Canadian Business

On International Women’s Day, professional services firm Grant Thornton released its 20th annual report on the state of women in senior-ranking positions at mid-market companies around the world. It surveyed 5,000 executives at companies with valuations between US$100 million and US$4 billion. Findings revealed that progress in the promoting of women to leadership roles over the past two decades has been slow at best—and when it comes to the C-suite, frankly, pretty dire. In the past year, the global percentage of CEOs who are women dropped from 28 per cent to 19 per cent.

Following a trend noted at the world’s top corporations, many of the women CEOs at these mid-market firms left of their own accord. The reasons cited point to an unsettling truth: Not only is the climb to the top an against-the-odds feat but once women arrive there, they often face a psychologically unsafe environment that makes performing in their roles untenable.

In Canada, women make up 10 per cent of executive officer jobs, marking a record high. But less than two per cent of those women are BIPOC. Compared to the global trend, it is at least moving in the right direction here. While we have such a long way to go, the road map is clear. Grant Thornton’s report found that we can pave the way to parity by focusing on three key factors that impact women’s ability to thrive in leadership positions: a commitment from those in the C-suite to sponsor women for growth opportunities; a clear and measurable DEI strategy; and, crucially, greater flexibility—businesses with hybrid or flexible work models statistically have more women in senior roles.

We spoke to six Canadian CEOs who are the first women to hold the top position in their companies’ history. A common theme in their stories is their dedication to enacting change within their organizations—and industries at large—to ensure that more women are promoted to senior positions. Herein lies the
conundrum but also the solution: We need more women at the top in order to promote more women to the top.

Justine Hendricks (Photograph: Alexa Mazzarello, Makeup: Anthonia Bejide) Justine Hendricks Farm Credit Canada

Title: President and CEO

Years in Job: 1.5

Location: Ottawa

I’m a problem-solver at heart. I started my career in the banking sector, and I fell in love with the process of helping customers. I began to grasp the profound impact I could have during their pivotal life moments by offering knowledge and guidance.

For most of my career, I’ve been a single mother. I have three daughters: an 18-year-old and 14-year-old twins. Balancing the demands of work and motherhood hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve learned that the quality of the time you spend with your family is what matters most.

You know the saying “It takes a village to raise a child?” I’m probably the poster child for that. Friends and family have played and continue to play a very important role in our lives. I’ve also made it a priority to involve my girls not only in my work but also in my interests outside of work. I hope that inspires them too.

I joined Farm Credit Canada in January 2023. I see endless opportunities for growth and change within the agriculture and food industry. I’m happy, at the end of the day, if I’ve solved a problem. It doesn’t have to be the biggest problem, but if I help unblock something or push us closer to a solution, that fuels me each and every day. I believe we have the potential to address the world’s most pressing problems, from world hunger to climate challenges.

Women have always been an integral part of farming in Canada, and it’s exciting to see more women move into leadership roles and take seats at the board level. We are now sitting where decisions are being made. I am confident that we will continue to see women rise to the top ranks of agriculture and food in Canada, because there is a need for our skills, passion and fresh ideas.

It is important to have examples and role models for other women to look to; that will make a difference. FCC has dedicated events and resources to help women at any level achieve their entrepreneurship and leadership goals.

I think sometimes when women get an adverse reaction, they respond by pushing themselves to do 125 per cent. But you’ve got to stop and reflect: What’s important is to be comfortable with who you are, to be true to who you are and to do things with integrity. You don’t always have to surpass others just because you think that that’s the only way you will ever be seen as an equal.

As a woman leader and visible minority, I’ve faced certain biases and obstacles over my career. I’m not necessarily what someone pictures when they see the name Justine Hendricks. There’s an element of surprise for some. I can tell from people’s reactions when I enter a room that what they see is not
necessarily what they expected. And you can just see how they have to internally adjust.

During my first 12 months as CEO of FCC, I met over 500 individuals and stakeholders and farmers and producers, and, looking back, I can honestly say I was welcomed with open arms by this industry.

I feel like I belong here. I invested in reaching out and connecting with everything that I had, and with authenticity, and the industry has accepted and embraced me in return. That’s an environment where I know I can thrive.

Meghan Roach (Photograph: May Truong, Hair and Makeup: Alanna Chelmick) Meghan Roach Roots

Title: President and CEO

Years in Job: 4.5

Location: Toronto

My family was really influential in shaping my career path. I have two sisters and a brother. My parents always told my sisters and me that we could do anything as women, and that is something that has stayed with me all my life.

I became a passionate investor early on, thanks to my grandfather. He gave me my first stock when I was 12 and continued buying me stocks for the rest of his life until he passed away in 2021. I knew I wanted to do something related to investments, so I started my career in private equity. After doing my MBA at the University of Oxford, I joined Searchlight Capital Partners in London, U.K. Then I had my first child and came back to Canada to work at the fund’s Toronto office.

Searchlight acquired Roots in 2015, and in 2019 I jumped in as the company’s interim CFO. I had only been in the role for a couple of months when the board decided to search for a new CEO. They told me I should think about taking the job.

At that time, I hadn’t really considered moving to the operations side. When I was at university, there weren’t a lot of female CEOs that I knew about. So I didn’t necessarily think about that pathway as something that was possible for me. But working closely with the Roots team as interim CFO, I realized that I loved getting up every day and going to the office to think about the next thing we could do or the next opportunity we could get involved with.

