Board of Directors
Brianna Morissette
Board Member | President & Chief Executive Officer, Ascend Aegis Corporation
Brianna Morissette is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Ascend Aegis Corporation, an AI startup developing a sleep diagnostic tool. She joined the company in 2025 as Chief of Staff and moved into the CEO role in 2026, where she leads fundraising, investor relations, partnerships, and day-to-day operations. The company's sleep diagnostic platform was built under technical co-founder Richard Bangyay.
Before Ascend Aegis, Brianna spent more than a decade in hospitality and retail management. From 2020 to 2025 she worked at JOEY Restaurant Group, moving from Day Manager to Bar Manager to Guest Service Manager, where she worked alongside the general manager of a $9.7M store and helped lead a team of 11 managers and roughly 50 staff. She is known for recruiting, training, and developing leaders, and for a practical, people-first approach to running operations.
Brianna holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Social Development from the University of Waterloo, where she worked as a research assistant to several department chairs and co-authored a paper on online dating among Canadian post-secondary students. She also volunteered for several years with a counselling service, and that background in human behaviour shapes how she leads and communicates.
Experience
- President & Chief Executive Officer, Ascend Aegis Corporation (2026–Present): Leads the company, with a focus on fundraising, investor relations, and partnerships. Oversees executive operations and internal and external communications. Works across teams to keep company priorities moving forward.
- Chief of Staff, Ascend Aegis Corporation (2025–2026): Served as a strategic partner to the CEO, overseeing executive operations and stakeholder engagement. Managed internal and external communications, investor relations, and partnership coordination. Led development of fundraising materials, presentations, and marketing assets, and supported cross-functional execution of company priorities.
- Guest Service Manager, JOEY Restaurant Group (2023–2025): Previously Bar Manager and Day Manager (2020–2025). Worked alongside the general manager of a $9.7M store, with responsibility for budgets, recruiting and training, reservations, and event sales. Led a team of 5 salaried managers, 6 hourly managers, and roughly 50 staff. Helped grow sales 6% over the prior year (2024–2025) and raised the store's lifetime Google rating from 4.0 to 4.5. Developed staff training frameworks for new location openings. As Bar Manager, kept P&L variance under 0.5% and developed two bartenders into salaried leaders.
- Research Assistant, University of Waterloo (2016–2019): Research assistant to the chairs of the Psychology, Sociology, and Sexuality, Marriage & Family Studies departments. Co-authored Digital Connections: Exploring Online Dating Among Canadian Post Secondary Students. Volunteered as an intake counsellor and children's group facilitator at KW Counselling Services (2016–2019).