Anna Foat

Instructor, University of Western Ontario

Anna inspires and challenges status quo thinking inside large organizations, directly engaging employees looking to have an impact. The best ideas come from the grassroots, and the right internal supports and process will allow them to flourish.

Media

Western Design Thinking

Brief video explaining how useful Design Thinking as a methodology can be to solve complex problems.

Biography

Anna Foat wants to live in a world where diverse businesses become larger and more profitable by leveraging user empathy as the guiding principle. As an industry expert on sales, marketing, and alliances she led the first cohort of the Fierce Founders Accelerator at Communitech providing mentorship to female entrepreneurs over the 9 months of the program. She joined BlackBerry in 1999 (before it was called BlackBerry) with about 200 others and stayed until 2011 when the firm had 16,000 employees.

Foat left BlackBerry and led Worldwide Marketing at IBM for a few years on the Mobile Protect portfolio of products before leaving to work with start ups and help them scale. Currently she teaches Design Thinking at the University of Western Ontario and advises the Chief Transformation Officer at a major Canadian financial services firm on the digital transformation agenda.

Recognition/Reconnaissance

40 Canadian Tech Women in Worth Following | Professional

https://betakit.com/30-women-in-canadian-tech-worth-following/

Additional Titles and Affiliations

Loran Scholarship

Selection Committee for SWO

Past Talks

Start Up Empire

Keynote

Halifax

HR Tech Summit

HR Tech Summit

Toronto, June 23, 2017

Expertise

  • Technology
  • Design thinking
  • Digital transformation
  • Innovation
  • Women tech entrepreneurs
  • Female entrepreneurship in Canada
  • Entrepreneurship

Education/Éducation

  • Schulich
    Developing Sales and Marketing Plans & Presentation Certification
    Certification, 2006
  • University of Waterloo
    English Literature
    BA, 1998