One of the first things I wanted to do as CEO was re-establish Roots’ premium-brand status, a mission that included hiring a chief product officer and creative director. We partnered with new collaborators and saw a massive increase in our gross margins. Later on, we made the shift to manufacturing 85 per cent of our products with sustainable materials and launched one of the first gender-free product categories with extended sizing in Canada.

At Roots, we try to promote women into leadership roles. Every time you put one woman forward, that moves women as a group forward. It’s important for us to think about how we support each other. I try to mentor and help women who are looking at similar paths—I want them to be able to see themselves in these roles in the future because they have examples that have come before them.

It’s important for women in leadership positions to talk more openly about the challenges we face. I’m a mother to two little kids, I’m a CEO and my husband works full-time. It’s not easy to balance all these things.

It’s a barrier to women to think we need to be “perfect enough” to take on a big role. The reality is that none of us are perfect. We have to show that it’s okay not to be and it’s okay to find things difficult. We can work on weaknesses and continue to learn and grow.

Kelly Schmitt (Photograph: Mecoh Bain) Kelly Schmitt Benevity

Title: CEO

Years in Job: 3.5

Location: Calgary

I spent my early career in corporate finance and the oil and gas industry. Coming up, I was typically the only woman in the room at almost every meeting and encounter. Then, in 2007, I joined Smart Technologies, a learning-tools company, as treasurer. It had a 10-person executive team and five were women, including the CEO and the CFO, which is one of the reasons I felt compelled to make the move from the energy sector to tech.

After helping take Smart public in 2010, I became the CFO at Solium Capital, now Shareworks by Morgan Stanley. Eight years later, I was approached by Benevity’s founder and CEO, Bryan de Lottinville, when the company was looking to uplevel its CFO.

Soon after, Bryan told me he was looking for his successor. My first reaction was, “Don’t look here, man. That is not me.” I never wanted to be the person in front of clients doing sales. I loved being the number two.

I was holding myself back. I think men typically look at job qualifications, and if they meet two of the 10, they’ll be like, “I’m good to go.” And I think women tend to find a lot of reasons why they’re not qualified. Meanwhile, Smart Technologies and Solium Capital had both hit unicorn status while I was there.

Neither of the CEOs we hired externally for Benevity lasted long. Meanwhile, I had learned a lot more about the role—that the CEO job is about people and culture. And I cared so much about Benevity’s mission and the people who work there. So that’s what ultimately made me decide to take the plunge—I thought, “I could do this, and do it better.”

I actually think my career claim to fame, though, is that I birthed both of my kids as a CFO and took eight months of maternity leave with each of them. The world didn’t end, and the companies didn’t go out of business.

I think the biggest thing that’s holding women back from leadership roles is that it’s still the woman who bears the majority of the responsibility for raising children. I look at companies that have mandated that people come back to the office five days a week, and it hurts the careers of people who are the primary caregivers, which is still most often women. At Benevity, we’re flexible in the way we work and provide a progressive parental-leave program for both parents. Recently, I’ve also been reading about the impact menopause has on women in the workplace. It’s a huge thing; you can’t sleep and you’re having all these issues, and it’s something we never talk about at work.

We also need more sponsorship—not just mentorship—for women. That means kicking down doors and actively advocating for women’s careers throughout the company. We have to do the hard work to develop people, promote them and support them so they succeed.

In my time as CEO, I’ve promoted three women to the C-suite from within the company. The average representation of women at a tech company is 28 per cent, but at Benevity it’s 55 per cent, and two-thirds of our executive team are women.

We need to have these types of conversations—and I’ve been using my platform to try to make sure we have them.

An Verhulst-Santos (Photograph: Melissa Gamache) An Verhulst-Santos L’Oréal Canada

Title: President and CEO

Years in Job: 3

Location: Montreal

My very first job was at L’Oréal. I started there as a product manager on Kérastase, a brand within our professional-product division, 33 years ago in Belgium, where I was born.

I became the first woman CEO of L’Oréal Canada in June 2021. One of the first things I did in the role was create the position of chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, currently held by Marie-Evelyne François. The more diverse a team is, the more creative and ambitious they are—and that leads to greater and more profound results for the whole company.

Historically, the cosmetics industry has been responsible for certain beauty standards that fail to accurately represent the global population. We’re trying to change that. Today, all of the brands within the L’Oréal group strive to represent a wide range of ethnicities, ages and gender identities in their campaigns and offer products for different skin tones, hair types and beauty preferences.

But it’s important to not stop there. By actively participating in ongoing discussions and supporting new initiatives that promote inclusivity, we improve the industry as whole. It’s important for me to be a part of that evolution.

I often get asked, “What advice would you give other women in business?” And I’m sometimes disheartened to see how many ambitious women lack confidence to go after what they want—and deserve. Since arriving here, I’ve found Canada to be a vibrant and diverse market, and I consider myself lucky to be part of a team that celebrates inclusion and creativity. But statistics show that isn’t the reality for most. So the advice I would like to give is: Don’t put up additional barriers. Have faith in your strengths and speak up. You need to be true to yourself, because if you aren’t, it will be hard to influence others to trust you. People want to invest in someone who fully believes in what she does.

Related: How Do I Push Past My Imposter Syndrome and Get the Job Done?

Having work-life balance as a leader is also key, and I try to lead by example. For me, it isn’t just about managing time; it’s about nurturing fulfillment and a sense of purpose both in and outside of work. It’s about making myself available for what matters most. To help make this possible for our team, we recently doubled mental-health coverage and introduced unlimited sick and personal days so employees can better balance their responsibilities and accommodate unforeseen events in a way that works for them and the business.

