About Us

Bringing honesty and transparency to the real estate experience, one agent at a time.

We built WOWA when we realized how little most people knew about real estate agents. Our goal is to give Canadians the chance to find the best real estate agent for them.

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Our Core Products

All-in-One Platform for Real Estate and Finance

WOWA.ca is an industry-leader in real estate and finance technology used by over 2 million Canadians anually. With a wide range of comprehensive financial tools and calculators, consumers can now plan for the financial implications of buying, selling, or managing a home. Our portfolio of over 370 financial and real estate tools are backed by data from leading financial institutions and analyses of real estate markets across Canada.

Real Estate Services Marketplace

WOWA.ca enables buyers, sellers, and renters to select top real estate agents in their area based on their unique home needs. We empower agents to advertise a full range of factors: commission rate, experience, skills, personal biography, Q&A, and videos. Consumers can choose from an unbiased selection of hundreds of agents across Canada while our agents benefit from an exceptional lead conversion rate.

Management

Hanif Bayat

Founder & CEO

Dr. Hanif Bayat is the CEO and Founder of WOWA Leads. He founded WOWA Leads after realizing the untapped potential in the real estate market for an agent marketplace. He has had extensive experience as a Quantitative Analyst at RBC and BMO, engineering mathematical models to predict market behavior. A Ph.D graduate in Computational Chemical Physics from the University of Toronto, he has worked with quantitative models in other fields for decades and has published numerous papers and reports about topics such as protein folding and liquid crystals.Profile of Dr. Hanif Bayat

David Zhao

VP of Product Development

David Zhao is the VP of Product Development at WOWA. He leads the WOWA development team with a mission to create the best experience for our users. He has experience across a wide range of competencies ranging from cloud infrastructure to finance and real estate. He has previously worked at RBC and a leading LMS technology company.

Development Team

Jonathan Park

Senior Full Stack Developer

Jonathan Park is a Senior Full Stack Developer at WOWA. He has an intuitive eye for design and uses an analytical approach to engineering new applications for our visitors. He has Bachelor’s of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and has won numerous accolades during his time there for his contribution to the student community. He has previously managed his own company specializing in martial arts education.

Shawn Li

Product and Cloud Solutions Engineer

Shawn Li is a Product and Cloud Solutions Engineer at WOWA. He has previously worked at Sinopec and has a M.Eng. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He specializes in cloud computing and data analysis and has led cloud-native projects with real-time data aggregation and analysis.

Anirudh Kalia

Full Stack Developer

Anirudh Kalia is a Full Stack Developer at WOWA. He has a passion for frontend and has experience with both Vue.js and React.js. He is currently studying Computer Science at the University of Toronto and is an active member of the Rotman Commerce FinTech Association. He has previously developed an online real-time trading platform and an online Python IDE.

Product and Content Team

Sumant Mathur

US Product Manager

Sumant Mathur is a Product Content Manager at WOWA, in charge of developing content for WOWA’s USA expansion. He has extensive experience in both retail and corporate finance from his previous role at BMO Financial Group. He has also worked on Quality and Risk Management at Deloitte Canada. Apart from work, he enjoys trading stocks and cryptocurrency, helping non-profit organizations, and playing soccer. He has a B.Comm. from Rotman Commerce at the University of Toronto.

Jimmy Nguyen

Financial/Real Estate Content Architect

Jimmy Nguyen is a Financial and Real Estate Content Architect at WOWA. He also serves as the Vice President for the Political Science and Pre-Law Association at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). He has previously worked at a Toronto-based investment group and the Department of Management at UTM. He has a B. Comm from the University of Toronto where he was a finalist in the Rotman Portfolio Management Competition and is currently pursuing a CFA certification.

Karen Fu

Financial/Real Estate Content Architect

Karen Fu is a Financial and Real Estate Content Architect at WOWA. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Accounting and Financial Management at the University of Waterloo, with a minor in Music. Karen has previously held positions as a CPA Articling Student at MNP and as an Accounting Analyst at BMO Capital Markets. She is passionate about finance and real estate and enjoys reading and playing violin in her spare time.

Kevin Lai

Financial/Real Estate Content Architect

Kevin Lai is a Financial and Real Estate Content Architect at WOWA. He is a fintech specialist with an interest in algorithmic trading. He has previously worked at BMO and is a Research Associate of the Rotman Commerce FinTech Association. He is currently studying Finance and Economics with a CS minor at the University of Toronto.

Customer Growth

Julie Baron

Customer Growth Lead

Julie Baron is a Customer Growth Lead at WOWA. She has extensive experience in politics and previously worked in the Ontario government and as a Staff Writer for The Foreign Observer. She is also well-connected in the Francophone community and served as the Co-President of Français de l'Université de Toronto. In addition to English and French, she also knows German and Mandarin Chinese and has lived in three different countries. She is now completing a B.A. in Political Science and Criminology from the University of Toronto.

Advisors

Blake Witkin

Executive Advisor

Blake Witkin is a pioneer in Canada’s angel investment community, specializing in the development and commercialization of emerging technologies. He is a co-founder of Maple Leaf Angels, Toronto’s largest angel group, and is currently a board member and former Chair of the Board of Directors of Angel Investors Ontario. Blake has been personally involved in many technology startups, including as a senior executive and private investor of Image Processing Systems Inc., a TSX-listed corporation that was ranked #1 in growth by Profit Magazine.

Rostam Dinyari

US Operations Technology Advisor

Rostam Dinyari is a serial entrepreneur with a decade of experience in Silicon Valley companies. He has previously worked at Bosch’s Venture Capital division and built extensive connections in the tech industry. He is now leading strategic AI initiatives at Google Cloud and works with customers and technology partners to develop AI applications for the industry. He has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Emmerson Smart

Real Estate Advisor

Mohamedreza Farahani

Technical Advisor

Mohamedreza Farahani is a Data Scientist Consultant at BCG. He has over a decade of experience tackling business models and revenue generation from an algorithmic perspective. He is the co-founder of a Business Intelligence and CRM platform, Jubin Co. Prior to BCG, he has worked as a Business Analyst and Data Scientist at TD and SOTI.

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