August 4, 2026
Welcome to Board Spotlight, a new series introducing the leaders helping shape the future of Nova Scotia’s tech sector through Digital Nova Scotia’s Board of Directors.
Our Board is made up of accomplished professionals from across the province’s technology ecosystem who volunteer their time and expertise to guide our organization. Representing startups, scale-ups, established companies, post-secondary institutions and industry partners, they bring a wide range of perspectives that strengthen our programs, inform our strategy and support the continued growth of Nova Scotia’s digital economy.
In each edition of Board Spotlight, we’ll sit down with one of our directors to learn more about their career journey, their perspective on Nova Scotia’s tech sector and what inspires them to give back through Digital Nova Scotia.
To launch the series, we’re joined by Robert Chambers, Co-founder and CEO of Sandbox ERP and Chair of Digital Nova Scotia’s Board of Directors. Robert reflects on his entrepreneurial journey, why Atlantic Canada has always been home, what excites him most about Nova Scotia’s growing technology sector and why he believes building strong connections across our community is key to future success.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your professional journey. What brought you to Nova Scotia’s tech sector?
I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I’ve started three companies and seen two through to acquisition, and I’m now building my fourth, Sandbox ERP. But the honest throughline of my career isn’t the exits. It’s that I love building things that make other people’s working lives simpler.
After spending time working on startups in Toronto and Australia, I was fortunate enough to come back home to Atlantic Canada, something that had always been a goal of mine and a chance to blend my professional career with the aspiration of building a life back in the region.
What’s kept me here is the sector itself: it’s small enough that you genuinely know the people building alongside you, and ambitious enough that those people are doing world-class work.
What do you do in your current role, and what excites you most about the work?
My day-to-day focus is as co-founder and CEO of Sandbox ERP, a platform we’re building to replace the tangle of disconnected tools that small businesses end up cobbling together (point of sale, inventory, accounting, CRM, e-commerce) with one system that actually talks to itself.
What excites me most is the customer side. Sitting with an owner-operator who’s been fighting their software for years, and watching the moment it clicks that it doesn’t have to be that hard. That part I never get tired of.
How would you describe your organization and the impact it has on the community or industry?
Sandbox ERP is a business platform, with a focus on the lumber and building supply industry, the independent yards and growing buying groups that have historically been stuck choosing between expensive enterprise software they don’t need and a patchwork of point solutions that don’t connect.
The impact we’re after is giving those businesses back their time and better answers from their data: letting an owner run their whole operation from one place instead of reconciling five systems at midnight.
What excites me most is the bigger ripple effect. By helping modernize how building suppliers operate, we’re improving supply chains across construction, which plays a real part in addressing the housing shortage and bringing down the cost of building homes. And building it here matters to me, because it’s proof that serious B2B software can come out of Nova Scotia, not just out of Toronto or the Valley.
How long have you been involved with the Digital Nova Scotia Board, and what inspired you to join?
I’ve been on the board for 4 years and currently serve as Chair. What drew me in was simple: I’d spent years benefiting from this ecosystem, the connections, the talent, the sense that people here genuinely want each other to succeed, and joining the board was a way to contribute to it rather than just draw from it.
When you’ve built companies here, you understand viscerally what the sector needs to thrive, and DNS is one of the few organizations positioned to deliver on that at scale.
What’s been the most rewarding part of serving on the Board?
Honestly, the people. Watching someone come through DNS programming and land their first tech role, or seeing a member make a connection at an event that shifts their whole trajectory, those moments are a reminder that this work is about people, not abstractions about “the changing digital economy.” Getting to play a small part in that, alongside a board of volunteers who show up purely because they care, has been the most rewarding part by a distance.
What’s one thing you’d like more people to know about Digital Nova Scotia?
That “tech” doesn’t only mean software developers, and DNS isn’t only for companies with “IT” on the door. Almost every business today runs on technology, and almost every IT company depends on people who aren’t engineers: project managers, analysts, operations and people leaders, marketers. A lot of our programming reflects that, like the project management training and certifications we support, which help people already strong in their field see that their skills carry directly into tech. If you’ve ever assumed the sector wasn’t for you, DNS is often the place that shows you the door was open all along.
Interested in helping shape the future of Nova Scotia’s tech sector? Digital Nova Scotia is currently seeking passionate leaders to join our Board of Directors. If you’re interested in contributing your expertise and helping strengthen our province’s technology ecosystem, we’d love to hear from you. Learn more about becoming a Board member and apply here.
In the meantime, stay tuned for more Board Spotlight conversations, where we’ll continue introducing the dedicated leaders helping guide Digital Nova Scotia and support our growing tech community.