We want everyone to feel supported at work and at home. As a mother of two teenagers, I know that the time I spend with my kids is so important. And discovering the world through their eyes is extremely enriching—they open my mind and encourage me to ask questions, and that makes me a better leader.

Kim Brooks (Photograph: Carolina Andrade) Kim Brooks Dalhousie University

Title: President and Vice-chancellor

Years in Job: 1

Location: Halifax

Coming up in my career in the ’90s, I experienced moments of exclusion that other women and gay people can relate to. I’ve been underestimated. I’ve had men repeat my ideas in meetings and take credit. And I’ve felt like I’ve had to conform to a conventional way of dressing. In the past, I expended a lot of energy on making other people feel comfortable, even to the extreme of not mentioning my partner in a work setting. Today, I feel confident showing up how I want and saying what I want.

But those challenges are still pervasive and continue to be a deterrent for many women with ambitions of making it into the C-suite. When I think about a diverse workforce, I think of how that adds to the richness of decision-making at an organization, and I’m consistently a cheerleader for having more women, queer people and racialized people come on board at Dalhousie.

I think it’s important that students see people who may have a similar life path to them assume leadership positions. It’s affirming when a woman—especially a gay woman—becomes president of a university. It lets them know that this is a doable accomplishment.

As the first female and openly queer president of Dalhousie, I bring a different background to the role as well as a fresh set of eyes to tackle various institutional challenges persistent in the university sector. I’ve been explicit in leading a strategy around mentoring students from a range of backgrounds. We want to leverage their talents to give them the support they need, recognizing that it isn’t just about elevating a woman to a leadership position and hoping for the best. We need intentionally inclusive workplaces for the next generation.

The conversation in the boardroom gets more interesting when you have different voices. If it’s the same four or five people with similar backgrounds making decisions for the next 20 years, nothing will change. Dalhousie’s leadership team should reflect a diverse range of communities—including rural Nova Scotians and those from low-income families.

We’re aware of the progress we’ve made in certain departments, like how more than half of the students in the law school are women. But we still have gaps, such as how few Black students enrol in the medical school. We’re working to change that through outreach to students, assisting them with their applications and ensuring that the application process isn’t biased.

And once marginalized students come into those programs, we want to ensure that their time with us is successful. We’ve instilled solid mentorship programs and created cohort circles so they can see themselves reflected in the student body.

I love this job because the challenges are exciting to me. And I’m passionate about driving the right change.

Jennifer Publicover (Photograph: May Truong, Hair and Makeup: Alanna Chelmick) Jennifer Publicover RBC Insurance

Title: Executive VP and CEO

Years in Job: 1.5

Location: Toronto

My dad was an investment adviser. I remember going into his office as a kid, and they didn’t have computers; they had a ticker machine on the floor. He introduced me to the world of markets, and I bought my first stock when I was five or six years old. And guess what stock it was? RBC.

I spent most of my career at Morgan Stanley in various roles. Sometimes when you grow up within an organization, it can be hard to convince those around you that you’ve evolved and are ready for further advancement. When I was up for managing director, I didn’t get the job, and the feedback I received wasn’t that I’d done the wrong thing or that I’d been lazy; it was that I wasn’t doing enough of what the guys were doing, like networking and promoting themselves. Meanwhile, I had my head down and was always working while also trying to balance the needs of my young family. I remember being devastated by that feedback.

After leaving Morgan Stanley, I spent three years running strategy and products for wealth management at RBC. To be honest, I wasn’t necessarily looking to be the CEO. But our last board chair, Kathleen Taylor, was very passionate about finding opportunities for women.

The first time I presented to the board of RBC, people around the table were sending me notes that said “You’ve got this; you’re gonna do a great job.” I didn’t experience that kind of support when I worked in the U.S. or in Europe, where there seemed to be deep-rooted views of women.

I’ve never had the sense that I shouldn’t be here. Still, for a long time in my career, I wasn’t great at saying what I wanted. Was I getting paid right? Was I getting the right assignments? But I’ve gotten more deliberate in advocating for myself, and my confidence in terms of what I bring to the table has increased.

I wish we had more women running companies in Canada. It’s good for business. Women tend to solicit a very broad set of stakeholders for feedback, which typically leads to more optimal decisions being made with more complete information. Women are also very comfortable making tough decisions, particularly when the interests of the collective are at stake.

I’m a big believer in setting bold goals. When I became CEO, I and my senior leadership team recognized that to grow our business and win in the future, we would need a much more ambitious strategy. That really energized and excited the team. We’re in an environment where change is happening so fast, and incrementalism is just not going to work. Setting bold goals—and then giving people the belief that they can achieve them—is the most important thing you can do as a leader.

The post What Does It Mean to Be the First Woman in the C-Suite? appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

About three years ago, the Burlington Performing Arts Centre (BPAC) realized there was a discrepancy between who was engaging with and participating in art and what the community of Burlington, Ont., actually looked like. To remedy this, BPAC started hiring external organizations to conduct annual diversity, equity and inclusion workshops with the goal of helping the centre learn how to better reflect the city’s diverse community.

But the workshops weren’t as inspiring as they’d hoped they would be. The presentations lacked the emotional hook needed to spark real, lasting change, leaving the centre feeling like it was taking baby steps toward meaningful inclusion. Participants also struggled with the facilitators’ attitudes. “Last year’s DEI training was delivered in a really judgmental way,” says Tammy Fox, BPAC’s executive director. Rather than engaging with staff’s experiences and questions, the facilitators focused on BPAC’s mistakes. “You can’t help but get your armour up, and then you’re not listening actively—your mind is busy defending yourself rather than taking in the message.”

