Cody Slater founded BW Technologies in 1986, a global manufacturer of industrial and commercial gas detection devices with a product line of more than 30 unique instruments. From the Calgary head office, he grew the company’s operations to include offices throughout the world. His impact on one of the country’s fastest-growing technology companies was well recognized through achievements that have garnered numerous awards including Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, Alberta’s Most Influential Top 50 People, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Certificate of Merit for Business Excellence by Industry, Science, and Technology Canada.
Lead Independent Director; Governance, Compensations and Sustainability Committee Chair; Member, Audit Committee
Cheemin Bo-Linn
Lead Independent Director; Governance, Compensations and Sustainability Committee Chair; Member, Audit Committee
Cheemin Bo-Linn is the Chief Executive Officer of Peritus Partners, Inc., a valuation accelerator leading to next level growth or public markets with international consulting and operations expertise in software/SaaS, IoT, mobile, and digital (analytics, AI, marketing, e- commerce, and cybersecurity). Prior, she served as a Vice President at IBM and other senior leadership executive roles where she was responsible for fast growth multi-billion-dollar global businesses across consumer, M&D, and industrial sectors. She also served as Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Revenue Officer and President of mobile, software, and internet companies and as M&A partner. She was recently recognized as one of the “Top 50” directors in the United States by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). She holds a Doctorate degree specializing in “Computer-based Management Information Systems and Organizational Change” from the University of Houston.
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).
Independent Director; Member, Governance, Compensations and Sustainability Committee
Dr. John Finbow
Independent Director; Member, Governance, Compensations and Sustainability Committee
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.
Mr. Gilewich is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of experience in advising private companies. He was a Partner at PwC in Edmonton until 2011, when he joined the Katz Group. Mr. Gilewich is Managing Director and Chief Operations Officer, responsible for operational and corporate support across the Katz Group.
Mr. Hayduk has been a practicing lawyer since 1978. He has worked as an associate with Smith Mack Lamarsh since 2007 and as an associate and partner with Miller Thomson LLP from 1987 to 2006. From 1981 to 1987, Mr. Hayduk was legal counsel at the Alberta Securities Commission. He was also a director of Valentine Ventures Corp., a listed capital pool corporation, from 2006 to 2010 when the qualifying transaction was completed. Mr. Hayduk was secretary of Sawtooth International Resources, a listed oil and gas company, from 1997 to 2006.
Mr. Herdman is a Fellow Chartered Accountant and was formerly a Senior Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ('PwC') in Calgary. He worked with the firm's largest Calgary-based public clients with extensive experience in industries including manufacturing, utilities, transportation, mining, oil and gas and financial services. After a 34-year career with PwC, Mr. Herdman retired from practice in 2010. Having previously sat on a number of committees overseeing the practice of accounting in Alberta, and also as a director for a series of not for profit organizations, he currently serves on the board of directors of a number of companies. Mr. Herdman graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Calgary.
Independent Director; Member, Governance, Compensations and Sustainability Committee
Barbara Holzapfel
Independent Director; Member, Governance, Compensations and Sustainability Committee
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 VP of Microsoft Education, responsible for strategy, marketing and growth of the Microsoft portfolio of devices, education experiences and cloud services for the education segment. Prior to her work with Microsoft, Barbara was Chief Marketing Officer at fintech companies Taulia and Addepar.
Previously, she was the Senior Vice President and Managing Director of SAP Labs North America, where she drove innovation strategies in Mobile, Cloud and Big Data, and incubated various new businesses. Barbara held leadership positions at SAP since 2001, serving as Senior Vice President of Portfolio Marketing, driving growth through thought leadership and Solution Marketing for SAP’s solutions portfolio for large enterprises, SMB and across Analytics, Cloud and Mobile.
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”.
Cody Slater founded BW Technologies in 1986, a global manufacturer of industrial and commercial gas detection devices with a product line of more than 30 unique monitors. From the Calgary headquarters, he grew the company’s operations to include offices and distribution throughout the world. His impact on one of the country’s fastest growing technology companies was well recognized through numerous awards including Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, Alberta’s Most Influential Top 50 People, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year and the Certificate of Merit for Business Excellence by Industry, Science, and Technology Canada.
Brendon Cook holds the position of Chief Partnership Officer at Blackline Safety, where he is responsible for Blackline Catalyst, a global partner program that exists to accelerate growth and innovation as enterprises around the world transform digitally. He 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 was awarded a B.Sc. in Geomatics Engineering from the University of Calgary in 1996.
