Leonard Brody

Leonard Brody has been called a “controversial torchbearer for this new world order.” He is a highly respected entrepreneur, venture capitalist, best-selling author and a 2 time Emmy nominated [1] media visionary. He has helped in raising millions of dollars for startup companies, been through one of the largest internet IPOs in history and has been involved in the building, financing and/or sale of five companies to date. Leonard was recently awarded Canada's Top 40 Under 40.

At Onvia (where he was part of the initial executive), the company was voted Canada’s number one startup in 2000 and subsequently closed a $240 Million IPO on NASDAQ.

In 2004, Brody co-founded, and was CEO of, NowPublic, a citizen journalism online news source. The company was named by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites in the world, was inducted into the Newseum in Washington and was recently acquired by the Anschutz Corporation. Currently he sits as the President of the Clarity Digital Group responsible for overseeing one of the largest online news conglomerates in the world including Examiner.com and NowPublic, which between them, share over 30 million unique visitors a month and over 300,000 contributors.

Brody also acts as an advisor to venture capital funds in the US, Europe and Asia. Throughout his career, he has advised several companies including, the Associated Press, Alliance Atlantis, Derby County Football Club, Coventry City Football Club and MTV Enterprises. In addition, he was the Senior Technology Advisor to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs & International Trade. Currently, he is one of the co-founders of GrowLab, a Vancouver & San Francisco based accelerator backed by such venture capital funds as Mohr Davidow, Innovia and Rho.

A highly sought-after public speaker, Brody has lectured at institutions such as Stanford, the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, the G8 and the United Nations. His insight has been requested by companies such as Forbes, Warner Music Group, as well as the governments of countries such as India, Israel, Ireland and South Africa. He has spoken at conferences throughout the world and his work has been featured in such publications as Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and the New York Times. He is co-author of the best selling books, “Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Jurassic Park to Java” and “Everything I Needed to Know About Business...I Learned from a Canadian” both published by John Wiley & Sons.

Brody holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from Queen's University, a law degree from Osgoode Hall and is a graduate of the Private Equity Course at the Harvard Business School.

Bibliography

• Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Jurassic Park to Java. ISBN 0-470-83202-9 (with Ken Grant, Matt Holland (writer) - Toronto: Wiley, 2002.
• Everything I Needed to Know About Business...I learned from a Canadian. Toronto: Wiley, 2005. ISBN 0-470-83637-7 (with David Raffa)