Toronto’s rising tech stars have one big thing in common: they worked at Uber

Some of Toronto tech’s most ambitious leaders share a common trait in their Linkedin profiles: working experience at Uber Canada. 

Since first setting up shop in Canada in 2012, Uber’s focus has been building products to get people closer to where they want to be. From UberX to Uber Eats, Uber has sought to change how people, food, and things move from point A to point B. 

“I quickly came to realize that I had no idea what an innovative, fast-moving company was, because Uber was operating at a totally different level.”

And it has also served as an incubator for talent.

Uber’s Canadian outpost has spun out the likes of Rob Khazzam, co-founder of Float; Kelly Kwan, general counsel at GoBolt; Andrew Tiffin, chief of staff to the CRO of Shopify; and Rachel Wong, co-founder of Monday Girl.

FreshBooks, Clutch, and The Peak are also among the Canadian startups and scaleups with senior team members who cut their teeth at Uber. 

There, they learned in an environment of rapid growth, constant product development and complex realities, all while keeping pace with a rapidly changing market that required a rare blend of savvy and stamina.

Today, Uber Canada’s veterans are channeling those skills into the local ventures that are shaping the city’s tech ecosystem.

Anne French, VP of Strategy and Biz Ops, Clutch

Anne French’s career path began with corporate mainstays, but it was Uber’s energy and rapid growth that captured her attention. 

Transitioning from brand marketing at Coca-Cola to Uber’s Toronto team in 2015, she dove into the tech world just as Uber was building local operations across Canada.

“Uber was really unique,” she said. “We were simultaneously advocating for a regulatory framework that would enable Uber to operate while building the infrastructure to support the product’s unprecedented consumer adoption and rapid scale-up.” 

With Uber giving its Toronto team the latitude to shape their own operations, French found herself wearing multiple hats, starting with leading adoption for Uber’s then-novel shared services like Uber Pool.

“People forget it now, but the concept of getting into a car with a stranger was a little bit crazy,” she added.

French supported key partnerships, such as Uber’s transit collaboration with the town of Innisfil, Ont., and led operations for Uber Eats during the pandemic—an experience she remembers as “a very, very crazy time, but incredibly rewarding.”

Uber’s local-first approach and startup-like agility made a lasting impression on French. “It was very much that ‘all-hands-on-deck’ mentality. There’s no job that’s too big or too small. We were really building a business off the ground,” she said. 

French’s role and responsibilities at Uber evolved exponentially. She started as Marketing Manager of Uber Rides, before taking on a role as Chief Staff for Uber’s Head of Marketing for US and Canada and Head of Operations at Uber Eats Canada.

The mindset she adopted during her six years at Uber influenced her approach at auto-commerce platform Clutch, where she now leads strategy and business operations. 

“People weren’t necessarily satisfied with how they moved around a city before Uber, but not everyone was saying, ‘This has to change,’” she said. “It’s similar to car buying and selling. Most people don’t love their options, but before Clutch they couldn’t envision an alternative. It takes a team with a bold idea and courage to challenge the norm.”

As a member of Uber’s alumni network, she still finds value in the connections she built there. She described that group as “a very tight-knit group who have built these bonds… a network of people that have their fingerprints all over the tech companies across Toronto.” 

She said Uber also shaped her confidence and ability to navigate the tech sector, particularly in a non-technical role.

 “If I’d spent most of my career in corporate, I probably wouldn’t have developed the skill set, experience, network or confidence to make the transition into an executive role as I have now,” she added.

Brett Chang, Co-Founder, The Peak

Brett Chang always had an eye for tackling transportation issues.

Back in 2014, he had launched a crowdfunded bus line in Toronto that shuttled people from Liberty Village to Union Station. The project met its end due to regulatory challenges, but it paved the way for Chang to connect with Uber’s general manager at the time, Ian Black. 

Chang joined Uber in 2015 as a Marketing Manager, just as the company was launching UberX in the city. He would later become a Senior Public Policy associate for the company.

“Uber was the most exciting place in the world to work at the time,” Chang said, recalling his work on fast-paced, high-stakes projects, from signing up drivers in Canadian communities to rallying support at Toronto City Hall for ridesharing regulations. It was all new territory for him, but he said he welcomed the chance to help make a difference locally. 

“If you had an idea that you wanted to take on, you were given license to,” he said, noting he was given a chance to take the reins on Uber’s partnership with Innisfil to build a transit solution that still operates today.

Chang’s project also included managing Uber’s partnership with Toronto Pearson Airport and advancing Uber’s cyclist safety efforts as part of the city’s Vision Zero plan. To help prevent road accidents, his team introduced features in the app that warned passengers when exiting onto bike lanes, as well as “look before you open” decals for cars.

Throughout those three years, Uber became a real-world business school for Chang, who had previously dabbled in startups, but lacked the know-how to scale them. Surrounded by managers and operators at Uber, he learned the ins and outs of managing teams and building scalable processes, both of which would serve his next venture well.

“Uber was the best possible business education I could have gotten,” Chang added.

Three years of Uber’s rapid-fire environment also gave Chang the foundation he would need to co-found his current business media startup, The Peak. Though his Uber days are behind him, Chang still credits his time there for setting him up for success in Toronto’s tech ecosystem. 

“A lot of my friends from Uber joke that we probably should have just stuck around at Uber for the entirety of our careers,” he added. “It was just an incredible experience to work with amazing people.”

Faye Pang, Chief Growth Officer, Freshbooks

When Faye Pang first joined Uber in 2015, it wasn’t as an executive or a strategist, but as a customer.

“I was one of Uber’s biggest fans in Toronto,” she said. “At the time, it was just a ride-sharing app, and I used it a lot. It was such a refreshing departure from the status quo.”

In 2015, an opportunity arose that would take Pang beyond the role of a user and into the thick of Uber’s fast-paced ecosystem as Senior Marketing Manager.

She describes her onboarding as a swift plunge into the deep end. “It was a bit of a baptism by fire,” she quipped. On her first day, she learned that everything she was told during the interview had changed: Uber decided Toronto would be the test city for a standalone Uber Eats app, and the company had a target to launch by the year’s end.

“I quickly came to realize that I had no idea what an innovative, fast-moving company was, because Uber was operating at a totally different level,” she said. “The pace at which people moved, just the challenge, the passion, the drive was unlike anything I’d ever seen.”

Following the successful launch of Uber Eats, Pang’s role moved from marketing to leading restaurant operations, before moving to General Manager for Uber Eats Canada, and finally, General Manager of Uber Freight.

Pang drove a few ‘firsts’ at Uber Canada, from becoming the first woman at the Canadian outpost to take maternity leave and helping shape the Toronto office’s policy to co-leading the global Parents at Uber group, which offers programs like ‘Bring Your Kid to Work’ days. 

She also helped launch, ‘The Daras,’ an internal awards show complete with Oscar-like statuettes resembling Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The tradition still continues to this day.

After leaving Uber in 2020, Pang took on a new challenge at accounting software firm Xero, before joining Toronto accounting platform FreshBooks as Chief Growth Officer earlier this year. Today, she’s responsible for sales, marketing, customer support, and partnerships at FreshBooks, a role she describes as a culmination of all she learned at Uber. 

At FreshBooks, Pang also brushes shoulders with other Uber alumni, and she said they often use a collective shorthand: “Remember how we did this at Uber? Let’s bring a bit of that spirit here.”

PRESENTED BY

Learn more about Uber’s tech hub in Toronto and careers here.

Headshots provided by Uber, and sourced via LinkedIn, and X.