About The Lightning Group

Howard Lichtman, MBA, JD is a founding Partner of Ethnicity Matters, Canada’s leading multicultural marketing agency. 

Ethnicity Matters’ team of 50+ specialists provide market research, strategy, media planning & buying, creative & production, social, digital, shopper marketing, influencer, and experiential programs.

Prior to Ethnicity Matters, Howard was President of The Lightning Group, providing Virtual Chief Marketing Officer services. At the Lightning Group, for one of his clients, he was responsible for all the marketing, programming, media relations, and sponsorship for the Taste of the Danforth – Canada’s largest street Festival – which welcomed over 1.6 million attendees in the course of a single weekend. He was also CMO of the Ethnic Channels Group – Canada’s largest distributor of foreign language television channels, where he mastered the multicultural space.

He also served as Executive Vice President of Marketing & Communications at Cineplex North America, where he transformed cinemas from being just movie theaters to being media outlets, with the launch of screen advertising and a host of other services, including sampling and place-based media. He also ran a buying co-op on behalf of Cineplex and the major studios. As part of the marketing and sponsorship sales for Phantom of the Opera, he sold three 5 million dollar sponsorships to Pepsi, Labatt, and American Express. For American Express, he created the American Express Front Of The Line program. He also handled investor relations on both Bay Street Street and Wall Street.

Howard is an angel investor in the Interior Design Show, LifeWire, NXM Labs, Sensibill, Dot Health, Mediseen, Halvana, Ethnic Channels Group and NSE Technologies. He was an instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University on “How to Launch an eBusiness”. He is very active with the Schulich School of Business where he is a program advisor for their annual alumni conference, as well as serving as a Devil’s Advocate in the school’s Global Management Program. He also serves as a mentor in their Together Challenge with start-up India and is also an Expert in Residence for the HULT Global Competition with a $1 million U.S. prize for start-ups in businesses laddering up to UN initiatives.

He currently serves on Advisory Boards for programs at Centennial College and Seneca College. He has also served on the Advisory Board of TICO and as the Vice President of th Board of 3AF (American Asian Advertising Federation).

Howard is the Past Vice Chair of the Ontario Science Centre, and is currently serving on the Board of Governors for Exhibition Place, as well as several other non-profit charities.