Laura Easton

Strategy Consultant

2023

Early-stage strategic and financial advisory

Business Operations Manager

2022 - 2022

Optiva was a seed-stage MedTech company dedicated to improving IVF success rates. I worked closely with the CEO to manage strategic initiatives and day-to-day business operations, including: investor relations, product procurement, OKR tracking, recruitment processes, Series A strategy, business & financial planning, and M&A options.

Investment Associate

2020 - 2022

Led investment into a women's health venture; was responsible for the tracking of, communications with, and advisory for over a dozen early-stage portfolio companies; and supported the recruitment, onboarding, and coaching of 2 new investment associates.

Investment Analyst

2018 - 2020

Real Ventures is a founding investor in the Canadian ecosystem and has invested in over 280 startups since 2007. As the Analyst for Real's pre-seed fund, I qualified over 1000 prospective investment opportunities, cross-sector and cross-technology stack; and supported over 50 investment decisions from start to finish via business, market and financial analysis, and legal diligence.

Digital Business Analyst

2016 - 2018

FCB Chicago is Chicago's oldest advertising agency, leveraging transformative ideas and storytelling to drive change. Within 3 months, I established a quantitative framework to highlight and prioritize new business opportunities for clients across the Financial, CPG, and Life Science industries; contributing to new business wins. In collaboration with strategy, dev, and analytics teams, I helped deliver 4 digital projects; leading technical and business requirement gathering and documentation.

Senior Research Associate

2016 - 2016

Research Associate

2015 - 2016

Forrester connects the dots between diverse and dynamic issues, to help Fortune 500 companies navigate pressing challenges and effectively drive digital transformation. As a RA, I managed the research cycle for 24 reports across Management Consulting, Digital Services, Big Data and Connected Technologies topics; and established a framework to track and analyze consultancy M&A activity, informing advisory calls and market trend reports.

Senior IT Consultant

2012 - 2015

As a Senior Consultant, I implemented mentorship and recognition programs to address lack of motivation in the workplace - improving IT troubleshooting skills and employee morale.

Research Consultant

2014 - 2014

Fletcher Spaght provides growth-oriented strategy consulting to emerging healthcare and technology companies. As a summer consultant, I fulfilled market and competitor analysis work for 3 clients concurrently; Developed market valuation and visualized strategic use cases for a telecommunications client; and led primary research (N>200) and survey recruitment to assess the market growth of video remote interpretation services in the US healthcare industry.

Office Manager

2012 - 2012

Aquaback Technologies is solving the world's water crisis with an innovative distiller that uses vapor compression technology. As an Office Manager, I supported patent filing and lab testing, and optimized document management processes.

Business Analyst Contractor

2011 - 2011

Analyzed master customer database to identify and resolve duplications; Processed customer orders in SAP to ensure efficient, effective sales management

President

2008 - 2011

Provided and managed quality aircraft detailing services for the interior and exterior of private airplanes