Made in Toronto, Canada
About us
Get to know the team behind Visto
Our mission
We believe in making Canadian immigration accessible for everyone.
Our team members
Josh Schachnow
CEO and co-founder
Josh Schachnow is a Toronto-based immigration lawyer. After spending 2+ years growing his own law firm and helping hundreds of immigrants and companies navigate Canadian immigration, he realized there was no technology to help make the process easy.
So he started Visto, in an effort to automate all of the things he spent years doing manually – generating checklists, filling out forms, sending documents for signature, and more. He now spends most of his time talking to new clients, partners and working closely with the tech team to continue to improve the platform.
Alex Ghattas
CTO and co-founder
Alex is a full-stack web developer who enjoys working on creating awesome and interesting experiences that make the world a better place. As a childhood friend of Josh, the two connected over the potential that the Visto portal had, and Alex has played a crucial role in building out the technology behind the Visto website and portal from the very beginning!
Andres Vargas
Senior Software Developer
Andres is a full-stack developer with ninja powers! He is Mexican and was born in Yucatan, Mexico. Andres was the first full-time employee hired by Visto, and recently relocated to Canada so he can continue to help us build more awesome immigration tech. You can find him searching for “zodman” on the internet.
Andres is also passionate about open-source and created LMIA.work – a tool to help foreigners to land a job in Canada. He has the record for most referrals sent to the Visto portal!
Richard Berman
CMO
Richard has a long history and passion for marketing, with over 22 years in technology marketing in New York and San Francisco, as a former employment columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and extensive experience advising venture-backed startups and scale-ups.
But when Richard, a US citizen, was sponsored for Canadian permanent residence by his wife in 2018, he truly got a taste of the confusion and stress that comes with the immigration process. He knew there had to be a better solution, and was connected to Josh by a mutual friend in the legal tech space and the two have been working on Visto ever since!
Janet Bomza
Strategic Advisor
As Co-Chair & Partner of PwC Law LLP, Janet led the North American arm of PwC’s global legal immigration network, accountable for developing and executing the strategy while ensuring alignment to the global immigration practice. She built a high-performance culture, brought a high-touch/high-tech experience to the marketplace, grew the firm six-fold in six years and elevated the firm’s positioning as an industry leader. Prior to that, Janet founded, grew and led Bomza Law Group, a national law firm acquired by PwC LLP.
Janet is passionate about building positive organizational cultures through socially intelligent leadership, diversity and inclusion advocacy, and social and environmental responsibility. She is a purpose-driven advocate of ethical consumerism, sustainability and plant-based living.
Vinay Chaudhry
Strategic Advisor
Vinay is the founder and CEO of Worldwide EduConnect, a marketing and recruitment services company that supports twelve Canadian public institutions in South Asia and the Middle East. Recently, Vinay founded another company based in Canada, and came to know Josh through the Toronto tech startup network. Considering the strong overlap in their goals of helping immigrants settle in Canada, it was natural that they made a strong connection!
Vinay’s company, Maple Assist Inc., develops mobile applications for student recruitment, engagement and support. In addition, Vinay leads an international student housing company, StuHomz, which provides accommodation to international students in London, Ontario.
Zaki Mahomed
Strategic Advisor
Zaki is CEO at Growth Foundry, a product studio in San Francisco that helps fast-growing SaaS startups nail, scale, and automate their go to market strategy in order to grow faster and more profitably. Prior to this he was a Product executive at Influitive, marketing technology SaaS startup in Toronto and founded a sports games studio in Singapore.
Hailing from Pakistan, and having experienced the immigration systems up close in multiple countries, he grew interested in the talent arbitrage opportunities enabled by immigration tech. He helps the team at Visto with product and growth, along with general company building guidance.
Sharad Srivastava
Strategic Advisor
Sharad is a highly skilled business leader with over 20 years of international experience in business process consulting, business analysis, product development & specialized staffing. Sharad was assisted by Josh in setting up his company’s operations in Canada, and the two became good friends and have been working together ever since.
In his current role as the director of Pinaki (with offices in India, Singapore, the USA and Canada), he is responsible for managing global operations, including managing more than 200 employees. In this role he partners with senior business leaders in technology & HR to ensure Pinaki fulfills its client requirements & commitments, helping build blockchain product development and deployment strategies for technology companies.