John Ruffolo is the Founder of OMERS Ventures. OMERS Ventures is the venture capital arm of OMERS, the pension plan for Ontario’s municipal employees. Over the course of John’s leadership, OMERS Ventures had invested over $500 million of capital in over 40 disruptive technology companies across North America, including growth investments in Shopify, Hootsuite, Desire 2 Learn, Hopper, Wattpad, Touch Bistro and League. John also formed Platform Investments, OMERS’ innovation arm, where he led investments in Purpose Financial, PointNorth Capital, District Ventures, OneEleven and ArcTern Ventures. John is also the Co-Founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators. A non-profit organization dedicated to helping high-growth Canadian technology firms scale up globally. As Canada’s business council for a 21st century economy the Council is made up of CEOs from Canada’s most promising technology companies. The Council’s position is to promote, share, and collaborate with public policy leaders on key policy levers to optimize the growth of Canada’s innovation-based sector.
John sits on the board of a number of leading not for profit organizations including Ontario Centres of Excellence, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Royal Ontario Museum, Caldwell’s Top 40 Under 40 and Sustainable Development Technology Canada.
Prior to joining OMERS, Mr. Ruffolo was a Partner at Deloitte, as well as the Global Thought Leader, the Global Tax Leader and the Canadian Industry Leader for Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) practice. He was also a member of the firm’s Tax and TMT Global Leadership teams and a member of Deloitte’s Board of Directors.
