Brian heads up a team of data scientists at Thomson Reuters Labs – Waterloo Region, located in Communitech, a startup accelerator that supports over 1100 startups annually. The lab shares a common workspace with the innovation labs of many other major brands including Canon, TD, Deloitte, Microsoft, and General Motors. The primary objectives are to develop customer-driven innovation projects exploring big data sets for new product offerings, services, and insights ; and work with both startups and academia to foster innovation through partnership. Brian has a long history of ecosystem building. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Brian worked as an Executive in Residence at Communitech, where he worked with over 100 startups helping them scale all aspects of their business: investment, tech, product, sales, marketing, and most importantly, staff. In his previous role as Director of Developer Relations at BlackBerry, Brian led a global team of 30+ developers through rapid expansion and managed direct technical relationships with over 600 major brands. This unique position gave Brian insights into dozens of different industries, both with major brands as well as with thousands of independent developers and small businesses with whom he’s engaged over the years.