Our Mission
Helping you reach peak performance and greater wellbeing
Meet the team
Ginu Chacko
Founder & CEO
Ginu is Talentrade’s Founder and CEO. She has over 15 years of management consulting and international development experience working for organisations including Aon Hewitt, Positive PlaNet, Accenture, and Dalberg. She has advised corporate, non-profit and government clients across four continents in over a dozen countries in areas such as growth strategy, learning and development, impact evaluation, organisation design, and advocacy. Ginu believes that the most effective solutions to both business and social challenges are developed when people with diverse perspectives, skills and experience start collaborating. She has worked on a range of innovative cross-sector projects globally.
Ginu has a B.Comm from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and holds an MBA from the University of Oxford. She loves classical music and studied opera singing for over 12 years. She has also recently taken up hip hop dance.
Adonai Garcia
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer
Adonai is a transportation engineer with more than 8 years of international experience in micromobility and sustainable transportation. This commitment aligns with his ongoing master's studies in Transportation Engineering at York University, where he focuses on electric cargo bikes in urban settings, underscoring his expertise in smart mobility and drone applications in engineering—a foundation built upon his master's degrees from Spain.
As the transportation engineer at RydUp, a startup that promotes ridesharing for communities, Adonai's contributions extend beyond his professional duties. He actively participates in organizing hackathons, volunteers with Engineers of Tomorrow, and serves as a judge at various science fairs throughout Canada. These activities underscore his commitment to harnessing technology for societal benefit, reflecting the impactful and transformative approach he applies to both his professional endeavors and community involvement.
William Patterson
Training Coordinator
William is a third-year Knowledge Integration student at the University of Waterloo. He has a strong passion for facilitating growth and learning in others, which has drawn him to work with Talentrade. An interesting tidbit about him is that he's currently taking swimming lessons with the ambitious goal of completing a Half Ironman in just over a year, a challenge he finds both daunting and exciting.
Mark Greenberg
Advisory Board
Mark is the SVP and Global Head of Tech Transformation at Scotiabank, and previously was a Venture Architect Principal with BCG Digital Ventures, focused on digital business model innovation, especially within Financial Services. Prior to joining Digital Ventures, Mark was a Principal with the Boston Consulting Group, and brings a wealth of strategic and operational insight to the Talentrade team.
Mark received a Juris Doctorate (JD) and an MBA from the University of Toronto (Faculty of Law and Rotman School of Management), where he received the Gerald W. Schwartz Gold Medal and the Roger N. Wolff Prize. Previously, Mark received a BASc in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto. Mark is a ‘foodie’ and can always be found scoping out the newest/best food joints wherever his travels take him.
Olav Schewe
Advisory Board
Olav is a learning scientist and the author of two international bestselling books on learning: Learn Like a Pro and Super Student which have both been translated into over a dozen languages. He has advised a number of educational technology companies, including Kahoot and Hotmart. Currently, he is a PhD Candidate at the University of Oxford where he focuses on how digital platforms can help individuals learn more effectively. Olav has also developed a digital program used by a number of universities and schools to help students improve the way they learn. Olav supports Talentrade’s design of transformational learning experiences in hybrid learning environments.
Before devoting himself fully to education, Olav worked as a finance manager and was an Associate at EY. He holds a Bachelor of Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics, an MBA from the Said Business School, University of Oxford. In his free time, Olav enjoys running, hiking, winter sports, cooking, and traveling, and was previously a sailing coach.
Julia Vlad
Advisory Board
Julia is a Senior Partner, Lending and Investments at New Market Funds and has over 14 years of experience in banking, finance and the non-profit sector. She is deeply passionate about using finance to drive social innovation and change. Her experience spans investing in and managing a portfolio of financial institutions that provide credit to small businesses at the World Bank’s private sector arm, IFC, in both Latin America and Africa; to providing capital advisory to social entrepreneurs at Agora Partnerships accelerator in Nicaragua; to working at one of Canada’s top banks in financial analysis, forecasting and acquisitions. Julia is excited to bring her impact investment and finance experience to Talentrade as a board member and adviser.
She holds a B.Comm from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, an MBA from HEC Paris and is a CFA charterholder. She loves running, yoga and learning more about coffee and sustainable coffee growing across Latin America.
