Roshni Wijayasinha: Implementing a Modern Digital Marketing Focus

Roshni Wijayasinha is a marketing professional with over 15 years of marketing experience in the tech sector. Having worked on top consumer brands on the agency side, she has built her reputation by bringing her creativity and strategic insights to leading global tech brands. Most recently, she has built out marketing teams and programs at a number of North American innovators, and has started her own Marketing company, Prosh Marketing.

Roshni began her career working at what was then the largest communications company in Canada, Cossette. Starting as an intern, working full time while still a business student at Wilfrid Laurier University in a different city, she scheduled night classes and leveraged her time commuting to complete her homework. Working in the early days of digital marketing, she worked on what was then called an “interactive” team and was hired to officially join the team when she graduated, handling project management for accounts like the Toronto Film Festival and General Mills.

She then went on to work at Microsoft where she was a Product Manager on the Windows Live team. Here, she executed her first big product launch when she identified an opportunity in the Canadian market for the storage product, Windows Live Skydrive (now OneDrive). Bartering media space with other Microsoft properties and working with the internal marketing team, she achieved strong awareness of the product in-market and after the first month, the Canadian team had the 3rd most users globally, behind the giants, US and India.

At that point, Roshni decided to pursue an MBA so that she could position her future career towards leadership and management. She graduated from the Schulich School of Business at York University’s MBA program where she was on the Dean’s List and also received the Dr. Herman Overgaard Award for International Marketing.

After her MBA, Wijayasinha worked at Sony Ericsson (which became Sony Mobile) where she managed consumer marketing, launching many mobile phones and accessories. She developed many different channels, starting in Canada and then expanding her role to include the US. Her capstone project was developing Sony’s Major League Gaming sponsorship to help launch the Xperia Play smartphone in the US. The sponsorship was so successful, it expanded to multiple markets and earned Roshni the Sony Ericsson Global Select award.

Roshni wanted to try her hand at Product Marketing so she moved to Kobo, where she took leadership and developed a team to launch several products, personally taking on the go-to-market for 5 ereaders in over 15 markets, including one of the leading eReaders at the time, Kobo Aura HD.  In addition, she also implemented an overall organizational translation process, streamlining the company’s approach to marketing in 10+ languages. This won her Kobo’s Unsung Heroes award in 2013. Roshni was also recognized for her work at Kobo with three promotions, culminating in her becoming the Global Product Marketing lead reporting to Chief Revenue Officer.

For all of her achievements, especially those at Kobo, Roshni was also awarded Marketing Magazine’s Top 30 under 30 in 2013. She also was named one of DX3 Top 100 Digital Marketing Professionals in 2014 and 2015, and one of the Women of Microsoft in 2014.

At this point, Roshni wanted to lead her own Marketing team so she moved to JUICE Mobile where as the Head of Marketing reporting to the CEO, led her team to launch the world’s first mobile programmatic platform, Nectar. She also spearheaded the company’s marketing expansion into the US Market (from Canada), and as a result, she exponentially increased the visibility of the company and its products amongst media industry giants, positioning the JUICE for its future acquisition by Yellowpages.

Roshni was then hired as the VP of Marketing of Thinking Capital, where she rebranded the company from AdvanceIT and rebuilt the Marketing function. Opening up the company’s Toronto office with the Chief Strategy Officer, Roshni led company-first marketing programs across a number of channels. Her work in setting up the Marketing infrastructure paved the path for Thinking Capital’s 9 figure acquisition in 2018.

Roshni’s next role was as the VP of Marketing at Benecaid Health Benefits Solutions, where she was hired to lead the Marketing team in implementing a new digital marketing focus and launch a special growth project. Working with the EVP of Corporate Development, they led a cross-functional team to build an industry leading online benefits platform with a companion mobile app – Honeybee Benefits.

Her leadership was again recognized, being named one of 360 Insights’ #WomeninTech in 2017, Synthesio Top Canadian Marketers to Follow on Social also in 2017, and Sri Lanka’s Women in Management Canadian Marketing Award in 2018.

Roshni then joined Foxquilt as their CMO, building out the marketing plan and team to go-to-market in the fall of 2019. Leading the initial go-to-market strategy, brand and messaging, content plan, public relations footprint, digital marketing roadmap, social media, and website development, she nurtured the marketing team’s growth from a high-growth startup to a formidable insur-tech.

Roshni believes in continuous learning.  After her MBA, she obtained her Chartered Marketer designation, and most recently, completed the Disruptive Strategies course at Harvard School of Business Online.

Roshni has always been entrepreneurial – she started her first business teaching art and piano to the neighbourhood children, growing through marketing efforts like flyer-ing and a referral program. Her parents were also entrepreneurs, inspiring her to launch her own Marketing company, Prosh Marketing, where she helps startups and SMBs with Marketing Strategy, Planning and Fractional Marketing Leadership, having helped over 45 companies.

Community has also always been important for Roshni. She’s an alumni mentor at her university and has mentored with the American Marketing Association and Futurpreneur. She has also participated in a number of speaking engagements to share her unique perspective and experiences, including a keynote speech at York’s Women in Leadership conference, hosting a workshop at DX3, Canada’s biggest retail, marketing and technology event, and hosting Foxquilt’s Entrepreneur Summit, a multi-panel event for business owners, founders and startups. Some of the panels she’s participated in include ones from Lean in Canada, University of Toronto’s Young Entrepreneur Conference, and The Canadian Fractional and Interim Executives Conference.

Roshni has judged the Canadian Marketing Awards for several years and even has her own podcast, Lunchtime Launchtime, where she interviews founders and shares their valuable insights to her podcast listeners. She is also a member of the Forbes Communications Council and a contributing writer to Forbes.

A passionate marketer, Roshni has had a notable career that has touched many companies, marketers and customers. She is equally excited about the next stage in her career as she goes on to help even more businesses and people grow.