As a seasoned marketer, community builder, and strategist, Elena Yunusov has a diverse career spanning emerging technology, the public sector, finance, and journalism. She currently leads the Human Feedback Foundation nonprofit focused on building a more transparent and open future for AI, and co-runs LLM Reading Group on Discord with 1,200+ members and AI researchers from OpenAI, Cohere, Hugging Face & various universities with the purpose of talking through their AI research.
Elena has held prominent roles such as the Head of Marketing at Borealis AI, an AI research institute founded by RBC, and at Highline Beta, a seed VC and corporate venture development firm. Her work has involved collaborating with leading corporations like RBC, AB InBev, Kraft Heinz, Aviva, and Intuit, and working with startups that drive corporate innovation. She also led marketing and brand at Shyft Network, a blockchain credentials verification protocol, and founded CryptoCamp, an unconference focused on showcasing enterprises and startups building blockchain products. Through her firm, Communicable Inc., Elena has served a wide range of startups and corporate clients, including Ritual, Deloitte, MaRS, DMZ, Wealthsimple, Influitive, City of Toronto, Design Exchange, TWG, and others. In her journalism days, she covered innovation and tech as a senior editor for BetaKit, a leading startup and technology news publication.
In addition to this work, Elena played a pivotal role in growing Maker Festival, a showcase of science, 3D printing, tech, and hardware innovation, into an annual event at the Toronto Public Library, attracting more than 11,000 attendees. And as a co-founder for #hohoto, she helped raise over $350,000 for Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank between 2009 and 2014 by creating a hyper-connected social media movement that demonstrated the power of self-organizing online groups.
