Peter Vanderlee: The Accomplishments

I'm still incorporating the fact that Peter's left the planet.

Few, if any, friends have had the impact that Peter has had on my life. Overall it was a hugely positive impact, filled with the ultimate highs and lows associated with anyone truly interesting.

Others have spoken well to Peter's dynamism, vision, generosity, inspiration and compassion. Something I'd like to add is his "official bio". Peter and I always found or even invented reasons to work together since we were first introduced by Shaun McLaughlin in the mid-80s.


Sometimes we were in business together. Sometimes he was the client, and sometimes I was the client as our careers criss-crossed during the IT Revolution, the Internet Revolution and more recently the Clean Technology Renaissance. Clients we worked together on over the years included IBM, Xerox, Dell, EDS, Microsoft, Transport Canada, ACCO and Steelcase. But it was the smaller companies and organizations we enjoyed working with the most - the under-appreciated underdogs run by people who were creating something great out of nothing much. People like us.

The last project we worked together on, proudly, was www.considercanada.com. In the last months of his life, Peter wrote several of the company profiles for this foreign direct investment marketing initiative on behalf of Canada's "C-11" large cities. This project has received more positive press upon its launch than any other I have been involved with in my life, and Peter's success stories can take much of the credit.

It was not to be our last project, but one of many more. But, like my sorely missed friend Peter, it was a good one that will live on in many unforeseen ways. Gonna miss you man. And right now I can say I do every day.

Here's the bio that remains online at: http://market2world.com/peter-vanderlee-bio

Peter Vanderlee, Senior Communications Strategist (RIP: Peter passed away in Febuary, 2011 and is missed by family, his many friends and colleagues in the North American technology community, and the market2world team)

In addition to his experience as a business and financial journalist (Financial Times of Canada, Financial Post, Canadian Business), Senior Communications Strategist Peter Vanderlee also offers market2world clients more than 20 years of technology industry knowledge gained in senior positions with several high-growth entrepreneurial companies.

With market2world’s CEO Nathan Rudyk he co-founded Toronto-based tech marketing and PR agency Mindshare Marketing Group before it was acquired by merchant bank Balmoral Partners in 1993. Mindshare’s corporate clients included ACCO, Dell, EDS, IBM, Microsoft, Steelcase and Xerox as well as emerging innovators such as Image Processing Systems, Demand Systems and Vigilant Software.

Among other successful executive roles, Peter served as the President of BCB Voice Systems. Under his direction in the late 90s BCB increased revenue from $1.7 million to $7.1 million and gross profit from $448,000 to $4.8 million while raising more than $15 million in equity financing before its merger with International Neural Machines to become VoiceIQ in 2000.

As a strategic marketing consultant Peter helped reorganize and refocus several operating divisions of ACCO Brands, with an extensive assignment at Kensington Computer Products, which became ACCO’s fastest growing business unit between 2002 and 2006.

Between 2006 and 2008, Peter served as Executive Vice President of Phoenix-Arizona-based CopperKey, a developer of SaaS predictive marketing software, to assist with the company’s equity financing, corporate communications and market strategy.

A past director of the Ontario Software Developers Association, Peter has also served the Ontario Advisory Committee on the Computing Sector and is a past member of Innovator’s Alliance and ITAC’s Board of Governors.

A resident of Tuscon, Arizona since 2001, Peter has become involved in community economic development activity, joining the Desert Angels (a community investing network) and was elected to the Board of the Greater Tucson Economic Council. He also played a key role in setting up the highly successful and growing bilateral link between Ottawa and Tucson, and subsequent to that helped found the Canada Arizona Business Council, an organization he still serves as a Director. Peter also lectures at and advises the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Business and Public Administration.