Solmaz Shahalizadeh

Solmaz Shahalizadeh is an executive and advisor in data and product, and a founding partner of Backbone Angels, a collective focused on funding more diverse and women-founded companies. Most recently, she was the Vice President and head of Data at Shopify (NYSE: SHOP), helping it grow from 100K to 1.75M+ merchants from 2013 to 2022. In her role, Solmaz was the senior leadership team’s voice of data, evangelized a data-informed culture across the company, and played a critical role in their successful IPO in 2015.

With a passion for data-powered experiences, she started and scaled Shopify’s machine learning product portfolio and grew its data team to 500+ data scientists, engineers, and product managers. Additionally, she led the suite of merchant-facing analytical products to give Shopify merchants best-in-class analytical experiences. Solmaz is passionate about entrepreneurs and data, spending her time coaching, advising, and investing in companies that want to leverage their data for better experiences.

Solmaz won the Globe and Mail’s 2020 Report on Business Best Executive award and the Ottawa Business Journal’s 2021 Forty Under 40, both recognizing her leadership and work in Technology.