CEO, Guardly
Class of 2008
Josh Sookman is currently CEO at Guardly, a platform for emergency communication that facilitates rapid social, mobile and location-aware responses to calls for assistance. He is a huge supporter of innovation, entrepreneurship and the startup community. Sookman is a co-curator at Toronto [StartupDigest]. He helped organize TEDxToronto 2010 and has also volunteered with Impact Entrepreneurship Group and mentored Overseas Education Center, a Stanford student team building a not-for-profit educational facility in Cambodia to help local students get top-tier educations abroad.
Sookman has also judged several international competitions, most notably, the Social eChallenge Competition at Stanford University (2009, 2010) and the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) regional round at MIT (2009). Most recently, he helped judge the 2010 Intel Challenge Europe.
Prior to this, Sookman was an Analyst at BlackBerry Partners Fund/RBC Venture Partners. In this role, he was primarily responsible for conducting due diligence and writing investment recommendations for prospective investments in the mobile sector. He also worked closely with portfolio companies to develop business strategies, enhance product development and improve user experience. Sookman has developed expertise in mobile social networking and location-aware applications, mobile commerce, mobile advertising and mobile search.
For Sookman, the most valuable parts of his experience in the MBiotech program were the networking opportunities it provided with industry, most notably his internship placements with companies such as BDC Venture Capital and GSK International. Moreover, he praises the information he learned in his classes, which were based on the bleeding-edge of scientific innovation and discoveries in the industry.