi-billion-dollar software, cloud and devices business. Prior to her work with Microsoft, Barbara was Chief Marketing Officer at fintech companies Taulia and Addepar, Inc.; and spent 12 years in a range of leadership roles at SAP, including as Senior Vice President, Portfolio Marketing, for a multi-billion-dollar business.
Prior to joining SAP, Barbara worked as a management consultant in London and Frankfurt, after spending several years working for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in Global Strategic Marketing. Barbara holds a master's degree in business administration from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and The University of Saarbruecken, Germany.
She serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at the Anita Borg Institute and is a past Board Director of the German-American Business Association, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), and SVForum for Technologists and Entrepreneurs. Barbara has been recognized by German Business Magazine Capital among the “Top 40 under 40”.
Brendon Cook holds the position of Chief Information Officer at Blackline Safety, where he oversees information, computing. and systems, with a focus on improving processes and efficiencies through technology. As Privacy Officer, Brendon works with compliance, security. and privacy teams, and supports the groups focused on intrinsic safety certifications and quality standards.
Brendon co-founded Blackline Safety in 2004 and has supported its early growth as a technology leader, and in recent years, oversaw its marketing communication programs. Prior to Blackline, Brendon worked for Calgary-based CSI Wireless (now Hemisphere GNSS). As its Product and Marketing Manager, he developed relationships with various international organizations and managed the company’s precision product portfolio. Brendon earned a B.Sc. in Geomatics Engineering from the University of Calgary in 1996.
Prior to joining Blackline Safety, Peter spent over 15 years in progressively senior roles at Husky Energy focused on safety, growth and operational management, and as a Safety and Operational Consultant for Dupont Sustainable Solutions.
Bringing his previous hands-on experience as a Blackline Safety customer to his role, Peter oversees the continued rapid growth and development in our Rest of World geography—all regions outside North American and Europe. His background in safety and operational management ensure that Blackline continues to drive operations excellence as we shape the future of industrial work around the world.
Monette Bautista holds the position of Director of Corporate Accounting at Blackline Safety, where she is responsible for the accounting strategies, procedures and analysis of the Company’s inventory and revenues. She also oversees day-to-day responsibility of the Accounts Receivable team for North America and Rest of World. Monette brings over 15 years of managerial experience in energy services, interactive digital experience design and medical equipment distribution. Prior to joining Blackline Safety, Monette was with Critical Control and Critical Mass in Calgary. Monette holds a BComm degree and is a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant.
Scott Boston is a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant, with over 10 years' experience as a finance leader in oil & gas, energy services and retail organizations. He leads the financial reporting team as we deliver our public company reporting requirements as well as our Environmental, Social and Governance program and reporting.
Prior to Blackline, Scott held senior finance roles at the Dilawri Group of Companies and Tesla Exploration Ltd.
Mike Brown is responsible for overseeing product management activities for several of Blackline Safety’s products. Mike has been building connected products for over 10 years. Prior to joining Blackline Safety he worked at BlackBerry in hardware development, before joining Swift Labs, an IoT Design and Consulting firm in a variety of roles including COO, Director of Sales, and Solution Architecture.
Rachel has been at the core of Blackline’s operations in Europe since joining the company in 2018. From the ground up, she has built and led a team to manage our day-to-day accounting activities, quotations, order entry and service renewal processing in the region. Based in Colchester, she oversees these functions for both the UK and France-based subsidiaries and ensures a smooth support service is provided to all our European functional teams. Amongst her special projects over the years, Rachel led the office move from the original Colchester office in Wakes Colne to DeGrey Square as well as the establishment of our new E.U. based subsidiary and facility in France post-Brexit.
Dr. Finbow has been involved in several start-up companies as an investor, director and consultant in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. He was a founding member of City Technology Ltd., the company that would come to be the predominant designer and manufacturer of the world’s leading range of electrochemical gas sensors. Dr. Finbow assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer in 1989 and oversaw the management buyout of the company in 1993 for $50 million. Following a successful IPO on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 with a valuation of approximately $170 million, he retired from City Technology Ltd. in 1999. Dr. Finbow served as the Chairman of BW Technologies Ltd., alongside Cody Slater, until the sale of the company to First Technology in 2004. He is a graduate from the University of London with a degree in Chemistry.
Elisa Khuong is a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant, with over 10 years' experience in accounting, finance and audit in diversified industries including manufacturing, real estate and financial services. She is responsible for the general corporate accounting functions across the globe, including the day-to-day management of the Accounting teams at Wearable Technologies and Blackline Safety Europe in the UK and France. Prior to joining Blackline, Elisa was with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a manager in their audit and assurance practice.
Colleen Monaghan provides leadership for Blackline's global Technical Support and Order Management teams for North America and International markets outside of Europe.
With over 20 years of experience in technical support, customer service, retention, and business performance development, Colleen has held leadership roles in diverse industries including print media, national travel and online procurement for the oil and gas industry, as well as large retail operations.
Andrew leads a team responsible for product test, assembly process design and automation, new product manufacturing, factory failure analysis, and factory design. He has more than 15 years experience in gas detection working in Manufacturing Engineering and Mechanical Design roles with BW Technologies, and joined Blackline Safety in 2017. Andrew is a University of Calgary graduate, with a B.Sc. in Manufacturing Engineering and minor in Mechatronics, and is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
Simon Rich oversees the sales function for all of Europe—from business development to customer support to channel management—responsible for driving the division’s overall revenue growth. He has over 25 years of industrial safety and gas detection sales experience in progressive roles with Honeywell, Drager and ICI Chemicals.
Francina Sharma (PhD MCSE), leads the Blackline Vision team at Blackline Safety, She has experience building and leading scientific and technical teams from the ground up, focusing on transforming business requirements to leveraging data-driven actionable insights that identify new targets and monitor safety & compliance in clinical trials, health and tech operations. Dr. Sharma has a particular interest in the role that data plays in shaping and forecasting patterns innate to the dataset employed that is very commonly missed when not viewed with the right perspective and selective application tools.
Donnovan Simon is Director, Client Success at Blackline Safety where his teams' focus is to be integrally engaged with customers in all post sales processes. Their goal is to deliver outstanding experiences that optimize and expand the use of Blackline products and services.
Donnovan brings to Blackline more than 20 years of leadership experience in technology companies working in customer experience, operations, sales, technical support and more.
Prior to Blackline, Donnovan held management roles at SMART Technologies, Nureva and Zephyr Sleep Technologies here in Calgary.
He holds degrees in Communications, Information Technology and Business Administration in addition to being certified in PROSCI change management methodology.
Blair Svoboda is Director of Quality Assurance. He and his team are responsible for design, customer and factory quality. Blair has over 20 years of experience in manufacturing, working with Sanmina, BW Technologies and Honeywell before joining Blackline Safety in 2019. He moved into Quality Management in 2009, focusing on new NPI process, product validation, engineering changes and RMA. Blair has his Six Sigma Black Belt and is committed to continually improving Blackline's product quality to provide world-class customer service.
Brian Wells is the Director of Research in Development at Blackline Safety and is responsible for leading the Waterloo engineering team. He brings over 12 years of hardware development experience from Blackberry and Apple. Most recently, he served as CTO of Swift Labs, a consulting firm that was acquired by Blackline in 2022.