The Hon. Brian V. Tobin, P.C., ICD.D, served as the Federal Minister of Industry from October 2000 to January 2002.
Previously he served as the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from 1996 to 2000 and won two consecutive majority governments in provincial elections held in February 1996 and February 1999.
Mr. Tobin served as a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1996 and served as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in the federal cabinet from 1993 to 1996.
Mr. Tobin is currently Senior Business Advisor with Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP in Toronto. Mr. Tobin serves on a number of public company boards including Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Aecon Group Inc. and Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines Limited and he is Chairman of the board for New Flyer Industries Inc.
Mr. Tobin is also a director Marport Deep Sea Technologies Inc., Kruger Inc. and Canpages Inc.
In addition, Mr. Tobin is a strategic advisor to a number of Canadian corporations. He is also Special Advisor for the Canadian Youth Business Foundation and Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship Inc.
Mr. Tobin has completed his memoirs entitled, ‘All in Good Time’ published by Penguin Books.
Mr. MacDonald is the CEO and Managing Partner of Tuckamore Capital, a small private investment firm he founded in the Fall of 2007 after the successful sale of Persona Communications. Persona was a publicly traded company listed on the TSX which Mr. MacDonald and HM Capital of Dallas took private in 2004. Currently Mr. MacDonald is the sole principle of Deacon Investments, a commercial real estate company with extensive holdings in Newfoundland. He is a partner in FYP Management Services; a company active in fibre optic and communication construction and design. Additionally, he is an investor in and a director of CommerceTel of San Diego, Unitek of Philadelphia, Canpages of Vancouver and Airborne Mobile of Montreal. He is also a partner and director of TXT-TV a company he co-founded in 2007, and The Gluten Solution founded in 2008. Mr. MacDonald is also a member of the board of directors to Choice Cable of Puerto Rico and The Canadian Television Fund.
Mr. MacDonald was the President and Chief Executive Officer of Persona Communications Inc., a privately held company with national outlets in Cablevision and Internet services serving over 275,000 households across Canada. In the past, Mr. MacDonald has served in the capacity of Chief Operating Officer of Rogers Cable Inc. and President of Cable Atlantic Inc., where he was a director and minority shareholder for 18 years. He is the past Chairman of the Board of the Canadian Cable Television Association (CCTA) and also currently sits on the Board of the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) and Canadian Women in Communications. Mr. MacDonald is past Chair of Canadian Cable in the Classroom, past Chair of the Canadian Cable Standards Foundation and past President of CTAM of Canada.
In addition to his communications endeavors, Mr. MacDonald was the Chair of the Newfoundland and Labrador Energy Corporation, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Corporation, Churchill Falls Labrador Corporation. He was a Director of Operation ONLINE, Ireland Business Partnerships, Oceanex Income Fund and Memorial University's Faculty of Business. Mr. MacDonald chaired SoftWorld ‘98, an International IT Deal Making event held in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Recently, Mr. MacDonald was appointed to the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Business Advisory Board.
Through his work with the cable industry, Mr. MacDonald has received the Frederick T. Metcalf award for Innovation in Marketing, the cable industry’s highest award for marketing excellence. In 1996, he was recognized as Gonzagas’ Alumnus of the Year and selected in 1997 by the Financial Post as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40. More recently Mr. MacDonald was awarded the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technology Industries 1998 Leadership Award. In the same year he was awarded Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Faculty of Business 1998 Alumnus of the Year. In 2007, Mr. MacDonald was selected as CEO of the Year by Birch Hill Capital Partners.
Dennis Becker is the President & Chief Executive Officer for CommerceTel, technology entrepreneur with extensive experience in telecommunications and Internet software development and has architected the platforms that have enabled CommerceTel to become the first commercially available, IP and software-centric "telecommerce" service provider moving rapidly into the mobile commerce space.
CommerceTel's flagship product, C4C, is based on Becker's vision of a web-deployable application platform optimized to operate with both the Internet and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), allowing the creation of applications natively accessible by any user from any location, across all networks.
Prior to co-founding CommerceTel, Becker held key management and consulting positions for a variety of manufacturing and industrial companies in the Pacific Northwest. During this time, he designed, developed, and installed a number of innovative solutions, ranging from real-time sales order processing and project control systems to a subjective experience analysis engine for various fields of academic research.
Earlier in his career, Becker founded Frontieric Corporation, a pioneer in providing complex call routing and merchant processing applications. Frontieric became an award-winning technology company and was twice awarded recognition by The San Diego Software Industry Council's annual business plan competition.