When Nova Scotia Premier-Elect Tim Houston’s campaign made news for his past in the business world, it was his time as a corporate consultant in The Bahamas that drew headlines. But it is the nearly two years he spent running software startup Znanja that typify a broader trend in Atlantic Canada’s innovation economy.

A roster of Atlantic innovation-driven entrepreneurs have been phasing between the worlds of business and government, running for office and often winning major elections.

Houston’s Znanja developed an AI system for converting Word documents into a format compatible with elearning software. And though Houston left to become an MLA in 2013, the company he helped build now has offices on five continents.

In a region that has historically been noted for its staid politics and less-than-vibrant economy, the emergence of this new breed of entrepreneur-cum-politician has coincided with the growth of the East Coast’s now dynamic startup ecosystem and a shift in the focus of government towards nurturing high-tech industries.

Here’s a look at six other entrepreneurs who have waded into politics:

Jill Green

Jill and Derrick Green launched Fredericton-based Green Imaging Technologies in 2006, using technology developed at the University of New Brunswick to make it easier, faster and more economical for petroleum companies to study rock core samples extracted during the exploration process. The company received investment from the First Angel Network in 2006 and began to reward investors eight years later with annual dividends. Jill Green ran for the Progressive Conservatives in Fredericton North in the past two elections, and today is the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure.

Danny Williams

Before he was premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Williams was a telecom entrepreneur. His company, Cable Atlantic, was once the main cable provider servicing Newfoundland and Labrador, until its sale to Rogers Communications in 2000 for $232 million. The same year, Williams ran for and won the leadership of Newfoundland’s Progressive Conservative Party, making good on longstanding rumors about his designs on political office. After he departed government in 2010 with some of the highest approval ratings of any politician in Canadian history, Williams returned to the business world as the owner of DEWCOR, which has gone on to become one of the largest real estate developers in the province.

Joanna Killen

Killen, now a city councillor in Saint John, spent half a decade as part of the city’s startup community. She served first as the Entrepreneur Development Manager for Enterprise Saint John, and then as the CEO of Momentum Canada -- a consultancy she co-founded in 2017 to match people who wanted to learn sales skills with young companies that could not afford experienced sales staff.

Susan Holt

A dyed-in-the-wool business luminary, Holt took on her first startup job in 2007, when she became the HR Director for Chalk Media. After the company was sold to Blackberry, then called Research in Motion, in 2009, she spent a year overseeing the integration of the Chalk team, before going on to become the CEO of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce. While she was on maternity leave in 2018, she ran for a seat in New Brunswick’s legislature as a member of the Liberal party. She lost that election to incumbent Green Party MLA David Coon. But after stints at the New Brunswick Business Council and as a civil servant, she went on to become Vice-President of Strategy and Sales for twin software testing startups PQA Testing and PLATO Testing in 2019, and Chief Growth Officer in 2020.

Pam Cooley

Cooley’s most significant entrepreneurial success has become a fixture of Halifax streets. CarShare Atlantic, which she ran for 10 years, grew from just nine cars to a fleet of more than 70 vehicles and 1,600 customers under her leadership. Cooley’s exit came after she negotiated the company’s sale to Monteal carshare giant Communauto, which offers its services across Canada, as well as in France. She ran for a seat in Nova Scotia’s legislature under the Liberal banner in Tuesday's election, but lost out to incumbent NDP member Susan Leblanc.

Colin Deacon

Deacon spent nearly a decade running Halifax medtech startup BlueLight Analytics, the company he founded in 2009 to sell equipment for testing the strength of the specialized lights dentists use to cure resin fillings. Under his leadership, BlueLight inked sales and distribution deals with several large medtech companies and continues to sell its checkMARC technology under a partnership with materials giant 3M that was finalized shortly after Deacon left the business. After he left the company in 2018, he was appointed to Canada’s Senate, where he now serves on the standing committee for banking, trade and commerce. Earlier this month, he told Entrevestor Nova Scotia should privatize its venture capital Crown corporation Innovacorp and instead become a limited partner in a basket of private-sector VC funds.