Marcella Erskine
Founder & Director, Music Shakers
Education Startup Consultant
Marcella has Master's degree in Social Work from Hunter College, New
York, where she specialized in group and community work, and a B.Sc. in Psychology from Colorado
State University. Her experience includes teaching music and movement in schools in the USA and
UK, as a Social Worker with alcohol and drug dependent youth, and as a group leader facilitating
support groups for cancer patients. She founded and directs Music Shakers, providing classes to
children, parents and caregivers in order to foster experiential learning of music and movement,
enhance early childhood development and build communities of families. She is also a member of
Science Capital, an independent non-profit company which provides a direct link between academic
and business experts. At Syngli, she advises on educational
entrepreneurship, and adaptation
of the platform to children and learners with communication disorders.
Samantha Frosst
Founder, Frosst Learning Centre
Language Learning Disorders Advisor
Samantha has a B.Ed. in Secondary Science Education and an M.A. in Educational Leadership, from McGill University.
She is the founder and head educator at Frosst Learning Centre.
She has also received training in the Orton-Gillingham approach. Samantha specializes in teaching individuals with language-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia.
As an individual with dyslexia, she understands firsthand how challenging school and learning can be when you struggle with reading and writing.
An unwavering desire to teach fuels her passion to apply and develop methodologies and processes to accelerate a student's learning ability.
Steven Fyke
Creative Director, Snap Pea Design
Design Strategy Mentor
Steven has over 15 years experience designing and building strategy, prototypes, products and
user experiences. Through his career he has developed an extensive and varied technical
background but understands that great engineering cannot build great products without the
foundation of a cohesive user story. He is a strong believer in User-Centered design and helps
to grow strong companies and products through critical analysis of user research, the creation
of new experience paradigms, diving into the technical details and large quantities of tea.
Steven holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo
and
has over 140 US patents to date in the fields of mechanical design, short-range wireless
communication, security, user interfaces and others.
Abby Goodrum
Program Co-ordinator, User Experience Design, WLU
UX Design Advisor
Abby has a Bachelor's Degree in Radio, TV and Film and a Masters and PhD in Information
Science. Prior to her appointment as Professor and Program Director of the User Experience
Design program at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU), she held held faculty positions at Syracuse,
Drexel and Ryerson, and taught User-Centered Design, Usability, UX, Knowledge Management,
Information Architecture, and Digital Reference. She additionally spent time working as a
researcher at CNN, and in educational technology for IBM. She was the founding Director for
Social Science Research in a $23M Canadian Centre of Excellence that served as both a research
network and commercialization engine in order to address complex issues in digital media and
transform multidisciplinary research into user-centered solutions. Her research bridges computer
science, humanities, communication studies, information management, and media studies, and
focuses on understanding how humans seek, use, share, manipulate, store, retrieve, and organize
digital multimedia. She is advising Syngli on its own UX design and testing, including its
incorporation of gamification elements.
Eddy Guo
Enterprise Application
Integration Specialist
Data Architect
Eddy has a bachelor's degree in engineering from Tianjin University.
Eddy's industry experience includes 14+ years of experience in EAI and SAP application
development and integration at Research in Motion. He has been
assisting Syngli with
evaluating and implementing the SAP HANA in-memory computing platform, to help with intelligent,
big data operation of the software. In his spare time, Eddy also loves jogging and
volleyball.
Kevin Hood
President, Market Access Corporation
Sales and Marketing Mentor
Kevin is a lifelong entrepreneur with over thirty years' experience developing and working
with
new business ventures. Over the years he has worked with many startups, emerging companies,
associations and major corporations. Clients have included IBM, CIBC, Northwestern Mutual
Financial, Microsoft Skills 2000, Supply Chain Management, Philips Electronics, Maplesoft,
Virtek and the Canadian Professional Sales Association. His book "Six Steps to
Self-Employment"
is a guide for anyone interested in creating and sustaining a successful entrepreneurial career.
He originated and developed the "Tech Sales Program" delivered through the Schlegel
Centre at
Wilfrid Laurier University and Communitech, and instructs on marketing and sales in the Masters
in Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program at the University of Waterloo. Kevin
holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from Western University.
Brian Jung Myeng Lee
B.Math., University of Waterloo
Technical Recruiter
Brian is a Computer Science graduate from University of Waterloo with
Bachelor's of Mathematics. He started as an embedded systems programmer at BlackBerry in
2006. He always welcomes good technical discussions. He specializes in drawing technical talents
to Syngli, and telling everyone about it. His main interest is
inspiring people, and
providing a fresh look at everything.
Sheila McIlraith
Computer Science, University of Toronto
Knowledge Representation Advisor
Sheila's research is in the area of knowledge representation and automated reasoning. Her
work
has had notable impact on Semantic Web Services and emerging Web standards, as well as
next-generation NASA space systems. Of particular relevance
to Syngli is her expertise in
web- and cloud-based semantic representation, probabilistic reasoning, and data-intensive
decision-making. She has advised the company on upgrades to its modeling of users' knowledge
states and learning trajectories.
Suzanne Stevenson
Computer Science, University of Toronto
Computational Linguistics Advisor
Suzanne's computational linguistics research takes a highly multidisciplinary approach
integrating computational theories and techniques with insights from the fields of linguistics
and psycholinguistics. A primary focus of her work is the automatic acquisition of linguistic
knowledge from large text corpora, using machine learning approaches. Another main area of
interest is work on cognitive models of human language acquisition and processing. She is
advising Syngli on a suite of computational linguistic techniques
to upgrade the system's
ability to automatically create and evaluate content and responses.