We’re Celebrating
20 Years!

This February 18th marks 20 years of PiVAL. It’s been quite a ride to say the least. What started with just one service, has now grown to a full range of transportation services, including intermodal, cross-docking, over the road transportation, drayage, and expedite, along with five fully integrated warehouses across Canada. And all thanks to the hard work of all the amazing PiVAL employees, the customers that trusted us to handle their supply chain needs, and the partners that have supported us along the way.

Thank you for all your support over the last two decades, none of this would be possible without you. We look forward to our continued partnership.

This video is an interview with Mario La Barbera, the President of PiVAL, talking about his 20 year journey. We hope you enjoy it.

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Our Mission, Vision & Values

Mission: As a value-added logistics partner, we maximize every talent, asset, and effort to provide the most optimized and innovative end-to-end supply chain solutions for our partners.

Vision: To be the ultimate customer centric 3PL partner of choice, delivering unparalleled supply chain solutions by leveraging innovation, cutting edge technology and operational excellence.

Values: In everything we do, the values listed in the following slides guide us in delivering optimal and sustainable logistics and supply chain solutions.

Meaning Behind PiVAL

The symbol for “Pi”, the Greek letter commonly used in mathematics.

It represents a mathematical constant which represents our movement, our consistency, and our certainty.

Empower Partnership

More than working together towards a common goal, partnership means doing everything we can to ensure our customers’ prosperity, as they help us prosper.

Maximize Value

Before we do anything for our customers, we ensure that it creates more value for their investment in us.

Always Do Better

We identify processes that produce positive outcomes, use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress, analyze results and implement improvements. Then we repeat the cycle.

Respect for All

We carefully curate team members based on their ability to contribute to our customers’ success. We are all experts in our roles. We have a voice. We listen. We learn. We improve.

Commitment - Give Everything We Have

We empower all our people, leverage all our assets and apply all our technology to enable our customers’ to reach their logistics, supply chain and overall business objectives.

Meet our Team

Mario La Barbera

President

Read the Bio

Mario La Barbera

President

After graduating from McGill University, eager to apply his studies, Mario decided to move to the US. Based in Philadelphia and New York, he never turned down an opportunity to travel to virtually all east coast ports, intermodal terminals and hundreds of plants to learn more about supply chains and transportation.

After five years, he returned to Canada and held Director roles for two large Class 1 railroads. Realizing his entrepreneurial skills were better used in smaller organizations, Mario created Acurail and later co-founded PiVAL International in 2003, based in Montreal.

Under his leadership and strategic guidance, PiVAL built a strong team overseeing operations in dedicated warehousing, cross dock, expedite and integrated transportation solutions. Mario has more recently embarked on changing the company culture to embrace operational excellence using the Shingo Model.

Mario is on several transportation committees and chaired logistics’ councils to advise governments and policy makers. A proud father of three active children and married to his childhood friend, Mario’s entire family shares his devotion to fundraising for children’s hospitals.

Rose Di Pancrazio

VP of People & Culture

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Rose Di Pancrazio

VP of People & Culture

Rose graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Commerce. Her professional career began in auditing before she assumed various roles in supply chain companies across Canada and the US in the electronics, food, beauty and retail industries.

She joined PiVAL in 2003 to help launch the company. In her role as Special Projects Manager, Rose was directly involved in numerous start-ups of new warehouses and managed all procurement. In 2015, the role of Risk Manager was added to her procurement role. As Risk Manager, she became responsible to identify and mitigate financial, safety and security risks for PiVAL and implemented standard H&S, security procedures and policies throughout the company.

In 2018, Rose assumed a leadership role in human capital and was promoted to Vice-President – People & Culture in 2020. As a strategic People business partner, she is responsible to build a diverse, emotionally intelligent, and inclusive culture driving employee engagement across all departments to support the company’s long-term growth.

Tina Dematos

VP of Finance

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Tina Dematos

VP of Finance

As VP Finance, Tina is responsible for all the company’s financial functions including accounting, audit, treasury, and capital resources. She also is responsible for optimizing financial performance. She leads the information technology services group, where she leads the development and operation of the company’s infrastructure, platforms, services, and applications. She is responsible for the ongoing series of innovation initiatives and solutions that support PiVAL growth strategy. With her drive for process improvement and her expertise in information technology she plays a critical role as PiVAL delivers on its aggressive five-year growth strategy.

