CCI Strengthens Ontario Advocacy Team with New Director of Ontario Affairs

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) is excited to welcome Hina Ahmed to the team as Director of Ontario Affairs, a senior policy role focused on advancing CCI's advocacy work across Canada's largest provincial economy.

CCI works alongside founders and executives from Canada's high-growth tech sector to shape public policy and help Canadian companies scale at home and compete abroad. In this role, Hina will be CCI's point person for engagement with parliamentarians, public servants, and public sector leaders across Ontario, making sure domestic innovators have a genuine voice in the policy decisions that affect their ability to grow and compete. She will also work closely with members, support regional outreach, and contribute to the policy and communications work that reflects what Ontario's innovation community actually needs.

"Ontario is home to an extraordinary concentration of Canadian innovation talent and ambition, but strong companies need a policy environment that matches that potential," said Dana O’Born, Chief Strategy Officer of the Council of Canadian Innovators. "Hina knows how government works from the inside, and she genuinely cares about helping Canadian companies succeed. We're really glad to have her, and I think her presence will be felt quickly in how effectively we're able to represent our members across the province."

Hina Ahmed is a policy leader with more than 15 years of executive leadership experience across public policy, regulatory systems, strategic operations, and large-scale transformation. Prior to joining CCI, she held senior leadership roles within the Government of Ontario, where she led complex cross-sector initiatives on files including environmental compliance, green technology, enterprise funding modernization, integrated human services delivery, and inclusion-focused systems change. She is known for navigating complexity, building trust across sectors, and turning ambitious ideas into actionable outcomes.

“Ontario is one of the most important policy battlegrounds for Canadian scale-ups,” said Laurent Carbonneau, Vice President of Policy and Advocacy at the Council of Canadian Innovators. “From procurement and commercialization to talent and regulatory modernization, the choices made here have real consequences for whether domestic firms can grow and compete. Hina brings the judgment, public-sector experience, and policy instinct needed to help push that work forward.”

She brings a strong track record of public service and a practical understanding of how government can better support innovators through thoughtful policy design, stakeholder engagement, and system-level change. She holds an Honours degree from McMaster University in Political Science and Women’s Studies and a Masters in Policy from the University of Waterloo.

"There's a real moment happening right now for Ontario's innovation sector, and I didn't want to watch it from the sidelines," said Hina Ahmed. "Canadian companies are building something significant, and they deserve to have their voices heard when governments are making decisions on procurement, talent, and economic growth. I'm looking forward to doing that work alongside CCI's members and team."

Hina joins as CCI continues to grow its regional presence and build deeper relationships with policymakers across the country. Her addition to the team is a meaningful step in that effort.

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About the Council of Canadian Innovators

The Council of Canadian Innovators is a national member-based organization reshaping how governments across Canada think about innovation policy, and supporting homegrown scale-ups to drive prosperity. Established in 2015, CCI represents and works with over 180 of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies. Our members are the CEOs, founders, and top senior executives behind some of Canada’s most successful ‘scale-up’ companies. All our members are job and wealth creators, investors, philanthropists, and experts in their fields of health tech, cleantech, fintech, cybersecurity, AI and digital transformation. Companies in our portfolio are market leaders in their verticals, commercialize their technologies in over 190 countries, and generate between $10M-$750M in annual recurring revenue. We advocate on their behalf for government strategies that increase their access to skilled talent, strategic capital, and new customers, as well as expanded freedom to operate for their global pursuits of scale.