Strategy Innovation Manager Jobs in Toronto, ON (NOW HIRING)

About MaRS

MaRS Discovery District (@MaRSDD) is a charitable organization and North America's largest urban innovation hub, dedicated to helping high-growth technology companies succeed. With a focus on climate, health sciences and other emerging technologies, MaRS supports startups tackling some of the world's most pressing issues. Through its world-class facilities, strategic programs and partnerships, MaRS accelerates the adoption of groundbreaking Canadian technology and bolsters a globally competitive innovation ecosystem. MaRS is the place where you can play a meaningful role in the innovation economy.

We understand requirements on a job posting can be daunting. If you're passionate about the role and believe you can make a meaningful impact, we want to hear from you, even if you don't meet every listed qualification. We're always looking for great talent to join our team on planet MaRS.

We actively encourage all candidates to apply, including equity-deserving communities, including those who identify as BIPOC, racialized, women, people with disabilities, and people with diverse gender identities, expressions and sexual orientations.

We want you to be comfortable being your most authentic self throughout our recruitment process. Please reach out to careers@marsdd.com if there's anything we can do to make your experience more accessible and inclusive, including accommodations. Include 'Accessibility Request' in your subject line.

About the Position

This is apermanent,full-time position, and a key member of the MaRS Corporate Innovation team. A Manager of Corporate Innovation is responsible for leading the delivery of a range of fee-for-service engagements for MaRS' partners across a variety of industries, located in Canada and internationally. These external engagements are aimed at supporting partners with adoption of innovation for inclusive growth - project examples include workshops, roundtables, innovation challenges, and technology adoption projects. These projects often involve additional engagement with stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem. This person is also responsible for supporting business development activities for acquisition or renewal of partners. It is expected for this role to establish a deep relationship with the client, proactively identifying issues and developing solutions, and to act as a leader for direct and indirect reports.

Key Responsibilities

Client Delivery

• Lead, advise or work on a project team to successfully deliver partner engagements leveragingprogram management and service delivery best practices in order to deliver outcomes that exceed client expectations, while ensuring the overall project is on budget and on time
• Lead, advise or conduct research to draw commercially relevant insights from emerging sector trends, technologies, investment opportunities, and business models, and tailor to specific client needs.
  • Activities include overall management of a program or project contract, delivery planning, tracking project schedules/ execution progress, day-to-day direction of client projects, and developing high quality reports, presentations, evaluations, and other client-facing communications materials
  • Additional activities include resource management; ensuring that direct and/or indirect reports are advised and supported throughout project work, providing mentorship and identifying growth opportunities within projects and beyond
    

Other Core Tasks

• Lead the development of research reports, policy papers, issue briefs, presentations and other productsthat would be used to support client engagements, business development, and internal strategy andthought leadership
• Actively manage and strengthen current client and stakeholder relationships with a view towards contributing to tangible innovation adoption and other specific project objectives, and identification and closing of follow-on partnership and advisory business opportunities
• Strengthen internal stakeholder relationships between different teams and departments at MaRS (i.e. Communications, Legal, Venture Services etc.), and act as a leader and advisor to colleagues, including direct and indirect reports
• Provide mentorship, identify and enable growth opportunities for team members
• Identify and provide inputon growth strategy for the Corporate Innovation team
• Share project learnings and identify opportunities to collaborate with teams to continuously improve and enhance projects undertaken at MaRS
• Create value for ventures by identifying opportunities for engagement during client deliveries, making warmintroductions, and sharing market insights
• Support with preparation of proposals and contracts, scope projects with clients, contribute to extendingwork and developing new business
• From time to time, take the lead role in design, development and delivery of Innovation Challenges whenworking with MaRS's partner organizations

Requirements

• 3+ years of previous project or client management delivery experience
• Able to put yourself in the client's shoes to understand their challenges and working collaboratively with them as a partner to help them achieve the incremental milestones on their innovation journey
• Exceptional verbal and written skills to develop and deliver narratives for engagement deliveries, deepen relationship with clients and ecosystem engagement
• Comfortable working with ambiguity, and be resourceful in developing and delivering solutions for the client while balancing multiple projects simultaneously
• Detail-oriented and mindset of continuous improvement to develop and deliver client engagements
• High degree of comfort with technical topics, specifically with regards to the electricity system, as well as business concepts and issues
• Able to think holistically about client problems and solutions, identify and connect things that the clients may have missed, apply learnings and insights across clients
• Ability to quickly learn new industries and areas of focus
• Ability to form deep client relationships, understand client's problems, identify and develop solutions to meet and exceed client's needs, close sales engagements that are often in the range of $100k - $500k
• Ability to gain the trust of clients (senior leadership) and serve as a credible resource to offer advice on the client's innovation journey
• Self-motivated to keep up-to-date with the latest trends in the sector and open-mindset to continuously learn and apply insights from across sectors
• Team player and leader - develop and mentor team members
• Able to work collaboratively within and across departments to share information and collaboratively develop new solutions
• Passionate about innovation, technology, the energy sector, and building the MaRS' Partnerships revenue stream to support MaRS' mission of helping innovators create a better world

Nice to Haves

• Graduate degree in related field
• 5+ years of professional work experience in a client facing role
• Consulting experience across multiple industries
  

Applications will close at 12pm EDT on August 18, 2026. However, we may close the posting earlier if we receive a high volume of qualified applications or if the position is filled before the deadline. We encourage interested candidates to apply as soon as possible.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

Applicants must be legally eligible to work in Canada, reside in Ontario and be willing to work out of our Toronto office (101 College Street) a minimum of 3 days per week.

Salary Range: $85,000 to $93,000 CAD, up to a 10% discretionary incentive, extended healthcare benefits, wellness spending account, 3% Company RRSP matching, and generous paid time-off.

Our Applicant Tracking System, BambooHR, does not use Artificial Intelligence (AI). From time to time MaRS may use AI in our screening, assessment, and selection processes.

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