Christine Gillies holds the position of Chief Marketing Officer at Blackline Safety, where she manages the marketing and communications programs and strategy for Blackline. With over 20 years of marketing experience, Christine has held leadership roles with other rapidly growing global technology and SaaS companies. Prior to joining Blackline, Christine served as Director of Product and Client marketing for Calgary software company, Benevity. Christine was also instrumental in developing technology product strategy and roadmaps during her time at SMART technologies, where she held the role of Product Line Manager, Technology Product Management. Christine earned her MBA in International Business from the University of Calgary in 2003.
Shane Grennan is a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant and a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland. He has a broad range of accounting, finance and audit experience in diversified industries across North America and Ireland. Prior to joining Blackline, Mr. Grennan worked as the Controller of a natural gas subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation and with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a Senior Manager in their audit and assurance practice. He offers a broad range of experience that includes financial reporting, performance measurement and analysis, operational efficiency identification and establishing and maintaining an internal control framework.
Kevin Meyers currently holds the position of Chief Operating Officer with Blackline Safety, after joining the company from his position of VP of Operations at Imaging Dynamics Corporation (“IDC”), a publicly listed company on the Toronto Venture Exchange. Prior to IDC, Kevin worked as the VP of Operations for BW Technologies, Ltd for 8 years. BW Technologies was formerly listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange before its acquisition by First Technology (2004) and finally Honeywell (2006). Kevin was instrumental in bringing new technologies in-house to reduce costs and improve margins on several of their product lines.
Sean Stinson holds the position of Chief Growth Officer at Blackline Safety, where he is responsible for product sales and recurring service revenue. He oversees the teams contributing to revenue generation, including data science, user experience design, sales, client success and customer care. Prior to Blackline, Sean facilitated roles in product management, project management, engineering and engineering management at BW Technologies and Honeywell, as well as designing optics solutions for a life sciences start-up. Sean received a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary in 2002.
Brian Sweeney holds the position of Chief Technology Officer at Blackline Safety where he leads the development and delivery of Blackline’s portfolio of wearable technology, connectivity solutions, cloud software, services and data infrastructure. Brian has extensive experience within the software and technology industries and has held senior leadership positions at several technology start-ups prior to joining Blackline. Previously, Brian held technology and operations roles at Hulu, Amazon, Microsoft and General Electric. At Hulu, he was responsible for building the video and content technology that brought Live Streaming TV to the platform. While with Amazon, he orchestrated the growth of the Imaging & Creative Services Team to over 3,700 team members across 51 sites and 17 countries. During his tenure at Microsoft, Brian led online services teams as a Principal Engineering leader. Brian earned his BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester in 1988.
Julie Baron brings 20 years of technology marketing experience from Benevity, SMART Technologies, Zedi and Veer. In her role, she oversees development of corporate marketing, development of marketing collateral and management of internal creative services.
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.
Phil Benson is Blackline Safety’s Vice President of User Experience. He and his team are responsible for the design of product and service interfaces, customer support material, training and Blackline’s employee experience. Phil is an industrial designer who has designed industry-leading safety products for BW Technologies by Honeywell, plus interactive learning and collaborative products for SMART Technologies. His focus at Blackline is to lead unified user experiences that tell a story, build confidence through thoughtful designs and increase brand loyalty. His team continually pushes the envelope of what’s possible for connected safety user experiences in the industrial safety industry.
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.
Neil Campbell is Blackline’s Director of International Sales & Marketing, focusing on developing business and cultivating distribution throughout international markets, including Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia. He brings over 30 years of experience in international sales and gas detection, having worked with Envent Engineering, Boreal Laser, BW Technologies by Honeywell and BW Technologies. Neil was awarded a B.Comm degree in Marketing from the University of Alberta.
Ryan Fernandez leads Blackline Safety’s Enterprise IT to provide secure, cost effective, reliable and integrated technology solutions to expand business value within the organization and to its customers. Having worked in IT for over 20 years, he brings a broad array of experience from a diverse group of industries including airports, telecommunications, transportation, education and oil & gas. Having started two successful companies, Ryan has an entrepreneurial style that lends itself to quick agility and adaptation, while keeping perspective on budgets. He holds several accreditations in the field of technology including from the University of Calgary, University of Southern California, University of Phoenix and Calgary’s SAIT.