Before joining PiVAL in April 2020, Tina served as Director of Commercial Effectiveness & E-Sales for Pfizer Inc. Prior to that, she served as Director of Operations and Director of Finance for Hospira Inc, a Pharmaceutical and Medical Device company.

Tina has 23 years in the Pharmaceutical industry where she successfully managed supply chain, customer relationship, information technology as well as the device support center. She has vast experience in the financial area from commercial to manufacturing. Tina also sat on the board for the Canadian Pharmaceutical Distribution Network.

Tina holds an Honors Bachelor’s degree in Accounting with a major in Finance from McGill University and is also a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA).

Martin Hillcoat

VP of Supply Chain

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Martin Hillcoat

VP of Supply Chain

Martin started his supply chain career in transloading for a large Class 1 railroad, where he was responsible for a network of terminals across Eastern Canada. Looking to build more end-to-end supply chain experience and expertise, he joined a small domestic manufacturing organization where he was responsible for procurement, manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution. He held progressively senior roles in operations and supply chain over the next 20+ years, for organizations with a combination of both in-house and third-party manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution. He oversaw multi-site operations and suppliers in Canada, the USA, Asia, and Europe and has experience in e-com fulfillment and wholesale and retail distribution, across industries ranging from clothing, building products, chemicals, and food.

Martin’s primary goal is operations improvement within supply chain, manufacturing, and fulfillment/ distribution to help organizations improve profitability. In his role as VP Supply Chain, he is responsible for PiVAL’s dedicated warehousing, cross-dock, expedited and integrated transportation solutions, as well as ensuring that these services continue to provide a value add for the evolving needs of our customers and partners.

Martin holds a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College, London, England, an MBA from McGill University, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from Villanova University in the USA. A proud father of three daughters, Martin and his family are active supporters of STEM education initiatives for girls.

Departments

Rod Levac

Director of Business Development

Sohaib Ansari

Key Account Manager

Ryan Buisman

Key Account Manager

Youssef Bassit

Key Account Manager

Sylvain Charbonneau

Key Account Manager

Paul J. Birnbaum

Director of U.S.A. Sales

Dean Egger

Operations Manager

Raechel Leite

Operations Manager

Lee Craig

Operations Manager

Andrew McNab

Director of Distribution

Jason Taylor

Operations Manager

Patrick Tassé

Operations Manager

Alexia La Barbera

Director of Customer Success

Maxine Donaldson

Customer Success Associate

Carl La Barbera

Customer Success Associate

Abigail Estrada

Customer Success Associate

Danielle Bendavid

Director of Quality and Compliance

Eric Reay

Director of Transportation

Carolyn Caines

Expedite Manager

Sinjini Chakraborty

Fleet & Recruitment Specialist

Soham Patel

Transportation Manager

Paul Martin

Director of IT

Lin Chen

Director of Finance

Founder's Story

As a kid I delivered groceries in a wooden wagon from the local supermarket to inner-city homes. I realized that tip amounts were directly related to being customer centric and service minded.

Improving the service meant exploring other solutions. Trading in the wooden wagon for a specialized bike equipped with a large pannier improved speed and efficiency. I could cut delivery times by more than half. And clients could call in their grocery orders from their homes which I would deliver within two hours. Delivery to home started in the 1960’s for this child…

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Fast forward a few decades, and the concept in supply chain remains the same. All customers have one thing in common. They want reliable and predictable service to be on time at a reasonable cost. If we understand these simple concepts, it’s not that difficult to scale a business. The speed of growth depends on talent and technology you throw at it. We embrace technology so you always have tracking and visibility of your product during the entire journey.

There is no way I will take credit for PiVAL’s success. But I will say that culture is so important to attract and retain the right people to the team. The culture starts at the top. Building a customer centric team is the root of our success.

We work tirelessly to satisfy our customers. You have our entire team’s commitment.