Founder, Chief Strategist

You might say that Mike is on a lifelong quest to build a better mousetrap. It may be because inventing and engineering run in the family, or simply that he has a perpetual drive toward the better, smarter and more impactful. It’s how he became a black belt in Taekwon-Do, a competitive volleyball player, and powerhouse problem solver for his clients.

In 2009, he earned his degree in International Business and Marketing at the University of Alberta. He left Canada for Latin America and kicked off his career in television sales and marketing, he designed an account management system to manage $3M annual sales across 180 PayTV distributors in LATAM. He trailblazed in partnership marketing too, by crafting the most successful partnership campaign for BBC News with Brazil’s largest satellite TV company, SKY Brasil. Next, from London, he helped BBC News break into the U.S. and grew the 24-hour news network’s TV distribution by 600% (from 5 million to 30 million households). His work launching BBC News in the US market included the full marketing mix from B2B marketing to win distributor interest and the follow through to integrated B2C launch campaigns.

Success at the BBC led him to relocate to NYC in 2013. A year later he joined the Government of Canada as Trade Commissioner for Digital Technology and Venture Capital in New York. In this unique role he leveraged his strategic insight and marketing savvy to help Canadian startups plan for growth and fundraising in the New York market. He then joined Canada’s most international bank as Chief of Staff to Scotiabank’s president of International Banking.

Before founding Raven Strategy Group, he joined the partners at boutique creative agency, Bartley and Dick, where he got back to his strategic marketing roots as the agency’s Strategy Director. He continues to support the agency in this role on a part-time basis.

Today he’s still building for all his clients: relationships, benchmarks, strategy, solutions. He helps business leaders find answers (even to the questions they didn’t know to ask) and forge marketing strategies that build better, smarter, more impactful brands.