Brian Ford

With over 40 years of experience in finance, strategy, and management consulting, Brian is a seasoned CFO with a passion for biotechnology and innovation. He has a CPA, CA professional designation and a diploma in accounting from McGill University.  Beyond accounting and finance, Brian is skilled in mergers and acquisitions, due diligence, valuation, deal structuring, and negotiation and enjoys working with dynamic and diverse teams.

Brian's career began with EY in their Montreal office and over the course of 20 years, worked on some the Firm’s largest audit and consulting clients in a wide variety of industry sectors including mining, primary and secondary manufacturing, hi-tech, forestry, oil and gas, energy, pharmaceutical and health care, media and broadcasting, telephony, and large-scale construction among many others. Brian also served the Canadian and International professional practice, including several years in the US advising the audit and accounting practices in highly technical areas with a high-risk profile. He also worked on early AI technologies. By introducing new tools to the audit international audit practice, he helped transform how audits are conducted and documented. This exposure to such a wide array of domestic and international businesses gives him a unique perspective on approaching business challenges financial and otherwise.

Leaving EY in 2002, Brian started a successful consulting practice offering revenue management services to telephony and broadcasting clients helping them to recover unrealized revenue streams amounting to as much as 20% of overall revenues. Brian also provided business recovery services for private equity entities looking to significantly improve business valuations and monetize their investments.

In 2009, Brian joined Telesta (formerly Bioniche) as CFO. This was a late-stage therapeutics company that had a large and profitable animal health business as well as a human immunotherapeutic drug development group (bladder cancer) raising over $200M over eight years. During that time, Brian oversaw the construction of three GMP facilities for pharmaceutical production to increase operational capacity, and the monetization of a large animal health business. His leadership during 3 hostile take-over bids protected shareholders and ultimately led to a successful sale of the Company.

In 2017, Brian served as acting CFO for AIM (now Neupath), a series of clinics in pain management and other CAMs lines of therapy (now Neupath). Brian has developed and executed strategies, plans, and processes to recover the business and improve operational efficiency, financial performance, and stakeholder value. The Company went public on the TSX in early 2020 through a reverse takeover transaction. Brian also served as CFO at Acasti Pharma, a Nasdaq and TSX listed company starting in September 2020. At Acasti Pharma, Brian was responsible for transaction and M&A support, financial reporting, and finance functions and helped the Company recapitalize and acquire new assets to develop.

Most recently, Brian been coaching a start-up biotech company with a promising therapeutic approach to Parkinson’s and ALS as well as assisting a group of family physicians in the US to establish and plan a new approach to give patients in the US improved assess to primary care services.