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This article is featured in the recently released Techopia Insights magazine. Find the full issue here.
Rachel Kirkham would be the first to tell you that when she began her career in technology a decade ago, she never would have imagined herself working for an Ottawa tech company.
Rachel Kirkham would be the first to tell you that when she began her career in technology a decade ago, she never would have imagined herself working for a company based in Ottawa.That’s partly because Kirkham, the vice-president of AI and product at MindBridge Analytics, lives in the southeastern English county of Essex, an ocean away from MindBridge headquarters off Preston Street. But even if someone had asked the London native what came to mind when she thought of Canada’s capital, artificial-intelligence-powered technology like the kind MindBridge produces definitely would not have been at the top of the list — or anywhere on the list, for that matter. “Before I joined MindBridge, I wouldn’t have even been aware that Ottawa had a tech scene, to be honest with you,” Kirkham says with a chuckle. “I think (branding) is something they could definitely work on.”Now, more than four years after joining MindBridge to lead the development of its platform that helps auditors detect irregularities and errors in accounting documents, Kirkham’s mindset when it comes to Ottawa has changed dramatically. She visits the city at least a couple of times a year and has come to appreciate the depth and breadth of the region’s tech expertise.“One of the things I would say is it does seem to be pretty vibrant,” Kirkham remarks of the city’s tech scene. “There’s a good pool of talent in Ottawa. I’m always impressed with the quality of candidates that we get.”Kirkham, an auditor by trade who spent two years as head of data analytics research at the United Kingdom’s National Audit Office in London before joining MindBridge, is among a growing number of foreign-based executives who work for tech enterprises headquartered in Ottawa.Perhaps not surprisingly, the trend seems to have really taken hold since the pandemic transformed remote work from a novelty into an everyday occurrence. The idea of someone managing a team of data scientists in Canada from an office thousands of kilometres away in Europe is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but a reality that is becoming more and more common.When Claire Rychlewski, who grew up in northern England and now makes her home in the Paris region, joined Kanata-based software firm Kinaxis in 2018 to help expand the firm’s European sales team, Kinaxis had only about 10 employees on the other side of the Atlantic.Claire Rychlewski is Kinaxis’s global executive vice-president.Today, the company’s headcount in Europe tops 400. Rychlewski, now Kinaxis’s global executive vice-president, is in charge of about 150 employees around the world and travels to Ottawa regularly to meet with the supply chain management software maker’s executive team.Like Kirkham, Rychlewski says she was initially surprised to find out a city she thought of strictly as a “government town” had such an “active and dynamic” technology industry. After dozens of trips to the National Capital Region, she’s come to believe that Ottawa doesn’t get the respect it deserves as a global tech hub.“The amount of talent in Ottawa for tech is much more than maybe you expect looking from the outside in,” says Rychlewski, whose resume includes a decade-long stint as a sales executive at software giant Oracle.Both Kirkham and Rychlewski praise the city’s post-secondary institutions as well as organizations such as Invest Ottawa for educating and nurturing a local sector that now employs more than 60,000 people.Surveying the Ottawa landscape from across the Atlantic, Rychlewski says it has “some amazingly smart people who are actually industry leaders in their knowledge and understanding of AI and technology development.”“It takes a long time to get that level of talent in the marketplace,” she adds. “It’s something that needs ongoing support and development.”John Cullen, who leads Calian Group’s European operations, brings a unique perspective to the capital’s tech industry.A former engineer in the Canadian Army, Cullen retired in 2011 after a 26-year career as a soldier that ultimately stationed him in Norway.John Cullen is the managing director of Calian's Europe operations.He and his family decided to stay in the Scandinavian country, where his wife had a job. Cullen soon became part-owner of Comprehensive Training Solutions International, a small firm that provides crisis management and emergency response training to customers such as NATO’s Joint Warfare Centre.When Calian acquired the company in 2020, Cullen joined the Kanata firm’s executive team. He became managing director of Calian Europe two years later and leads the company’s growing operations on the continent, which now include offices in the U.K. and Belgium.Cullen, who spends half the year in Norway and the other half just a couple of hours’ drive from Ottawa in Kingston, says Calian is gaining a growing reputation in Europe as a leader in defence training technology. And as more customers on the continent discover Calian, their eyes are opening to what the firm’s other Ottawa-based partners can offer as well.“I think that’s caused people to look at not just Calian, but where Calian is coming from and Ottawa in general,” he says. “It’s causing people to stand up and take notice.“In 2020, if somebody mentioned Calian in Europe, there would be a blank stare. I don’t think anybody is not going to know who Calian is in two or three years in NATO and the NATO nations space. We have three entities in Europe, all gaining in momentum and market share.”Cullen believes Canadian tech enterprises in general are often modest to a fault, and those in Ottawa are no exception.“I think we’re all starting to realize now that we need to be more vocal about what we can offer,” he says. “The market right now is starting to recognize what we can offer, and I think it’s shaking it up a bit in some of the NATO nations right now.”Kirkham agrees. Asked to offer her assessment of Ottawa, she says the region and its tech community have much to be proud of.“There’s a lot of attractive qualities about Ottawa,” Kirkham says. “I wish I could come to Canada a bit more.”
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