Ryan Little

Vice President, Business Development
StormFisher Biogas

 

A consummate entrepreneur, Ryan garnered national press attention with his first business, a sports cards retailer that he launched in 1991 at the age of ten. A few years later, he would launch a firm that would eventually become one of the world's first business-to-business e-commerce applications for the energy industry and may have been Canada's youngest CEO of an incorporated company.

During his time as CEO of Avenir Internet Solutions, Ryan spoke regularly to business and academic audiences about the future of e-commerce as a mainstay of business. He handed over the office of CEO to the company's CFO in 1998 to focus on school, at which point the company had achieved profitability and a growing staff of 15.

During his first year at Queen's University in 1999, he cofounded an online charity, CanadaHelps, which has raised more than $60 million in charitable donations to date. Ryan is the recipient of the 2000 Young Miracle Maker Award: CIBC World Markets Children's Miracle Day, the 2001 City of Toronto Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2002 Appleby College Young Alumnus of the Year Award.

Ryan graduated with a BA from Queen's University and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.