Events

Teresa Snelgrove
Managing Director, Boyden Global Executive Search Inc.

Teresa Snelgrove is a Managing Director in Boyden’s Toronto office where she specializes in senior level searches in emerging growth companies. Teresa’s work has been closely associated with entrepreneurial endeavours beginning with the co-founding of Timothy’s Coffees of the World in 1975 (Timothy’s won the Canadian Enterprise of the Year Award and Teresa was named a Chatelaine Woman of the Year), a specialty coffee chain now with over one hundred stores across Canada, Chapters Bookstore café and General Wellbeing a small chain of wellness stores in hospitals.
Prior to joining Boyden, Teresa co-founded her own executive search firm where she spent 12 years as a Partner where the focus of the practice was management recruiting within the venture capital community and their portfolio companies, primarily in the technology, healthcare, life science and biotechnology sectors.  For the former companies she has placed Partners and Associates, and for the latter “C level” roles including technical roles such as Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Scientific Officer. Additionally, she has successfully completed searches in Retail, Not-for-Profit, NGO’s, and Boards of Directors
Earlier, Teresa spent 10 years teaching at various Ontario Universities including the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario. The focus of her teaching and research was computational analysis of literary texts.
Teresa received a B.A. from McGill University, a M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.  Her Ph.D. included the development of one of the very first structural analysis software packages. She recently returned to the University of Toronto to complete a Masters in Education in Counselling Psychology.
Teresa has a passion for the entrepreneurial and for guiding young people to follow that path if so inclined; she frequently gives lectures and workshops on these topics. She is also a primary advisory board member for APT Inc., a spin out technology company, from McMaster University which has developed a suite of HR Assessment tools.


Frederic Sweeney
VenGrowth Private Equity Partners Inc.

Frédéric joined the life sciences investment team at VenGrowth in 2008, one of Canada’s premier private equity firms with over $1.3 billion invested in close to 200 innovative Canadian companies.  Fred’s main responsibilities are to provide operational support and coordinating follow-on investments for the current life sciences portfolio companies as well as sourcing new investment opportunities for the firm.  Fred also acts as an observer on the Board of Cytochroma, Interface Biologics and Axela.

Prior to VenGrowth, Fred worked at a Toronto-based boutique investment bank and helped private life sciences companies secure financing. He was also involved with MaRS by helping to organize bioentrepreneurial lectures and appearing as a guest speaker on topics such as strategic financing in biotechnology and career management.

Fred holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Medical Genetics from the University of Toronto where he was a Terry Fox Scholar of the National Cancer Institute of Canada. During his scientific training, he acquired a deep expertise in cancer-related phenomenon by using structural and molecular biology and small molecule biochemistry. His background also includes years of research in other areas such as neurobiology, developmental biology human and yeast genetics.