(Photo: Vanessa Hill)

Looking for a solution, Fox turned to Layne, a self-described “philanthro-tainer” who has helped raise $40 million in the past 14 years as a charity auctioneer. Back in 2020, Fox saw Layne speak on a panel at a women’s empowerment conference and was impressed by their ability to discuss serious subject matters in an engaging and entertaining way.

In January, Layne, who is non-binary and uses a mononym, launched Impact Workshop, a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, or DEIB, program that facilitates dialogue around gender barriers in the workplace. For Fox, Layne’s inviting presentation style seemed like the perfect approach to make BPAC’s DEIB training finally stick.

“Belonging” has been a staple part of DEI workshops since 2020, but what sets Layne’s program apart is their ability to create a space where colleagues can be vulnerable—share their pain, explore their differences, make mistakes and learn from one another through a combination of role play, group discussion and video content. The workshop is broken down into three modules: understanding concepts and definitions, learning inclusive behaviour and practising active allyship. Unlike previous workshops, Fox says, BPAC’s experience with Layne was a dialogue rather than a scolding.

Related: How to Navigate Conflict at Work

(Illustration: Soña Lee)

But convincing colleagues to open up is easier said than done. “You can’t create change by lecturing,” Layne says. “You have to get people feeling something.” To build trust during the workshop, Layne began with stories about themself—moments when they felt hurt or misunderstood, such as the countless instances when they’ve been misgendered at work. Layne used their stories to delve into LGBTQ2S+ concepts, like what it means to be non-binary and how to best communicate pronouns at work—all with the goal of building empathy among the BPAC staff.

Despite there not being any out non-binary individuals at BPAC, the discussion resonated. “While I couldn’t relate to the stories per se, I could relate to the hurt those experiences caused Layne,” says Fox. “That’s what made the workshop so impactful.” Staff immediately applied the lessons about inclusivity, suggesting to leadership that the centre change its performance greeting from “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen” to “Welcome, everyone” and relabel its accessibility washrooms to be non-gendered.

To maintain this new culture, employees need to feel like they can bring their whole self to work, Layne says. They suggest setting up regular team-bonding activities, such as a lunches where staff can share their cultural or family-favourite meals and stories about them. “Fun events like this bring teams closer by helping them find common ground and learn about their differences.”

For companies that are still overwhelmed by the idea of DEIB training—and knowing which topics to prioritize—Layne recommends starting with LGBTQ2S+ inclusion. Since queer individuals encompass a range of intersecting identities, including race and gender, it naturally leads to other topics. “The heart of the matter is empathy and embracing differences,” Layne says.

The post How to Add Belonging to Your DEI Strategy appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

You don’t notice what’s missing at first. Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox—that unassuming glass grid, dwarfed by the enormous monolithic condo protruding from the top of it—still looks the same. Inside the five-storey space is a surprising 16,000 square metres containing five cinemas, a screening room, a gallery and a library as well as office spaces from which to oversee it all: the not-for-profit arts organization, which is dedicated to “transforming the way people see the world through film.”

Then you catch it: The “TIFF” sign is still there above the entrance, but “Bell Lightbox” has been quietly removed. Canada’s leading telecom company got naming rights thanks to a $30-million investment in 2006, back when this King Street building—designed to be the headquarters of the Toronto International Film Festival—was still being erected. But last summer, Bell suddenly dropped its sponsorship. Now, the sign looks naked, diminutive—four tiny letters for that cavernous house of mirrors.

When the Lightbox opened in 2010, Noah Cowan, the organization’s artistic director at the time, claimed that its only real analogue was London’s British Film Institute. Last year, the Lightbox screened 504 films; much of its programming is the kind of smaller, independent and international cinema that is so hard to find at the multiplex these days. This year, it increased its membership by almost a quarter, and since it first opened, it has grown its revenue by $17 million. Coinciding with TIFF’s 50th anniversary next year, the Lightbox’s upcoming 15th is itself an achievement.

And yet the loss of its biggest sponsor comes after years of inner turmoil, reflecting the external tumult plaguing the arts at large. “I think TIFF’s status has slipped a bit in the past few years with the pandemic and streaming, which are the two major events that have affected independent film as a whole and film festivals in particular,” says Brian D. Johnson, author of Brave Films Wild Nights: 25 Years of Festival Fever. This has exerted pressure on the larger arts organization that acts as TIFF’s home base, which has been further squeezed with Bell pulling its financing. At $5 million a year, Bell was single-handedly keeping the lights on at the Lightbox, which had an “occupancy cost” in its 2022 Canada Revenue Agency filing of $4.6 million. As one ex-programmer (who wished to remain anonymous as they still work in film) put it: “That place is a money pit.”

“We didn’t have that clear vision of ‘This is what this company is.’”

The sources I spoke to, many of them former employees, characterize TIFF as a dysfunctional institution weighed down by the demands of its oversized headquarters. Last year, on the eve of the festival (already afflicted with a reduced star presence due to the actors’ strike), the news broke that Bell had chosen not to renew its sponsorship of TIFF after almost three decades. Two days earlier, TIFF’s chief operating officer had resigned and confirmation of its vice-president of partnerships’ resignation was also made public. All of this piled on to the day-to-day plight, according to multiple sources, of a staff that had gone through several rounds of layoffs and felt overlooked by those above them. Ex-employee Lauren Coughlan distills the ongoing problems at TIFF into two central issues. “One of them is a true leadership issue. It’s really a from-the-top problem of an inability to successfully hire in upper management,” she says. The other? “We didn’t have that clear vision of ‘This is what this company is.’”

