Martin Fournier, President, Conexart Technologies, has made a career of founding and growing important engineering organizations in university, in a government laboratory and in industry. He played a major role in connecting Canada to the global world through optical fibre telecommunications. In particular, he pioneered Canada's entry into optical fibre trans-oceanic telecommunications. He has also made major contributions to the implementation of the first trans-oceanic systems (both Atlantic and Pacific) installed by private investors as well as assisting a number of start-up Canadian companies to start and grow their businesses in the telecommunications field.