MaRS accelerator lays-off senior executives

TORONTO – MaRS Discovery District has slashed its senior ranks and is resetting its business model as one of Canada’s largest innovation support organizations heads into a potential funding crunch. It’s reported that the organization this week cut about 20 jobs, including many in the top ranks.

According to the Globe and Mail, one key departure is chief delivery officer Krista Jones, who e-mailed dozens of women across the innovation sector Tuesday to say she would be leaving her $346,000-a-year job at the end of June. That is less than two years after the 15-year MaRS veteran received a promotion and substantial raise.

Chief financial officer Nicole Barry, who was paid $326,000 last year, is also leaving.

Chief executive Alison Nankivell (pictured) said in a statement to The Globe that MaRS, in an effort to ensure its long-term sustainability, is “resetting our business model, which includes seeking to significantly increase engagement with the private sector and philanthropic circles while we continue to partner with all levels of government. We are also examining how our platform of spaces, programs, and community in the areas of health, climate, and transformative technology can propel Canadian innovation in a shifting global context.”

Ms. Nankivell through a spokesperson declined to confirm the number or scope of layoffs or elaborate on her plans but said in her statement: “Our path forward necessitates changes toward a more agile and lean organizational structure that reduces hierarchy and leadership roles in favour of a reallocation of resources to support programming that more effectively supports founders, fosters even greater ecosystem collaboration, and ultimately increases our impact.”

It’s the first significant move by Ms. Nankivell since taking the helm of MaRS in March after leading fund investments and global scaling for Business Development Bank of Canada’s private capital group BDC Capital. When her appointment was announced last December, she told The Globe and Mail, “I don’t think anything significantly needs foundational change,” at MaRS, saying, “It’s more of a nudging of certain aspects of the overall programming and partnership with the community in certain directions of emphasis.”

MaRS occupies 1.5 million square feet on downtown Toronto’s hospital row and 55,000 square feet at a Waterfront Toronto building. It has 120 tenants including startups, venture capitalists and foreign multinational giants and provides advisory services to startups building health and climate technologies.

The organization receives two-thirds of its revenue from provincial and federal grants.

MaRS has experienced a substantial drop in non-government grant revenues, including fees for services to startups, donations and event sponsorships, since 2019, the year before the pandemic began. Non-government revenues fell to $10.1-million in its fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, from $29.1-million four years earlier.

Total revenues dropped by 40 percent, to $29.6-million in fiscal 2023 from 2019 levels, while employee costs rose by 2.5 per cent over that period, reaching $23.9-million last year. MaRS lost money in all five years. Ms. Nankivell’s predecessor, Yung Wu saw his salary jump by 37 per cent, to $650,625 last year from $475,000 in 2019.

Meanwhile, MaRS reached the end of a two-year extension of its funding agreement with the Ontario government two months ago that had the province kick in $10-million annually. A portion of its federal government funding, for a small business-assistance program, ran out on Dec. 31, and its future government funding status is uncertain.