The Founder Institute has named Montreal’s Sergio Escobar as its “Best Overall Director” in its recent Startup Ecosystem Builder Awards.

The honours were mentioned as part of last week’s 16th Founder Showcase in Mountain View, California.

The Founder Institute calls itself the world’s largest entrepreneur training and startup launch program, “helping aspiring founders across the globe build enduring technology companies.” Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 50 countries, the Founder Institute also says it has assisted over 1,550 companies launch over 6 years. The company’s mission is to “Globalize Silicon Valley” and build sustainable startup ecosystems that will create one million new jobs worldwide.

Escobar is an entrepreneur, mentor, judge and program director for several different entities, including Startup Weekend, Startup NEXT, FinTech’s Startup Bootcamp, FounderLab, HackingHealth, Lean Startup Machine and more.

Founder Institute mentioned that Escobar “has led one of the fastest growing chapters in Founder Institute history, and is producing some of the fastest growing FI companies, like Makerbloks, Loggr, Heddoko, and more.” BusBud founder LP Maurice was also a nominated director. According to the organization, the local directors demonstrated “exceptional leadership in their local startup ecosystems in 2014, laying the foundation for promising founders to build enduring technology companies.”

Moreover, three directors in Toronto were also honoured as “Best Directors in North America,” including Kamal Hassan (CEO of entrepreneurial management platform IncMind), Ilona Hassan (fashion entrepreneur) and Sunil Sharma (Managing Partner of Extreme Venture Partners). “Toronto is one of our fastest growing markets, and the community of mentors and graduates the director team have built in just 12 months has been incredible,” wrote Founder Institute.