Director and Chairman, NexJ Systems Inc.
Chairman, Brookfield Global Infrastructure Advisory Board
Robert Harding has served as a director of Brookfield Asset Management since May 1992. A resident of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Mr. Harding is also Chairman of Brookfield and represents it as Chairman and a director of affiliates BPO Properties Ltd., Fraser Papers Inc. and Norbord Inc.
He is also a director of Atomic Energy Canada Limited and a director and Audit Committee Chairman of Burlington Resources Inc. Mr. Harding is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the University of Waterloo, a Trustee of the United Way of Greater Toronto and a Trustee of the Hospital for Sick Children.
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, NexJ Systems Inc.
As Chairman and CEO at NexJ Systems Inc., William M. Tatham is responsible for directing NexJ Systems’ strategy and product and business development. Prior to establishing NexJ Systems in 2003, Mr. Tatham was the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Janna Systems, which he started in his basement in 1990 and sold 10 years later to his largest competitor, Siebel Systems, in a record value transaction for a Canadian software company. Janna was the world leader in enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software for financial services.
Mr. Tatham is a member of the Board of Elizabeth Arden (RDEN: NASQ), a global prestige beauty, fragrance, cosmetics, and skincare products company where he sits on the Audit committee.
He serves on the Board of Governors at the University of Waterloo and on the Entrepreneurial Advisory Board of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. The University of Waterloo’s William M. Tatham Centre for Co-operative Education & Career Services is named in recognition of his support.
He is the Chair of the Technology, Innovation, and Equipment project for the “Embracing Health” Campaign for North York General Hospital. Previously, he was Vice-Chair and Chair of the North York General Hospital Quality Committee. He is a co-founder and member of the Board of the Canadian Association for People-Centred Health, a not-for-profit advocacy group for the reform of health care.
He is a member of the Board of Stewards for Open Health Tools, a global community of health professionals, developers, and jurisdictions dedicated to developing interoperable open source health software based on best practices. Mr. Tatham is the Honorary Co-Chair of the Building the Vision campaign for the Woodstock General Hospital and he is a Cabinet member of the Capital Campaign for the Michener Institute.
In 2001 Mr. Tatham was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Software and Information Systems. In 2006 Mr. Tatham was awarded the NAO Distinguished Angel Award by the National Angel Organization for Angel Investors. Mr. Tatham was a 2005-2006 inductee into the National Commission for Co-operative Education Co-op Hall of Fame.
Executive Chairman, CI Investments Inc.
William T. Holland is Executive Chairman of CI Financial Inc., Canada’s third-largest investment fund company with over $80 billion in fee-earning assets. Mr. Holland joined CI in 1989 and held several senior positions before being appointed CEO in 1999.
Mr. Holland has played a crucial role in fostering CI’s development and growth, with his strategic initiatives including the acquisitions of BPI Financial Corp. in 1999; Spectrum Investment Management Limited and Clairca Diversico Ltd. in 2002; Synergy Asset Management Inc., Skylon Capital Corp. and the Canadian operations of Assante Corporation in 2003; and IQON Financial Management Inc. and Synera Financial Services in 2004.
Under Mr. Holland’s guidance, CI has become known for offering the industry’s broadest selection of investment funds and for having the most funds, winning the top five-star rating from Morningstar Canada. The acquisitions of Assante and IQON also gave CI a significant presence in the financial planning business.
Mr. Holland is a major shareholder and director of CI, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol ‘CIX’ and is a member of the S&P/TSX Composite Index.
Board of Governors, University of Waterloo
Ian McPhee was a software developer and manager at the University of Waterloo under J.W. Graham in the Computer Systems Group. Following that, he was President and co-founder of Watcom, the first University of Waterloo software spin-off company; then VP & GM at Sybase Waterloo after the Watcom acquisition. Mr. McPhee assisted with the $1.6B mergers of LivePage (UW spin-off), Janna Systems (Toronto) and Siebel Systems (California), the largest software acquisition in Canadian history. Mr. McPhee currently serves on the Board of Governors at the University of Waterloo and is the Chair of the Accelerator Centre in the Waterloo Research & Technology Park.
Mr. McPhee has also been a Director of the TSX listed company Dalsa Corporation. He is a charter member of Atlas Group, the forerunner of Communitech. Mr. McPhee graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BMAth in 1973 and a MMath in 1979.
Chief Technology Officer, Software, Research in Motion
David Yach is Senior Vice President of Software at Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the popular BlackBerry wireless solution. David has overall responsibility for the full range of software produced at RIM, which includes low level signal processing on DSP’s, handheld device real-time operating system, handheld-based Java Virtual Machine, Java-based handheld applications, Windows NT based corporate servers, all the way through to a fully redundant distributed server network operating centre.
David received his B. Math from the University of Waterloo in 1983 and an MBA from Wilfred Laurier University in 1988. After completing his undergraduate degree, David went to work for Watcom, an early UW spinoff, developing language interpreters and compilers. His work there included the design and development on Watcom C/C, the Watcom SQL databases (more popularly known as SQL Anywhere), and the industry’s first complete ODBC implementation. David has been at RIM since 1998, and in addition to his management responsibilities has continued to be involved in the design (and sometimes implementation) of the end-to-end BlackBerry solution.
Mr. Yach is the inventor or co-inventor on numerous patents and patent applications. He is the recipient of the 2004 J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation.
