Don Simmonds

Don is known as a “serial entrepreneur”, having started over 20 new ventures in the last 30 years. He was one of seven founders of the Lenbrook Group, a private business incubation company perhaps best known for having created Clearnet, one of Canada’s 4 wireless networks sold in 2001 to Telus.
Most recently Don was the founder, CEO and Chairman of AirIQ Inc., a public company trading on the TSX in Toronto. During his years as CEO, AirIQ was named one of Canada’s fastest growing technology companies in the Deloitte Canadian Technology Fast 500 Program and ranked 12th and 17th in PROFIT magazine’s ranking of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies for 2005, 2006. Don was a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Awards in 2005.

For 17 of the last 30 years Don and Fay have enjoyed being the youth leaders at their home church (Uxbridge Baptist), and from 1991-1994 Don left the business environment to work more intensely with youth as the National Youth Coordinator for the Canadian Baptist Federation (now Canadian Baptist Ministries). The task was to challenge and assist Canada’s 1150 Baptist churches in reaching out more effectively to young people in their communities. From 1980 to 1990 Don served as Canada’s representative to Baptist World Alliance Youth and assisted in the planning of world youth conferences in Argentina, Scotland and Zimbabwe.

Don is a private pilot, serves on a number of profit and not for profit boards, and particularly enjoys his role as head coach of the Uxbridge Tigers High School Hockey team whose motto is “winning at hockey and winning in life”!

Don and his wife Fay have been married for 33 years and have four children. Shauna (25) operates her own film company called “MakeYouThink Studios”, Craig (22) is in Economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Brett (21) is pursuing Phys Ed at Trinity Western University; and April (11) loves horseback riding as she enters Grade 6.

With their love for God and commitment to family as overriding priorities, Don and Fay have enjoyed a full life focused on two of the most rapidly changing environments: the electronics business and the teenage world.