I was warned by friends in the film community that no one would talk to me about TIFF. I spoke to 10 people for this piece. Among the 17 others I contacted, most did not respond. Some claimed they had little insight as they no longer worked there, felt uncomfortable as they had friends there or still worked in the arts and couldn’t be transparent. Two people contacted me and then didn’t follow up. Two others would speak only off the record.

So, when Judy Lung, TIFF’s vice-president of strategy, communications and stakeholder relations, wrote to me and said that “it’s not an exaggeration to say most people in the Canadian screen industry have worked in some way at TIFF over the years,” it landed less as a jovial aside and more as a sign of foreboding. That outsize influence means that TIFF, in some ways a saviour of cinema in this country, also functions despotically. The organization holds the entire film industry so tightly in its grasp that it can’t be held to account.

“This is the thing about TIFF,” says Coughlan. “I looked around the industry and thought, ‘Well, I may have topped out. This might be the best there is.’ Where do you go after a major festival?”

Related: Gen Z Inspired My Mid-Career Pivot

Launched in 1976, The Toronto Festival of Festivals, as TIFF was originally known, was an opportunity for three film producers—Bill Marshall, Dusty Cohl and Henk Van der Kolk—to showcase the best films from festivals around the world as well as some of their own works. It hopped around different venues in the city that reflected its democracy and the taste of its programmers. Valerie Laws, who started attending in 1983, remembers when a pass meant you could walk into anything. She once saw eight films in one day. “It was essentially a different film festival for every person who attended,” she says.

This homemade approachability—one week, 100 movies, $6 passes—gave the event a quaintness that Torontonians could own and it became known as the “people’s festival.” “It could crudely be called the indus- trial outlet mall of world cinema,” says Johnson, “while Cannes was the high altar.”

Things started to change after Piers Handling became CEO in 1994 and the event was rebranded as the Toronto International Film Festival. A string of People’s Choice Awards wins—voted for by the festival audience—that translated into Oscar awards meant that TIFF became less a place for locals to hang out than for Hollywood to campaign for awards. This upmarket iteration of the festival no longer fit the offices it was renting a few doors down from Maple Leaf Gardens at 2 Carlton—which ex-staffer Nathaniel Siegler describes as “really crappy.” He was one of a ragtag group of young, inexperienced cinephiles on the fundraising team willing to work long hours for low pay and festival access; they were replaced in 2006 by a shiny new crew to front the campaign for TIFF’s new headquarters.

A stable home meant the festival would no longer be a roving event in thrall to local theatre chains. For programmers like Diana Sanchez, who would go on to become TIFF’s senior director of film, the prospect of sustained programming outside festival constraints was exciting, she told me. This would include the Cinematheque, TIFF’s popular year-round series of screenings and talks centred around a seemingly bottomless archive of classic films. (In fact, there are about 9,000.) In 2017, Handling told The Globe and Mail that his aim was “to build a centre of critical study somewhere in Canada.” If the festival was to provide the pulsing heart of this new organization, the Cinematheque would give it its soul. But for a scrappy organization that operated on a mere $13 million in 2004, a campaign goal of $196 million was, to put it mildly, ambitious.

Toronto’s KPMB Architects, the firm behind the Gardiner Museum and Koerner Hall, were hired to design the building. They worked alongside a vociferous committee of international filmmakers—among them Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Sarah Polley and Deepa Mehta—who, according to architect Bruce Kuwabara, referred to the theatres he was to build as “cathedrals of cinema.”

“I was desperately trying to make sure it didn’t look like an office building,” recalls Kuwabara. He was able to keep out street sounds and vibrations by designing the theatres as “kind of a building within a building” and placing concrete boxes on the building’s frame like “a big carton onto a bookshelf,” he says. (At the end, Kuwabara respected Egoyan in particular for saying, “You’re the director. You’ve got the final cut.”)

But while this centre for cinematic communion was being born, the festival was becoming less and less about community. “From the time they announced the Lightbox was going to be built, the tickets were getting more and more expensive,” says Laws. With the biggest proportion of TIFF’s budget coming from philanthropic donors and sponsors (38 per cent in 2022), they were prioritized, along with TIFF members. This led to less ticket availability for the general public. Add to that the increasingly elaborate star-studded galas designed to attract patronage, and TIFF started to look like, as Toronto Sun film critic Bruce Kirkland put it in 2008, “an elitist corporate spectacle.”

When Laws saw the cost of her tickets jump by 28 per cent in 2014, she finally wrote to Handling. He sent her back “a nice letter” and two opening- night-gala tickets. Two years later, TIFF started using Ticketmaster, the site famous for controversies surrounding astronomical ticket-resale prices. If you are quick enough to get into regular festival screenings these days, the price is a reasonable $26 (on par with other festivals around the world). But even before resellers plump up the prices, premium screening tickets can go for as high as $88. So much for the people’s festival; TIFF is now the kind of event for which you can resell a premiere ticket for more than $1,000.

To take over one of Canada’s biggest not-for-profit arts organizations during a worldwide pandemic requires a certain level of sang-froid—and Cameron Bailey is definitely cool. In February, we sat in the TIFF CEO’s minimalist office with Senegalese actress M’Bissine T. Diop, in a still from the 1966 film Black Girl, watching over us, along with TIFF’s director of communications, Alejandra Sosa. Bailey wore a buttery black leather jacket and exuded a serene sense of control. When I asked him why no one would talk to me about his organization, it was one of the rare moments his serenity flickered, but only because he was baffled. By sheer force of presence, Bailey transcends confrontation. This kind of unflappability must have been invaluable when he was named to his position in 2021, right in the middle of Covid. “That has been one of the defining elements of my tenure,” Bailey told me, adding with a laugh, “It’s not great.”

