A sessional instructor from York University’s Schulich School of Business has raised $3.1 million in financing to launch the expansion of a comprehensive public electric vehicle (EV) charging station network.
ChargerQuest owns and operates Canada’s most innovative smart EV charging stations, and was co-founded by York’s Stuart Browne (MBA ’09), who is also CFO of the company.
Stuart Browne
Despite the pandemic, the company successfully completed its pilot phase in 2020 and plans to raise additional capital to expand and grow its EV charging network over the next two years. Its next big mission is to deploy its charging station assets at some of the very best properties across Canada and beyond.
Beyond his role at ChargerQuest, Browne teaches the Private Equity and Venture Capital course at Schulich. He is also the founder and CEO of Pycap Venture Partners, an Investment Committee member of the Ontario Centres of Excellence and has acted as managing partner and interim CFO for a number of early-stage technology companies.
“Being an alumni and instructor at Schulich, as well as being a member of the Schulich Startups community, has allowed me to connect with a network of very enthusiastic aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as future and current industry leaders,” said Browne.
Last year, Browne was nominated for the Schulich School of Business John Peace Part-Time Faculty Teaching Award by Chris Carder and Moren Levesque, co-directors of Entrepreneurial Studies. They noted that Browne donates much of his time volunteering for Schulich events, and played a pivotal role in designing and launching the Schulich Pycap COVID-19 Business Support Centre. This initiative helped small Canadian businesses and entrepreneurs navigate the growing list of government and private-sector business support programs, while offering summer employment to at least 15 Schulich students.