Meet the Verativa Team

Geoff Frodsham is CEO of Verativa AI and an experienced executive, board director, and advisor with deep operating leadership across Canadian retail, logistics, supply chain, technology-enabled transformation, and family enterprise governance. He has served as President and CEO of Princess Auto and held senior leadership roles with Canadian Tire, Loblaw, Home Depot Canada, and Walmart Canada, leading national and international teams and working with suppliers, technology firms, logistics partners, consulting firms, and regulatory groups to build and operate complex enterprise systems.

Geoff's background is anchored in major decisions and programs where strategy, governance, capital allocation, execution risk, and organizational alignment had to come together. His leadership experience includes opening new markets, rebuilding executive teams, resetting operating models, implementing ecommerce and omnichannel capability, gaining board approval for major capital programs, and leading supply chain and technology transformations measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. In governance roles, he has chaired boards and audit and risk committees, helped establish shareholder direction and board committee mandates, supported balance sheet structuring, and advised leadership teams through periods of significant change and transition.

That combination of executive, governance, and transformation experience connects directly to Verativa's core purpose. Verativa is an emerging decision platform that helps organizations examine whether strategic decisions are likely to hold before they are executed and before capital is committed. Geoff's role is to keep the company focused on decision durability, real-world executive use, and the practical needs of leaders who must align people, capital, customers, and execution under uncertainty.

Claude Ricks is a seasoned executive, entrepreneur, and board leader with more than three decades of experience driving growth, transformation, and innovation across technology, healthcare, and industrial sectors. Throughout his career, he has led companies through strategic scaling initiatives, operational turnarounds, capital raises, acquisitions, and successful exits.

Claude currently serves as Managing Partner at LEVEL5 Strategy Group, where he advises organizations on growth strategy, operational excellence, and business transformation. He has also held leadership and board roles with several public and private companies, including SQI Diagnostics & Siemens International, where he served as CEO, board member, and strategic advisor during periods of significant organizational evolution.

Previously, Claude was Chief Operating Officer of gShift Labs, helping position the company as a leader in search and content optimization technology. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President & Client Services at Select Technology, contributing to the company's rapid growth and eventual acquisition by Amdocs in a $1.2 billion transaction. He also led major operational and financial restructuring initiatives at Oasis Technology Inc. and built global change management capabilities during his tenure at Kearney.

Known for his ability to align strategy with execution, Claude brings deep expertise in corporate development, operational leadership, digital transformation, and governance. His broad experience across startups, growth-stage companies, and enterprise organizations makes him a valuable advisor to leadership teams navigating complex change.

Lori is a CPA, with an extensive career spanning both industry and public practice. Lori's most recent experience was as CFO for an ag-tech company, bringing it from its early Series A funding through to IPO. She has experience developing governance and back-office processes to allow high-growth companies to rapidly scale. Lori's diverse background also includes serving as the VP, Finance & Investor Relations at a publicly traded company, where she also contributed to a number of M&A and strategic initiatives, and she also spent 6 years as a tax partner at PwC, specializing mainly in corporate tax.

Hugh Hamilton is an accomplished legal executive and business advisor with deep expertise in fintech, enterprise technology, commercial contracting, and operational governance. Over the course of his career, he has held senior leadership positions with organizations including Worldpay, FIS, Fidelity National Information Services, eFunds, and Select Technology Group.

Most recently, Hugh served as VP and Head of Legal Vendor Management at Worldpay, where he led a global team responsible for negotiating vendor agreements and developing scalable operational processes across Legal, Risk, Compliance, Audit, and Procurement functions. He played a key role in modernizing vendor agreements, streamlining negotiation processes, and aligning contract frameworks with evolving market and regulatory requirements.

Previously, Hugh spent nearly 14 years at FIS and Fidelity National Information Services in multiple senior legal leadership roles, including Senior Deputy General Counsel, Associate General Counsel, and Deputy General Counsel. During his tenure, he advised on commercial litigation, cross-border transactions, fintech operations, enterprise contracting, and strategic risk management.

In addition to his in-house executive experience, Hugh worked as an independent management consultant, supporting both startup and enterprise clients with contract strategy, customer and vendor negotiations, litigation management, and operational playbook development.

Hugh is recognized for his collaborative leadership style, practical business judgment, and ability to balance operational efficiency with legal and regulatory risk management. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Queen's University and an Honors Business Administration (HBA) degree from the Ivey Business School at Western University.

Steve MacDonald is a technology executive and product strategist with more than 30 years of experience leading innovation, software development, and digital transformation initiatives across healthcare, aviation, financial services, and enterprise technology sectors. Known for combining technical depth with entrepreneurial vision, Steve has built and led high-performing teams focused on delivering scalable, customer-centric solutions.

Steve currently serves as Chief Product Officer of Verativa AI, where he leads the development of advanced AI-driven consumer experience platforms. Throughout his career, he has held senior technology leadership roles spanning startups, growth-stage ventures, and enterprise organizations, consistently driving innovation through emerging technologies, cloud architecture, and intelligent automation.

Previously, Steve served as Chief Technology Officer at NowScience, delivering cutting-edge technology solutions for the pharmaceutical industry. He also held leadership positions with FreightConsole, Klevrai, MNP, and RapidMind Solutions, where he specialized in AI-driven systems, enterprise architecture, cloud-native development, cybersecurity, and digital transformation initiatives. Earlier in his career, Steve led enterprise-scale development projects for organizations including GuestLogix, Protean LLC, Epiphany Inc., Janna Systems, and General Electric. His work has included large-scale cloud and mobile application development, intelligent systems architecture, airline security technology, and enterprise software modernization.

Steve brings deep expertise in artificial intelligence, product development, enterprise architecture, and operational leadership. His passion for innovation and collaborative leadership makes him a valuable advisor and technology leader for organizations navigating complex digital transformation and AI adoption initiatives. Steve has held CTO roles with several companies in his career and co-founded and sold two technology companies. He is an avid AI enthusiast and has been on the leading edge of AI development for the past several years.

Darryl Burke, CTO of Verativa AI, leads the design and development of our AI-first simulation platform that creates, enriches, and operates realistic digital personas at scale. Drawing on our proprietary multi-agent orchestration, semantic memory systems, and large language model pipelines, Verativa enables organizations to understand their Decision Durability™ through full synthetic research and analysis — focus groups, surveys, and interviews — powered by AI personas that reason, remember, interact and evolve. Darryl's executive technology career spans over 25 years and includes CTO and SVP roles at Enercare, Mintent, and gShift Labs — where he consistently led scaled engineering teams and accelerated product delivery.

At Enercare he owned technical strategy and delivery for two of the company's most critical systems: the MyAccount public-facing web portal and Clarify, the legacy CRM platform underpinning 80% of Enercare's core business operations. He led the transformation of both teams from traditional SDLC delivery to Agile program-based methodologies, managing two cross-functional teams of 16 IT professionals through the full modernization of Enercare's customer-facing digital infrastructure.

His background extends into both leading-edge startups and regulated industries, having overseen the development and FDA approval of an automated assay processing platform at SQI Diagnostics, including successful ISO 13485 certification. This blend of regulated-industry rigor and startup velocity gives him deep technical range across full-stack development, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, InfoSec, and AI systems.