Vice President, Demand Generation and Marketing Operations
Kathy Glenn
Vice President, Demand Generation and Marketing Operations
Kathy Glenn leads campaigns, content and digital marketing, trade shows and marketing automation – all related to generating demand to build the sales pipeline. Previous roles include leadership of the global marketing team at SMART Technologies, and Manager, Marketing & Audience Development for Postmedia Network, where she played a leadership role in the rebranding of Postmedia’s daily newspapers and digital platforms across Canada. Kathy holds a B.Comm from the University of Calgary, and DAA Award of Achievement in Digital Analytics from the University of British Columbia.
Dennis Heckathorn is Director, Sales Development & Channel Management for North America, where is responsible for the Sales Development, Bid Development, Technical Sales and Channel Management teams. Prior to joining Blackline in 2018, Dennis spent 9+ hears with Honeywell Analytics selling gas detection in North America, and has over 25 years total in the safety arena.
Rob Herring serves as Vice President, Operations at Blackline Safety. Unlike many businesses in North America, Blackline has in-sourced its manufacturing operations, using a lean philosophy. With over 20 years of operational management and supply chain experience, Rob oversees the manufacturing, supply chain and logistics departments. Rob previously held positions with local tech companies Imaging Dynamics and SMART Technologies.
As Blackline Safety’s Director, Technology Operations, Jenna Janes is responsible for overseeing all aspects of project management for R&D. Collectively her team drives multiple concurrent projects that cross our hardware, firmware, and software teams – including updates, enhancements, and new features to our core existing products, as well as taking new product ideas from concept to launch. Prior to joining Blackline Safety, Jenna spent several years working in the media and technology sectors in California, including most recently as Head of Operations for TubeScience and Director of Operations (Business and Product) for Collide LLC.
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.
Andrea Lamond holds the position of Vice President, Sales Enablement at Blackline Safety, where she is responsible for the direction of the teams that provide information, content, tools, and processes that help salespeople sell more effectively. These teams include Sales Development, Channel Operations, Sales Engineering, Contracts Management, and Customer Care & Service. Prior to Blackline, Andrea held production and process engineering roles in oil and gas production and field operations at Encana Corporation. Andrea received a BSc in Chemical & Biological Engineering from the University of British Columbia.
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.
Glen Silver holds the position of VP Sales, North America at Blackline Safety, where he is responsible for the overall growth strategy of the North American sales organization and the execution of Blackline's go-to-market plan. Prior to joining Blackline in 2018, Glen held progressively senior leadership roles with United Safety, W.W. Grainger and Compass Group PLC where he led high performing sales teams to consistently deliver strong revenue growth. Glen holds a B.Comm degree in marketing from the University of Calgary.
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.
Lara Swift is a Senior Director in Product Development. Prior to starting at Blackline, Lara was the CEO of Swift Labs, a Hardware Engineering Consulting company that was acquired by Blackline in 2022. Lara brings 30 years of R&D experience from Canadian tech giants BlackBerry and Northern Telecom. She is a Graduate of the University of Waterloo, with an Honours BA in Literature, and an MEng in Management Science.
Steven Van Swol is Vice President, Software Development. Prior to joining Blackline, Steven spent over 20 years in Public Safety and telecom at Motorola Solutions on projects including embedded devices, telecom infrastructure and interoperability; and at HERE Technologies as Director of Software Engineering leading up to the Kubernetes Platform infrastructure. He holds 10 issued patents, a BSEE from the University of Illinois and an MSEE from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He resides in the Greater Chicago area.
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.
Meaghan Whitney holds the position of Vice President at Blackline Safety, where she provides leadership and guidance to Blackline's human resources, health & safety, and payroll & benefits functions with her unwavering focus on culture, communication and engagement in support of our Blackline Values. With more than 10 years of human resources experience, including health and safety, organizational development and instructional design, Meaghan has held a variety of roles in her career. Meaghan is a Chartered Professional in Human Resources and is a Certified Professional of the Society of Human Resource Management.
Bob Wicker holds the position of Director, Global Rentals. In this role, he is responsible for the overall growth and management of the Global Rentals Group. Bob has a proven track record of leading Sales & Operational teams driving results for North America. Prior to joining Blackline in 1010, Bob spent 21 years at United Safety including Director and General Manager roles in both Canada and the United States. He holds a Professional Manager designation from the University of Calgary and a Bachelor of Business Management from South University.
