| Website | fastcompany.com/u... |
| Blog | fastcompany.com/u... |
| @jeffkto | |
| Birthplace | Toronto |
| Birthdate | 1975 |
| University of Pennsylvania, MS in Engineering | 2004 |
| Management of Technology (MoT) | |
| University of Toronto, BA Honours with Distinction | 1998 |
| Commerce |
Jeff is CEO and Founder of GrowYa, a B2B product/service marketplace for customers, vendors, and partners. GrowYa won 2nd place at NYC Lean Startup Machine hosted by Eric Ries and Brant Cooper, and was 1 of 6 startups selected by the Insight accelerator program.
He is also a blogger for FastCompany who focuses on the NYC startup scene.
Prior to founding GrowYa, Jeff was a Business Development Executive at IBM’s Retail Emerging Business Opportunity Group, a corporate “startup.” Jeff launched an SMB-focused business which later grew to account for 20% of EBO revenues worldwide. He was awarded IBM’s Innovator Award.
At IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, Jeff was a Managing Consultant, Certified PMP and Certified Trained Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with a focus on finding new ways to apply technologies related to operations improvement and customer acquisition/retention. Jeff was selected to join IBM’s Business & Technical Leadership Resources (BTLR), a program which identifies IBM’s future leaders with the “best potential.â€
When he’s not chugging coffee in tech startup competitions during nights and weekends, Jeff is an Account Director at Taproot Foundation where he has advised the boards of non-profit organizations in education and economic development.
Jeff holds a Masters of Science in Engineering, co-sponsored by Penn Engineering and Wharton, and a BA with Distinction in Business from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
