Sylvie Otis

Ms. Otis holds a Bachelor in Industrial Relations and she completed studies for a master degree in the same field from University of Laval (Quebec City, Canada, 1974 and 1983, respectively). She has a long proven track record as an entrepreneur and a management consultant having two management consulting companies and worked in strategic planning for over 30 years. At the start of her career, she held various positions in the fields of operational research and organizational development. This led her to establish, in 1982, her first management consulting firm specializing in change management and implementation of new technologies, Les Consultants Sylvie Otis Inc. The firm was eventually purchased by Groupe CGI Inc., an international leader in information technology, and, by 1988, Ms. Otis has become Vice-President of their management consulting division, focusing on strategic planning and implementation of new technologies. In 1989 she joined Alcan Inc. (Rio Tinto), a leading aluminum industry multinational, to direct an interdisciplinary group formed to study the restructuring of the company by looking into ways of optimizing the management of its resources and exploring business development opportunities. In 1993, she founded a second management consulting business, Synopsis Inc., specializing in strategic planning. In 1998, she left Alcan and founded BioMatera. She personally financed the start-up of the company and hired the first scientists. At that time, being a visionary, she was convinced that the process would you be ripe when the world was ready. Over the past 20 years, she has laboured to bring the process and product to its full maturity.