I was there the day the Lightbox shut its doors in March 2020, arriving for a screening of Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow only to be turned back. (“We thought it was going to be a couple of weeks,” Bailey says.) In the following 18 months that the Lightbox was closed, TIFF membership dropped by half, according to Bailey. Offers of free access to the Cinematheque for members and free membership to anyone under 25 propped those numbers back up again. “But the makeup is different,” Bailey says. “It’s younger than it used to be.” He expressed surprise at so many young people seeking out auteur cinema, despite the growing success of repertory theatres in Toronto. Bailey likens screenings of Chantal Akerman’s 1975 feminist rendition of slow cinema Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles to a rock concert. “It’s become one of those real markers of being in the know about movies. And we find that young people actually want to be in the know.”

What the audience wants is of prime importance to Bailey. “I think what TIFF means to most people who have some connection with us is that it’s a people’s film organization—that it is about the audience,” he says. His interpretation of the people’s festival is as much about what TIFF brings to that audience as it is about what that audience brings to TIFF. That’s why there are so many social spaces in the Lightbox, from the ground-floor restaurant to the second-floor bar to the third-floor café. The act of gathering to discuss cinema is transformational, Bailey says. “It unites everything we do: When people start talking about movies, you get their different perspectives, and that tells you who they are.”

Bailey describes regular office “curation meetings” that involve “thinking through how we engage people in all the different ways they show up.” In the past, individual cinephiles with sharp taste knew how to engage those people. It’s less clear whether that still remains the case. “Now, none of the programmers have any identity and you don’t know who likes what,” says the anonymous ex-programmer. It also means that the once in-depth offerings of Cinematheque, with its 40-films-long retrospectives, have been dramatically reduced. Rather than, for instance, diving into a director’s complete career—revealing their progression across their entire oeuvre—the program is now more about sampling. Bailey believes that because streaming makes so many older films available, exhaustive programming is less valuable than introducing new work to audiences who want to be in the know. It’s a big change for the organization: Outside the festival, Cinematheque was perhaps its most respected year-round offshoot. Not to mention the original aspiration for the Lightbox was to be a place of critical study that would also house the extensive archives that fuel the Cinematheque. The program’s diminution is a common point of frustration among local cinephiles, for whom it has been a rare opportunity to fully engage in cinema and its history. It also limits the depth of discussion, countering the organization’s goal of transformation.

While TIFF was originally renowned for its approachability, there seems to be an all-encompassing inaccessibility to it now. Already the name itself is confusing for the general public: Is TIFF an arts organization or a festival? Then there’s the location, smack between an inhospitable row of theatres and tourist-trap restaurants. “A lot of people expected that the Lightbox would change that strip of King Street,” says Siegler, who worked on the building’s fundraising team from 2004 to 2006. “That’s one of the few areas that’s been pretty much exactly the same over the past 20 years.”

Once you get past its subtle exterior, the inside of the Lightbox is itself perplexing. Only on my most recent visit did I notice a silver slab attached to a concrete pillar off to the side mapping out each floor. That’s when I realized you have to take the elevator to get to the top floor, home to perhaps the most spectacular of the Lightbox’s rooms: the Film Reference Library. This space is so replete with archival material that when I visited, Crimes of the Future set pieces were unceremoniously strewn about. These are the kinds of objects that would have once populated The Gallery, an exhibition space on the first floor, but it turned out to be too expensive to keep it as an actual gallery and it’s now rented out for events. The cinemas, which seat a total of 1,333, are also rented out during the day; according to a 2017 Globe and Mail report, Lightbox ticket sales bring in less than $1 million in revenue annually. (Sosa said via email that they don’t publicly share the revenue from Lightbox ticket sales or rentals.)

“There’s a consistent issue of ‘Are we trying to be a theatre or are we an event rental space?’” says Coughlan, who was in the programming department from December 2014 to June 2021. She cleared the rights for Film Circuit, the organization’s film outreach program, and says there were constant tense meetings over space. A number of sources agreed that TIFF can’t seem to properly manage being a theatrical venue. “The people who are running the Lightbox are not exhibitors,” says Ron Mann, co-founder of Films We Like, one of the few remaining Canadian film distributors. “That’s really the problem. They don’t know how to do it.” The issue, as he sees it, arises when economic considerations dictate curatorial ones. This is particularly problematic when theatres for local indie and world cinema are dwindling; where 20 or more once existed in Toronto, now there are only a handful. When Mann does get screen time at the Lightbox, it’s limited, which makes his job—as well as the local film scene—increasingly unsustainable. (Fifty of 193 films screened at the festival last year were Canadian.)

“There’s a consistent issue of ‘Are we trying to be a theatre or are we an event rental space?’”

Even then, the schedules aren’t released much in advance, while wider changes aren’t always announced clearly, if at all—a recent hike in ticket prices, for instance, seemed to come out of nowhere. (Sosa said via email that they were announced on the website.) The organization’s streaming service, which was created for the pandemic, was also quietly shut down in February. (The site claimed the organization is “shifting focus” to the physical Lightbox; Sosa said via email that subscribers were notified.) Then there’s the labyrinthine website. The digital welcome mat to the festival has been a barrier for years. Sosa expressed exasperation when I brought it up, as it was only just redesigned in July. Guiding me through ticket purchasing, Bailey admitted it required a lot of steps, but said, “We’ve focused on ease of use.”

