"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every problem, and an optimist sees the opportunity in every problem."
– Winston Churchill
MEET DAVE
Dave Dinesen is a seasoned CEO, Board Member, Angel and Venture Capital investor. As a serial entrepreneur with a focus on mission and building great teams, Dave is invested in technology solutions that address global challenges like food security, AI, health tech, peer learning, and fintech, in addition to a 25-year career in technology-enabled service companies with a specific focus on background screening.
As CEO of both public and privately held companies, Dave understands the landscape and challenges businesses face in today’s environment. Assembling the very best talent and teams to execute a vision is Dave’s true passion.
Dave has been featured in numerous publications including Forbes, The Globe and Mail and has been named Top 500 most influential leader in both 2021 and 2022. You can also hear Dave in a few TEDx presentations on the topic of Vertical Farming and indoor Ag Tech.
COMPANIES
From 2022 to 2025, Dave Dinesen served as Chief Operating Officer of MacKay CEO Forums, one of Canada’s largest peer learning organizations with more than 1,200 CEO and executive members. Through professionally facilitated peer groups, members grow and learn by sharing real-world experiences rather than advice or opinion.
As COO, Dave partnered with founder Nancy MacKay to advance the company’s mission of becoming the world’s premier CEO and executive peer learning organization. Under his leadership, MacKay CEO Forums continued to embody its vision of populating the world with inspiring leaders.
From 2015 - 2022, Dave served as Chief Executive Officer of CubicFarm Systems Corp.™, TSX: CUB, which is a Vancouver, BC-based agriculture technology company specializing in automated vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture.
The globally patented CubicFarms™ technology is an automated vertical farm growing machines that grow more produce, in less space, using less labour, energy, and water than any other vertical farming system. These systems are designed for commercial-scale production of leafy greens, herbs, microgreens, and other crops, and can be installed virtually anywhere on earth to produce consistent crops 52 weeks a year.
During his time at CubicFarms, Dave and the CubicFarms team acquired HydroGreen Global. Located in South Dakota, USA, HydroGreen designed the optimal animal feed technology producing quality fresh forage regardless of season or weather using a fraction of the water compared to traditional crop production. One person can seed and harvest with the touch of a button. Fresh Forage is highly nutritious and highly digestible, promoting better animal performance and health.
Dave was Chairman of ModoHR, a Vancouver, BC-based technology-driven HR company from 2018 - 2022. ModoHR automates and continually creates scalable, compliant processes to deliver accurate Canadian background data in real time.
ModoHR has comprehensive web applications that offer a single, unified workflow for requesting and monitoring results in a secure environment that ensures the privacy of your information. ModoHR's goal is to efficiently and securely deliver accurate information in real time with previously unreachable levels of automation.
ModoHR was acquired 100% by Checkr in 2022.
Dave founded the BackCheck side of SterlingBackcheck in 1997. BackCheck quickly became Canada’s leading and largest background screening company, and after expanding to the UK and South Asia, one of the largest in the world. With a team of over 500 amazing “BackCheckers”, BackCheck was one of the true innovators and trailblazers and has screened over half of the Canadian workforce, and served the majority of the country’s largest employers.
In 2012, BackCheck was acquired by US-based Sterling Infosystems. Dave continued to grow the merged company, becoming President of the Canadian and UK Divisions. The merged company, SterlingBackCheck, was then acquired by a private equity division of Goldman Sachs in 2015, which facilitated Dave’s exit after 18 amazing years.
As Founder, President, and CEO from 1997 to 2012, Dave Dinesen built BackCheck into Canada’s largest background screening company and the eighth largest worldwide. BackCheck provided pre-employment background checks, including criminal, credit, and reference verifications, helping organizations make safer and more reliable hiring decisions.
Under Dave’s leadership, the company made background screening a standard business practice, served the majority of Canada’s largest employers, and expanded into the UK and South Asia with a team of more than 500.
In 2012, BackCheck was acquired by US-based Sterling Infosystems, where Dave led as President of the Canadian and UK Divisions. Following SterlingBackCheck’s sale to Goldman Sachs in 2015, Dave exited after 18 years of leadership, growth, and innovation.
