Acquiring and growing
exceptional Canadian businesses.

Along the way Jim served 13 years as a founding director of Research In Motion (BlackBerry), and between SYNNEX and Danby spent several years as an investor, board member and advisor, backing more than 150 companies and writing two books on leadership and growth. At Danby he joined the board first, stepped in as CEO when the role came open, and bought the company two years later. Under his ownership it was revitalized in under three years, with a renewed focus on product innovation and a culture that encourages employees to experiment and think differently. Valcom, the most recent addition, continues to run as a stand-alone business under its own name and management team. Alongside his business career, Jim gives back extensively to his community and runs his companies on the principle of doing the right thing. He is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. Jim has done exactly what Five19 sets out to do: acquire family- and founder-owned Canadian businesses, run them hands-on, and build on what their owners created.

The Commencement Group now serves more than 700 universities and colleges and thousands of high schools every year. It is a demanding operation: a compressed selling season, hundreds of venues across the U.S. and Canada, a workforce of travelling sales staff recruited and trained fresh each spring, and perishable inventory that has to be in the right place on the right morning. Running it built a deep, hands-on understanding of logistics, people and cash flow. As the business matured, Darryl began investing its proceeds in real estate, and what started as a side investment grew into a second full-time company, IN8 Developments, which he founded and leads, building high-density residential projects in Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, London and Kingston. That led him to service and light manufacturing businesses that keep buildings running, and to Hydrastone, where the founder remains involved as an advisor and the long-time general manager became a partner, keeping the company and its people intact. For Five19, Darryl brings the perspective of someone who has both built an operating company from a single idea and partnered with a founder to carry theirs forward, and knows what it takes to run them well.

At Walker, Michael was responsible for a wide portfolio of businesses in the environmental field: composting, biosolids treatment, growing media from waste organics, grease trap and organics collection, alongside the traditional waste management services of landfill, waste transportation and logistics. Running that range of operations at once meant balancing capital-intensive infrastructure against day-to-day service work, and growing a business threefold while keeping a large, geographically dispersed workforce aligned. He specializes in business development, change management, and mergers and acquisitions. Since retiring from Walker he consults with a number of companies, serves on advisory boards, and is a TEC Canada Chair, leading two peer groups, one for CEOs and one for key executives. TEC Canada is a national executive coaching organization whose chairs convene confidential peer advisory groups where business leaders work through their real decisions together. For Five19, Michael brings the discipline of someone who has scaled an operating division inside a larger company, integrated acquisitions, and led people through change.