TIFF’s string of high-profile departures over the past five years—most notably Bell—seems disproportionate, even accounting for the pandemic. Bell declined an interview, but a statement from Devorah Lithwick, the company’s senior vice-president and chief brand officer, praised the festival’s work. Though Lithwick did not address the dissolution of the TIFF sponsorship, two months before its announcement, Bell’s parent company cut 1,300 jobs and announced the closure of six radio stations and the sale of three others. (Lithwick remains on TIFF’s board.) In the past five years, TIFF also lost its co-head, senior director, chief operating officer and vice-president of partnerships—all of them women. While there is gender parity across TIFF’s leadership, its top three positions (chair of the board, CEO and chief financial officer) are all currently occupied by men.

“There were really consistent issues of people not being ready for the scope of their job,” says Coughlan. It is not uncommon for arts organizations to staff their higher positions based on creative expertise rather than business acumen, which might be more pertinent. Bailey, for instance, started out at the festival as a programmer before becoming the art director and making his way up to co-head and then head—but he was promoted to those positions. “The problem is how they let the managers go,” the anonymous ex-programmer says. “There is no transference of knowledge in that organization.” This is doubly problematic because, per Coughlan, people are often recruited based on their programming experience for positions outside their skill set. “People [were] hired to be senior managers—managing teams of people, overseeing other managers—without management experience,” she says. “This happened repeatedly.”

Coughlan initially enjoyed working at TIFF when she arrived in 2014 but noticed a precipitous decline within a few years. This pattern of initial excitement followed by extreme disillusionment united a number of the sources I spoke to. And posts from the past year on Glassdoor, a job site where employees can review organizations, are consistent with Coughlan’s description of ill-equipped leadership at TIFF. The word “toxic” appears several times. (The site gives the organization a score of two out of five based on 229 reviews, while the CEO gets a 20 per cent approval rating.) Repeated criticisms surround the integration of new hires, lack of promotion and overworked and underpaid staff. And compensation does appear to skew top-heavy. In 2022, the number of people making over $200,000 grew from three to five despite TIFF shedding 60 per cent of its full-time employees and 70 per cent of its part-time employees between 2018 and 2022. “With TIFF, it’s always been kind of like, ‘You should be grateful,’” says the ex-programmer. “‘Aren’t you lucky to be working in a job that you’re so passionate about?’”

According to Bailey, these complaints may be conflating TIFF’s year-round non-profit arts institution with its star-spangled namesake. “Sometimes it gives people a certain impression of the workplace.” TIFF can’t match the salaries of for-profit companies, he says. What they can offer the young employees they often hire is professional development, mentoring, exposure to the industry and the feeling that they are “making a difference.” Bailey admits that the 10-day festival’s hard deadline “brings a certain kind of intensity to the work,” but they are looking at how to improve that: “I don’t think we’re there yet. But I can tell you that we are working on it.”

I would have liked to talk to other members of TIFF’s leadership team, but over several weeks, I wasn’t able to secure interviews with the chief financial officer, Douglas Allison, the head of the board, Jeffrey Remedios, or the chief programmer, Anita Lee. I emailed Sosa, the director of communications, 10 questions about numbers and stats, but only four were answered. (The financial information across this story was cobbled together from TIFF’s annual reports, publicly available on its site, as well as harder-to-access public filings with the CRA.) As an arts organization that gets one-third of its funding from government grants, TIFF is expected to be transparent. But Canadian watchdog organization Charity Intelligence, which bases its results on audited reports provided by the CRA, gives TIFF a D+ for public reporting. It also states that only 64 cents on the dollar are available for its programs after fundraising and administration and management costs, which lands “outside of Charity Intelligence’s reasonable range” of overhead spending. “There seems to be this internal sense of ‘We’re just this little festival,’” Coughlan says. “We all know that arts are tricky to fund and are constantly trying to do more with less, but it’s also one of the biggest festivals in the world.”

“With TIFF it’s like, ‘You should be grateful to be working in a job that you’re passionate about.’”

Of TIFF’s $43 million in expenditures in 2022, $29 million was spent on charitable activities. That includes highly publicized diversity initiatives, like Share Her Journey, which focuses on representation of women, and Every Story, which supports a multiplicity of under-represented groups. But what these programs actually do and their sustained impacts are not immediately clear. (A number of Share Her Journey fellows did not respond to interview requests.) This is particularly troubling considering community partners like BIPOC TV and Film, a non-profit organization advocating for equity in Canada’s screen industry, help with outreach despite their own lack of resources. (BIPOC operates on one-tenth of TIFF’s budget at best and sometimes runs initiatives on no budget simply because it benefits the community.)

What I could glean from the TIFF site is that its talent-development programs involve mentorships, workshops and speaking opportunities (and, of course, a greater presence at the festival). Bailey describes connecting people within the industry for Share Her Journey, which is reminiscent of his approach within the Lightbox. “We try to open those doors,” he says. “We’ve made some progress. We can point to people who have moved through those programs and gone on to be able to create new work. Is it enough? There’s always more that we could be doing.”

In its ideal form, the TIFF Lightbox offers something increasingly valuable for how rare it is these days: immersion. At its best, it is a space dedicated to forging a sustained relationship with cinema, one in which time ceases to be limited and there are no distractions.

Corey Atad, a member of TIFF who is often at the Lightbox multiple times a week, has had those transformational experiences that Bailey talks about. He mentions 2020’s Angela Schanelec retrospective, which screened nine of the German auteur’s films in all their static, emotionally ambiguous glory. This holistic approach to one filmmaker’s oeuvre allowed him to get lost in her development as an artist and in turn helped him develop. “It changed how I think about cinema,” he says.

