Director, Corporate Innovation

About MaRS

MaRS Discovery District  (@MaRSDD) in Toronto is one of the world’s 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 a meaningful 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. We’re 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 there’s 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, Corporate Innovation is responsible for increasing the speed and scale of adoption of venture technology with corporate adopters. The Corporate Innovation team drives strategic outcomes for global early adopters of innovation leading to commercial outcomes for Canadian startups. The team aims to advance the knowledge, attitude, behaviour, and intention of adopters and innovation leaders to procure innovative Canadian solutions by increasing exposure to solutions, systematically driving meaningful connections, and fueling commercial outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Corporate Innovation Strategic Direction (~15%)

• Lead MaRS’ corporate innovation strategy and roadmap to position the organization as a global thought leader on corporate innovation amongst global corporates and the broader innovation ecosystem
• Oversee the strategic direction of all Corporate Innovation offerings that facilitate corporate adoption of venture technologies
• This work includes a constant commitment to developing a deep understanding of corporates, their strategic priorities and objectives, to ensure that Corporate Innovation offerings are delivering value to and continued engagement amongst the partner network

Program Delivery & Account Sponsorship (~25%)

• Ultimate accountability for Corporate Innovation engagements, providing strategic guidance and decision making to Corporate Innovation team members
• Coordinate with other teams at MaRS to ensure effective delivery of Corporate Innovation engagements
• Continuously foster relationships with senior-level (C-Suite) representatives of corporate organizations to build a high-quality network of MaRS corporate partners that deliver value to ventures

Team Leadership (~30%)

• Lead, mentor, and inspire Corporate Innovation team to achieve organizational goals, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and collaboration
• Drive talent development, coaching team members to reach their full potential while maintaining high engagement and retention levels

Business Development (~30%)

• Work collaboratively with MaRS’ business development team to design effective corporate engagement roadmaps that will deliver concrete needs and outcomes for MaRS corporate partners and prospects
• Contribute to pitching and closing revenue opportunities with partners
• Leverage partner and client feedback, insights and priorities to inform partner engagement design, developing and defining scope of work to represent client’s objectives, pitching, proposal development, and other related business development activities with new and existing partners and clients

Qualifications

• Bachelor Degree in business or STEM, MBA an asset
  
• 8+ years cumulative experience in a combination of:
  • consulting
  • management of high performing teams
  • services design
  • digital and physical program execution
  • client management 
  • B2B sales and marketing
  • strategy development and strategic thinking
  • cross-organization collaboration
    
• Services delivery experience with medium and large enterprises, a strong asset
• Sector-specific expertise in a MaRS vertical (e.g. health, energy and cleantech, finance, enterprise, advanced manufacturing and/or health)
  
• P&L Management
• Services design expertise
• B2B business development experience
• Client management and sales experience 
• Proven results in growth of strategic accounts
• People management
• Strong facilitation expertise 
• Multi-stakeholder management/facilitation
  

Applications will close at 5pm EDT on Aug 14, 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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