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For some reason, many identity professionals—identity geeks, or the Identirati—seem to have connections to Canada. I am one of them myself. On this page, I intend to gradually compile a list of such people. I abandoned age order and arranged the list alphabetically by last name.

  • Andre Boysen — Senior Vice President at SecureKey and an OIX director. Holds a master’s degree from the University of Western Ontario (UWO).
  • John Bradley — Director of the OpenID Foundation. Born in Vancouver. Dick Hardt was once his subordinate. Co-founder of GT Group Telecom, now Rogers. Broadly involved in identity through PKI, SAML, WS-*, and OpenID. In addition to writing the US ICAM SAML and OpenID profiles, he is an author of OpenID Connect, JWT, and JWS. Currently at Ping Identity and living in Santiago, Chile.
  • Tim Bray (1955–) — Founder of OpenText. Born in Alberta and graduated from the University of Guelph. Google’s identity evangelist, working on Account Chooser and other projects. Co-author of XML.
  • Joni Brennan — CEO of DIACC and former Executive Director of the Kantara Initiative. Born in New Jersey, but now lives in Vancouver.
  • Kim Cameron (–2021) — Author of The Laws of Identity. I believe he was from Toronto. He lived in Paris for many years while at Microsoft. He passed away in 2021 and is greatly missed.
  • Ann Cavoukian (born 1952) — Served for many years from 1997 as the Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario. Originator of Privacy by Design.
  • Pam Dingle — Founder of the Pamela Project, an open-source InfoCard project. Born in Calgary. After working at Ping Identity, she is now a senior figure at Microsoft.
  • Kaliya Hamlin — Identity Woman and facilitator of IIW.
  • Phil Hunt — Former Director of IdM Standards at Oracle. Deeply involved in Kantara’s IGF, OAuth, and other efforts. Holds a graduate degree from Queen’s University.
  • Dick Hardt — Famous for his legendary Identity 2.0 presentation. Former director of the OpenID Foundation, one of the authors of OpenID 2.0, and an editor of OAuth 2.0. Currently at Hallo.
  • Paul Madsen — An identity geek famous for his spicy sarcasm. Co-author of SAML. Formerly at NTT and Ping Identity. Lives in Ottawa. Holds a master’s degree from the University of Western Ontario (UWO) and a doctorate from Carleton University.
  • Steve Mann — Born in Hamilton. A pioneer of lifelogging and a professor at the University of Toronto.
  • Nat Sakimura (Natsuhiko Sakimura) — Chair of the OpenID Foundation. Also involved in founding the Kantara Initiative and Open Identity Exchange (OIX). Co-author of OpenID Connect, JWT, and JWS. Promotes standardization on ISO technical committees for identity and privacy. Holds a master’s degree from the University of Western Ontario (UWO).
  • David Turner — Involved in identity-related standardization at ISO and ITU-T. Holds a master’s degree from the University of Western Ontario (UWO). Formerly at Microsoft and now at the FIDO Alliance.
  • Stephen Ufford — CEO of Trulioo. Lives in Vancouver.

And so on…

I will continue adding people whenever I notice them.