René Azeez

René Azeez is the Senior Director of Strategy and Enterprise Initiatives at the MaRS Discovery District. Throughout his career, he has been focused on driving business strategy to enable organizations, partners, & clients to maximize growth. René has performed management & leadership roles in world-class market intelligence, management consulting, and innovation focused organizations. Currently, he is the strategy leader for the Venture Services arm of the MaRS Discovery District, among the largest urban innovation hubs in the world, where he is focused on designing transformations that have the potential to unlock long-term prosperity for the entirety of the Canadian technology ecosystem including government, capital providers, corporates, and a carefully selected portfolio of the highest potential Canadian technology ventures spanning all technology sectors.

René started his career as a market analyst and was ultimately promoted to lead a global market intelligence team based in Toronto, India and China, with the Millennium Research Group (MRG), a division of the Decision Resources Group (DRG). René has spoken at conferences as a healthcare market expert and routinely performed duties as a DRG brand ambassador. From there, René utilized his healthcare expertise as a senior healthcare strategist with Insync, a division of Publicis Health, focusing on companies in the pharmaceutical space. Rene not only drove complex healthcare strategies for client partners and supported business development, but focused deliverables on insight generation through the lens of behavioral economics, providing a unique approach to healthcare market research.

René attended Woodsworth College at the University of Toronto, where he studied Developmental Biology. He also has an Executive MBA from HEC Paris, with a specialization in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.