Sonya Shorey is the President and CEO of Invest Ottawa, Co-Founder of SheBoot, World Economic Forum Fellow, and Director of several Boards.

An executive and management consultant with 25+ years of leadership experience with private and public organizations, she has spearheaded over $300M in public-private funding. These initiatives have catalyzed new opportunities for visionary founders and companies in Ottawa, an inclusive global tech, innovation and business hub, across Ontario and throughout Canada.

As Invest Ottawa’s VP of Strategy, Marketing, and Communications from 2017 to 2023, Sonya helped lead, architect and implement:
• Women Founders and Owners Strategy, and associated initiatives including Int'l Women’s Month, to enable and accelerate the growth and success of women entrepreneurs from every walk of life; and
• The Pan-Ontario ScaleUp Platform which helps accelerate the growth of scaling firms on their path to $100M in annual revenue;
• Bayview Yards, Ottawa’s first innovation hub and one-stop business acceleration shop; and
• Area X.O, the $51M R&D complex for next-gen smart mobility, connectivity and autonomy.

Sonya is also honoured to be:
• A co-founder of SheBoot, a national non-profit that helps women founders secure capital to grow, scale and compete globally; it has helped to catalyze $17+M in follow-on investment for women entrepreneurs since 2021
• A World Economic Forum Fellow.

Prior to Invest Ottawa, she established a consulting firm that addressed the corporate strategy, operational, and investment needs of dozens of accelerators, innovation hubs, entrepreneurship and economic development organizations across Canada and their global partners.

A proud Carleton graduate, she held previous leadership roles in technology with Calian, Nortel Networks and CMC Microsystems.

Highly committed to fostering an inclusive culture of belonging, she also serves as a:
• Director of the Board for SheBoot, the Royal Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research, Women in Automotive Tech, Mindtrust, and Elevate International and volunteer with Technovation
• Mentor with organizations such as MindTrust, Women in Cloud and Women in AI

She holds a combined Honours in English and Political Science from Carleton University and has won 10 national and international awards for communications, three awards for entrepreneurial leadership, and three awards for women's economic empowerment, including the Women in Cloud Innovative Partnership of the Year, and Canada's Women of Inspiration Economic Empowerment award.

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  President and CEO in Invest Ottawa

  Invest Ottawa helps you accelerate your growth and success in one of the fastest-growing global tech hubs.