Verschuren, who was appointed chair, is the chair and CEO of energy storage company NRStor. She is a board member of MaRs Discovery District, and co-chairs the Smart Prosperity Leaders’ Initiative. Verschuren takes over for outgoing chair Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of Research in Motion (now BlackBerry). Mahoney is the commissioner of environmental services for York Region and Earthy is the head of Vancouver-based Female Funders. SDTC supports cleantech firms’ commercialization projects. (The Logic)

Talking point: Under the current Liberal government, the agency has increasingly focused on helping scale-up companies, particularly ones that are looking to expand in international markets. Balsillie—who was appointed by the Conservatives in 2013—scaled up RIM and took it global, but Verschuren has direct experience in the cleantech sector. NRStor is building a compressed air storage facility in a salt cave in Goderich, Ont. and also operates a business installing Tesla Powerwall units for homes. She’s also a frequent adviser to the government on sustainable-business issues. Verschuren is a member of Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains’ cleantech economic strategy table, and was part of the Generation Energy Council, a group that advised then-natural resources ministerJim Carr on Canada’s transition to a “reliable, affordable, low-carbon economy.”