Joe Strolz

In leadership roles with some of the world's most innovative brands (Shopify, Snap, Microsoft, AOL/Verizon), Joe's global experience spans organization leadership, business transformation, and market expansion. Over more than 25 years, Joe’s experience has touched multiple domains, including e-commerce, telcom, advertising technology, public sector, and publishing.

As VP, Operations at Shopify, Joe is responsible for the global operations of the company’s largest RnD organization; shipping the product roadmap for everything that comes in-the-box when a merchant signs up for Shopify.

As COO of the public company EQ Inc., Joe led all commercial facets of the company including revenue, product, marketing, and technical operations, in addition to working with the Board on strategy and M&A.

As Country Manager at Snap, Joe led the re-positioning of the Canadian business, from "hard-to-buy/hard-to-measure" into a credible audience platform delivering competitive third-party verified return-on-advertising-spend for hundreds of brands across thousands of campaigns.

While Head of Americas for AOL, Joe led regional expansion in Latin America. Prior to this regional leadership role, Joe led the Canadian business, as well as the complex global integration of Microsoft's advertising business into AOL, resulting in the successful unification of people, process, platforms, and tools across 9 countries, including the US.

Before joining AOL, Joe led Microsoft's advertising business in Canada, held progressively senior leadership roles at some of Canada’s largest media and technology companies, and served a two-year term as Chair of IAB Canada’s Board of Directors. Joe is a Director on the Boards of lg2 (Canada's largest independent creative agency) and Media City (a National Digital Out of Home platform), and is a mentor in a variety of programs.

Joe holds an MBA in Strategic Management from the Sauder School of Business at UBC.