Sean Sturge
COO & Founding Partner
A founding partner and Chief Operating Officer of PortaVia, Sean oversees the operations of both PortaVia and its various operating companies, standardizing the operating model of each partner company and reporting back to PortaVia’s advisory board. He is a catalyst for business transformation, leveraging a diverse background in sales and marketing, corporate development, and organizational optimization that aligns with PortaVia’s goal of scaling and improving businesses. At PortaVia, Sean’s expertise and hands-on approach to operational oversight helps partners create more capacity, focus, and discipline.
Prior to PortaVia, Sean held strategic advisory roles for some of the regions most exciting entrepreneurial projects such as Cabot Cape Breton Resort in Inverness, NS and spearheaded a 1000-acre hospitality development in Margaree, NS. In senior roles with established industry leaders such as Bell Canada, xwave Solutions, and J.D. Irving Ltd., he optimized sales and marketing efforts, managed acquisition and divestiture files, and led several organizational transformation projects.
Sean holds an MBA in Strategy from the University of British Columbia and is a finance graduate of Saint Mary’s University. He has also studied at the Manchester Business School (UK) and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sean has two children (Molly and Liam) and when he is away from work you can likely find him in a rink coaching high school hockey.
Richard Landzaat
CFO & Founding Partner
Richard is the Chief Financial Officer and founding partner of PortaVia. He provides financial oversight for all of PortaVia’s companies and guides our investment decisions and forecast models relying on decades of financial advisory experience. Richard finds and addresses financial gaps that hold businesses back. This forms a key part of PortaVia’s goal of combining disciplined financials with strategic intuition to foster long-term, sustainable growth.
A Chartered Professional Accountant, Richard is a business graduate of Dalhousie University and earned his CA designation in 1993. He has served as a senior financial officer for multiple corporations and has led over a dozen multimillion-dollar acquisitions. His experience expands all aspects of financial accounting, forecast modeling, strategic planning, and business consulting.
Richard is also the president and founder of an independent financial services practice in Dartmouth, NS, providing a full suite of bookkeeping, financial accounting, and advisory services. This includes acting in CFO-for-hire roles and delivering cloud-based accounting solutions to clients across the region for over 10 years.
Richard is an avid runner, competing in numerous half and full marathons. He lives in Dartmouth with his wife Heather and their fur baby Cosmo.
Harold Daley
CEO & Founding Partner
As CEO and founding partner of PortaVia, Harold provides overall governance to the firm while paying particular focus towards the identification, qualification and onboarding of new PortaVia companies. Harold’s decades of leadership in real estate development and property management also provides a disciplined approach to our investment philosophy and a seasoned perspective to our management ecosystem. This perspective embodies PortaVia’s commitment to working with good people who want to be great, fostering an environment where collaborative success drives growth.
After studying at Saint Mary’s University, Harold spent over 30 years in real estate development and property management, managing more than 4 million square feet of commercial office and institutional buildings along the way. Starting out his career as one of the youngest GM’s with Oxford Properties Group in the late 90s, Harold joined Ashford Properties in 2000, leading the development and facility management of the company’s portfolio. He went on to run the company’s Nova Scotia division, assuming the role of President in 2011.
For the past four years, Harold has also been CEO and Co-founder of Quest Capital and President of Triquest Investments, setting up property management platforms and leading the successful acquisition of strategic development lands and assets across Atlantic Canada.
Harold lives in Halifax with his wife Rachel and two children Charlie and Hilary.