Richard Blundell

Bio

Mr. Blundell has over 35 years of senior executive management and consulting experience in the global environmental services and technology sectors. His experience includes operations management, corporate and market development, mergers and acquisitions, new business initiation, and consulting. Mr. Blundell’s international experience includes running businesses in East and West Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia (12 countries from India to China). He has significant experience in new business creation and management of growth-stage businesses in global markets. He has completed over $500 million in combined corporate M&A transactions and private equity funding for early-stage companies.

From 1989-2004, Mr. Blundell held senior leadership positions with Laidlaw Inc., Canada’s largest waste management company, as Director of European Business Development; SGS SA, a global company in inspection, testing, and certification services as SVP of the Global Environmental Services Division; and Hagemeyer Cosa Liebermann, a technology marketing company in Asia Pacific as EVP of the Technology Division. During this period and since 2004, Mr. Blundell has held founder and/or executive management positions in ten early-stage, cleantech companies, including a number of Board of Directors appointments.

He joined the MaRS Discovery District in 2018 to lead the development of applied innovation networks for global, corporate partners. In 2019, he was appointed Managing Director of the Cleantech Venture Services group. MaRS is Canada’s largest innovation hub with 1M ft sq of office space in downtown Toronto serving over 1,400 startups, from early-stage to high growth companies in the Cleantech, Health Sciences, Fintech and Enterprise Software, including a focus on AI, IoT, AR and other fourth industrial revolution technologies.

He is an Executive-in-Residence at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He joined the Rotman faculty in 2016, where he teaches MBA, Executive MBA and Global Executive MBA courses in sustainability and entrepreneurship. He is also an advisor to the Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability charity.

Mr. Blundell holds a BSc from the University of Toronto and an MBA from IMD, Lausanne.