Yuri Navarro (he/him)

Since 2006, Yuri Navarro has been working with businesses, government and the non-profit sector to support the growth of the Canadian technology investment sector and Canada’s startup community.

In his role as Managing Director at Sunnyside Group, Yuri continues this work by investing in deep technology companies with disruptive innovations that are building the infrastructure for tomorrow’s solutions in AI, fintech, datacenters and related industries. As a Partner at Kanata Ventures, Yuri takes that focus one step further by helping promising technology companies from some of the world’s most rapidly emerging markets execute at a global scale by expanding into North America, the largest market in the world for Enterprise sales and technology investment.

Prior to his current roles, Yuri worked as the AI Business Development lead at Synteq Digital, a data center infrastructure and compute provider, and was a Co-Founder at Panache Ventures, one of Canada’s most active seed-stage Venture Capital firms. Yuri’s non-profit work includes his role as a member of the Board of Advisors to the Dean of the Ted Rogers School of Business in Toronto and as the former CEO of the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO), where he built and represented the Canadian early-stage technology investor community with industry and government. Over his eight-year tenure at NACO, Yuri presided over the renewal and growth of the Canadian Angel Investor, Accelerator and early-stage Venture Capital community by focusing on the growth and professionalization of Canada’s risk capital asset class.

Previously, Yuri’s time in Government included working as a Policy Advisor and then Chief of Staff to the Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Trade, and as a Policy Advisor to the Ontario Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, where he focused on smart grid, electrification and grid integration of renewable energy, electric vehicles and demand response programs for large energy consumers.

In 2009, Yuri founded NAVY Global Consulting, where he has worked since to support clients, including tech companies, VCs, CVCs and family offices to participate in the growth of the technology sector with a focus on energy, deep tech, semiconductor, artificial intelligence and fintech solutions.

Yuri is a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (Formerly Ryerson University) Commerce program at the Ted Rogers School of Management and George Brown College’s Financial Planning program and holds several designations with the Canadian Securities Institute.