Yacoob Kurimbokus
Advisory Board
Yacoob is a tech entrepreneur with more than a decade and a half’s experience delivering enterprise data analytics applications for businesses small and large. He notably led the project that earned Aon a spot on the 2012 InformationWeek 500 list of top technology innovators. He was the Chief Technology Officer at Elliptic Enterprises, was a Senior Product Manager at Improbable, one of the UK’s most recognised and fastest growing tech start ups, and is currently Principle Product Manager at Sensat. He contributes his deep technical, operational, and strategic product insights to the Talentrade team.
Yacoob has an MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and holds an MBA from the University of Oxford. He enjoys traveling, motorsport, and loves racing go-karts. He will also dance to anything with a good beat.
Yacoob has an MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and holds an MBA from the University of Oxford. He enjoys traveling, motorsport, and loves racing go-karts. He will also dance to anything with a good beat.
Robyn Burton
Advisory Board
Robyn is VP of Insights and Strategy at one of Canada’s largest marketing agencies specialising in Shopper Marketing, Experiential and Digital Marketing. Robyn’s portfolio has included a diverse range of clients such as ABI InBev, Tim Horton’s, General Mills, Samsung, Metro, Johnson and Johnson and Hershey. Prior to joining the Strategy Team, Robyn honed her Training and Change Management skills working as a consultant for Accenture. There, she led both Training and Rollout & Implementation Teams for a number of large private and public sector clients including Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada Post and Metro Links.
Robyn won Gold in 2015 at the International Women in Business Awards in NYC and has been the recipient of a number of industry awards including a Gold Stevie Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year for her work with Labatt Breweries.
Jim van Spengen
Advisory Board
Jim is a Manager, Tender and Contracts at VolkerWessels, a leading Dutch infrastructure and construction services company. There, he has helped lead programmes in areas including mergers and acquisitions, internal organisational strategy, and operational improvements. Previously, Jim worked for McKinsey & Company in the Netherlands where he worked primarily on strategic and operational projects for a variety of companies. Jim brings his expertise in competitive analysis, organisational design, and growth strategy to the Talentrade team.
Jim completed his Bachelors and Masters in Engineering at Delft University, and holds an MBA degree from the University of Oxford. In his free time, Jim is an avid cyclist, plays the saxophone and spends time with his twin daughters and youngest
Jim completed his Bachelors and Masters in Engineering at Delft University, and holds an MBA degree from the University of Oxford. In his free time, Jim is an avid cyclist, plays the saxophone and spends time with his twin daughters and youngest
Dr. Valerie Noel
Advisory Board
Valerie is a Research Associate at the Douglas Research Centre at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She was a Policy Researcher at Westat, and prior to this she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellows and Project Manager with the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Her research focuses include supported employment and recovery in youth and adults with severe mental illness.
She completed her doctoral degree (PhD) at Memorial University of Newfoundland in experimental psychology. She has training in both quantitative research methods including structural modeling, and qualitative research methods including interviewing, observation, and ethnography. Valerie is excited to contribute her expertise in research and impact evaluation to Talentrade’s programmes. In her spare time, you might find Valerie practicing tennis, figure skating, or doing creative DIY projects around the house.
She completed her doctoral degree (PhD) at Memorial University of Newfoundland in experimental psychology. She has training in both quantitative research methods including structural modeling, and qualitative research methods including interviewing, observation, and ethnography. Valerie is excited to contribute her expertise in research and impact evaluation to Talentrade’s programmes. In her spare time, you might find Valerie practicing tennis, figure skating, or doing creative DIY projects around the house.
Chris Raine
Advisory Board
Chris is the Co-founder and Director of Clean Slate Clinic, and was previously the Founder and CEO of Hello Sunday Morning (HSM) – an organisation that helps people to change their relationship with alcohol. Hello Sunday Morning was started after one particularly bad hangover when Chris was 22 years-old when he decided to take a year off alcohol and share his journey online through a blog. Ten years later, thanks to the support of corporate foundations as well as governments, the HSM team has grown to support the largest online community of its kind in the world, now sitting at over 120,000 people. Chris was named a Skoll Scholar in 2013 and went on to complete his MBA at the University of Oxford.
Chris’s career mission is focused on building scalable technology that changes the way the world uses drugs. He sits on a number of boards and advisory boards to support this mission and speaks internationally on the subject.
Chris’s career mission is focused on building scalable technology that changes the way the world uses drugs. He sits on a number of boards and advisory boards to support this mission and speaks internationally on the subject.