About MaRS

MaRS Discovery District (@MaRSDD) in Toronto is one of the worlds largest urban innovation hubs.

MaRS supports promising high-growth companies to scale their businesses globally, while tackling key societal challenges in areas such as Health, Cleantech, Finance, Transportation, AI, and others. In addition to helping start-ups launch, grow and scale, the MaRS community is dedicated to cross-disciplinary collaboration, commercialization of discoveries, and driving ideas to impact.

MaRS is the place where you can play ameaningful role in our innovation economy.

We understand qualifications on a job posting can be daunting. If you're passionate about the role and believe you can make a meaningful impact, we want to hear from you, even if you don't meet every listed qualification. Were always looking for great talent to join our team on planet MaRS.

We actively encourage all candidates, including equity-deserving communities, including those who identify as BIPOC, racialized, women, people with disabilities, and people with diverse gender identities, expressions and sexual orientations.

We want you to be comfortable being your most authentic self throughout our recruitment process. Please reach out to [email protected] if theres anything we can do to make your experience more accessible and inclusive, including accommodations. Include 'Accessibility Request' in your subject line.

About Ventures & Ecosystems

This role resides within the V&E group at MaRS. V&E works with over 1400 innovation-driven science and technology startups. V&E helps entrepreneurs commercialize innovations with high business growth potential in Canada and globally by facilitating access to the customer, talent, funding, marketing and stakeholder connections required to successfully scale their business.

About the Position

The Director, Venture Growth provides strategic oversight for the portfolio of programs that support founders across various stages of their startup journey, from early-stage ventures to those scaling towards $100M in annual revenue. This role ensures that venture programming is aligned with organizational priorities, maximizes impact, and effectively supports a diverse range of companies across multiple sectors. In this role the Director will define and deliver our stage based programming to support 1200+ ventures.

The Director collaborates with internal teams including Advisors, Market Intelligence, Impact team, Corporate Innovation, Marcom, Data & Insights etc., to optimize the venture support model. They ensure that advisory services, programming, and expert-driven content are effectively structured to help ventures navigate key growth challenges such as business expansion, product development, sales strategies, financing and capital raising, organizational design, and operational scale-up.

This role will be responsible for setting the strategic direction for all stage based venture programming, overseeing portfolio selection and management, ensuring effective program(s) execution through cross-functional teams, and driving strategic initiatives that enhance venture success. The Director will also identify opportunities to improve program delivery, leverage organizational assets, and foster collaboration across teams to maximize value for ventures for all stages of growth.

Key Responsibilities

• Accountable for a team of ~10 employees (~2 direct reports) that execute on deliverables tied to our government contracts.
• Provide strategic oversight for MaRS venture programming, ensuring offerings effectively support founders from early-stage self serve programming to high-potential growth ventures with 1:1 services and bespoke offerings to scaling ventures towards $100M
• Guide program strategy and evolution, determining which services, resources, and advisory frameworks best support venture success across multiple sectors
• Identifying best practices and key milestones that help ventures progress through different stages of growth
• Lead venture engagement strategy, working with internal stakeholders to enhance the venture experience, including the leveraging of digital tools and touchpoints
• Lead the venture onboarding experience to MaRS, ensuring ventures feel welcomed and connected to MaRS resources, programs and offerings.
• Oversee program reporting, operations, and feedback mechanisms, leveraging data to track impact and inform decision making
• Support partnership strategy, co-creating content and services that enhance venture programming in collaboration with external and internal stakeholders
• Leverage lived experience and deep venture engagement to understand the trends, challenges and needs to effectively grow and scale startups in the Canadian ecosystem. Share this understanding through strategic initiatives and thought leadership opportunities.
  

Qualifications

• Bachelor Degree, MBA an asset
  
• 5+years of experience in relevant positions in the ecosystem
• Experience in program management
• Experience in customer delivery, experience or success
  
• Familiar with the language and terminology of industry, finance and commercialization
• Personal accountability and commitment to achieving and exceeding goals and objectives
• Strong influence and decisions making skills
• Ability to apply structure to design and decision-making process
  

Applications will close at 5pm EDT on April 17, 2025.

Applicants must be legally eligible to work in Canada and reside in Ontario.

Salary Range: $111,000 - $140,000, up to a 15% discretionary incentive, extended healthcare benefits, lifestyle spending account, GRRSP matching, and paid time-off.

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