Team HomeStars
Nancy Peterson
Co-founder and CEONancy launched HomeStars into the Toronto market in early 2006. Prior to HomeStars, she held senior management positions over the past twelve years primarily at Kraft Foods as well as Procter & Gamble, marketing world class brands. She has lived and worked in Canada and Europe.
Nancy holds a BA from the University of Western Ontario and a MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University.
Brian Sharwood
PresidentBrian Sharwood was a management consultant and industry analyst covering the telecommunications and technology industry as Principal of SeaBoard Group and founded his own strategy consulting company, Think-Forward, in 2007. He has done consulting work for merchant banks, venture capital companies and start-ups.
He holds a BA in Philosophy from University of British Columbia and a MBA in Entrepreneurship from Babson College in Boston.
Jodi Showers
CTO and VP Product DevelopmentJodi has led software development in high tech companies over the past two decades. As CEO of RightContent, Jodi lead the executive team through startup, to buyout in 2005. Prior As CTO of BigEquip.com, Jodi represented the technical face of BigEquip.com with the software and construction industries. BigEquip.com successfully raised three rounds of capital and was featured in Business 2.0 and was awarded "B2B Best Of The Web" by Forbes magazine in 2000.
Jodi has a Computer Engineering degree from Humber College and is a contributing author of The Rails Way published by Addison-Wesley.
Ryan D’Souza
Vice President – SalesBefore joining the HomeStars team in January 2012, Ryan was leading a new mobile technology start-up in addition to a number of unique entrepreneurial endeavours. Previous to his entrepreneurial leadership, Ryan held progressively senior roles in the local search industry, most recently as Vice President – Sales & Marketing at Canpages. Ryan started his career with Yellow Media (Yellow Pages Group) and held senior management positions in both Marketing & Sales over a 10 year period.
Ryan holds a BA from the University of Toronto, a MBA from Revans University and is certified by SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization of Canada).
Board of Directors
Nancy Peterson
Chairman
Andrew E. Goodman
Director
Andrew Goodman, Co-Founder, Director. Andrew joined the HomeStars effort in 2007, lending marketing and strategy expertise in the early stages of the company's product development, fundraising, and strategic mission building.
As a Director of the company, he remains active in an advisory role. Andrew is Founder and President of Toronto-based Page Zero Media, a full service digital marketing agency, author of Winning Results with Google AdWords (2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 2008), and a regular columnist for ClickZ. Andrew also helps shape content for the global SES Conference series as a member of its Advisory board, and has spoken at some 50 SES stops globally since 2002.
He has used HomeStars for emergency drain repair, gentle pest removal, and more. Along with Greater Toronto Area and entire world domination, Andrew's quiet but achievable dream for HomeStars is putting more homeowners and contractors together in markets of 50,000-200,000 people -- places like Belleville, ON, St. Catharines, ON, Kelowna, BC, and Fredericton, NB. ("Pay it forward... write a review, then tell your neighbors about HomeStars!")
Follow him on twitter: @andrew_goodman
Wendy Thompson
Director
Wendy Thompson is a lawyer with 30 years of business law practice experience, including many years as a senior partner of the law firm Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP.
In 2011, Wendy established MaestroLaw, a solo business law practice. She advises entrepreneurs and mid-market companies in M&A and financing transactions, contractual negotiations, shareholder relationships and governance issues.
Ms. Thompson is a director of several corporations and is a past Chair of the Board of Governors of Havergal College and past member of Corporation of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. She joined the Board of the Homestars in 2010.
Ms. Thompson holds an LL.B from Osgoode Hall Law School and a B.A. and M.L.S. from the University of Toronto. She is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and holds the ICD.D certified director designation.
Strategic Advisors
Darrell Cox, CA
VP Finance, FreshBooks. Has been part of several high-growth start-up leadership teams including Virgin Mobile Canada and Wind Mobile Canada, Led Rogers new Ventures and was General Manager of two Rogers-incubated venture companies.
Chandran Ratnaswami
Chandran has been with Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd since 1994, providing investment management to the insurance, reinsurance subsidiaries of the company as well as managing investments in Asia. Chandran holds several board directorships within the insurance industry as well as ZoomerMedia Limited on the TSX Venture Exchange. Chandran holds a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras India, and an MBA from University of Toronto.
David Woolford
Partner, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, a Toronto-based law firm focused on technology and manufacturing. Manages legal affairs for hundreds of successful small and medium sized companies. Serves on various public and private company boards and advisory boards.