The TIFF Lightbox building itself was designed to be immersive. Kuwabara explains that it was set up to choreograph the people progressing through it. “There’s the whole thing about seeing and being seen and sequencing movement,” he says. But what is immersive in theory is not always the so in practice.

The Lightbox can operate as a warren—box upon box of disorientation; in some ways, it’s a perfect reflection of an organization that functions in similar confusion. TIFF is a $43-million box that keeps tipping from its initial ambition to be Canada’s centre of cinema into a real estate property struggling to pay its bills, the loss of its biggest sponsor rendering the task even more difficult. It is a place that originally grew out of local cinephilia but now leans on its audience for perspective; a place that regularly launches sparkly initiatives around identity rather than devoting its resources to fortifying a diverse local film ecosystem.

In an atmosphere like this, where grand artistic ambitions often go unrealized, it makes sense that the very large, very heavy hinged doors Kuwabara originally chose for the front entrance of the TIFF Lightbox, were silently replaced by sliding doors—“like you see in malls,” he says.

The post How Did TIFF’s Lightbox Become Its Money Pit? appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

People with autism see the world through a slightly different lens—lights can appear too bright, noises might sound too loud. As a result, working in a busy environment like a restaurant can be kryptonite for those on the spectrum. 

But this didn’t deter the Pacific Autism Family Network (PAFN) from opening the country’s first neurodiverse café inside Canada’s second largest airport in the fall of 2023. Located in the busy domestic arrivals area of the Vancouver International Airport, Paper Planes Café hires and trains employees with neurological differences in the art of customer service, order taking and latte making.

The business’s lofty purpose is posted on the wall for travellers to see: “We’re a coffee shop on a mission to empower autistic and neurodiverse individuals, providing meaningful employment opportunities.” Employees are paid a living wage of $24 per hour, and after a six-month stint at the café they earn their “hospitality wings” and the PAFN team helps them find employment elsewhere. 

The social enterprise is the brainchild of Wendy and Sergio Cocchia, a Vancouver couple that started the PAFN in 2016 to support families living with the lifelong developmental disorder that impacts one in 50 Canadian children and adolescents. The Cocchias, whose adult son has autism, dreamed of one day helping members of the autism community find work. 

Related: Is Your Workplace Supporting Neurodiverse Employees?

“Employment really is the conduit to leading a meaningful life,” says Sergio, noting that most families with a member on the spectrum want two things for their child: a friend and a job. The café provides both.

Trainees start out working shorter shifts of two to four hours to help them build confidence and get used to the sounds and space. With support from neurotypical managers and mentors, they learn how to take and fill customer orders while progressing through a skills checklist that includes everything from wearing an apron properly to completing a transaction.

But the training program is about more than just mastering practical tasks like making and serving coffee and sandwiches. “It’s also about the soft skills and the social skills that are incredibly important to any kind of employment,” says Wendy.

Vancouver Airport Authority CEO Tamara Vrooman receives the first cup from the café. (Photography: Vancouver Airport Authority)

Trainees get to practice smiling, having friendly conversations with customers and problem solving, crucial assets when working in hospitality. Support staff are there to guide them when it gets busy—the café serves about 100 customers a day—and to help them manage issues like sensory overload. 

The venture is funded through a partnership with the Vancouver Airport Authority, which made a five-year commitment to PAFN for $500,000. In return, PAFN is training 25 per cent of airport authority staff in autism awareness and sensitivity, so that frontline workers including CATSA security screeners, terminal officers and YVR Fire and Rescue members, among others, will have the skills to recognize and respond to neurodiverse travellers. 

Additionally, the 95-square-metre space is being provided to the café rent-free, so that the PAFN can reinvest the business’s profits into supporting more employment opportunities for the autism community.

Related: How to Spot—and Stop—Unconscious Bias in Hiring

“It’s really important that our airport be fully inclusive and accessible,” says Vancouver Airport Authority CEO Tamara Vrooman. “This initiative allows us to make sure that our staff and our passengers are interacting with and seeing people with autism in a different way. We’re getting a cup of coffee when we go there—they’re getting a career.”

Tellingly, Paper Planes Café doesn’t count success in food and drinks sold, but in trainees graduated. “The only way we can measure success is the number of people we place and who get meaningful employment after the fact,” says Sergio.

So far, five employees have fledged from the café and are now stretching their wings in jobs outside of the YVR nest, with more following this spring. Paper Planes made their employment dreams possible, and in the process the café improved the airport experience for all passengers. That’s definitely good for business.

The post This Airport Coffee Shop Is Uplifting Neurodiverse Workers appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

Welcome to CB’s personal-finance advice column, Make It Make Sense, where each month experts answer reader questions on complex investment and personal-finance topics and break them down in terms we can all understand. This month, Damir Alnsour, a lead advisor and portfolio manager at money-management platform Wealthsimple, tackles eco-friendly investments. Have a question about your finances? Send it to editor@canadianbusiness.com.

Q: It’s Earth Month! And… there’s a climate crisis. How can I invest in companies and portfolios funding causes I believe in?

Earth Day may have been introduced in 1970, but today it’s more relevant than ever: In a 2023 survey, 72 per cent of Canadians said they were worried about climate change. Along with carpooling, ditching single-use plastics and composting, you can celebrate Earth Month this year by greening your investment portfolio.

Green investing, or buying shares in projects, companies, or funds that are committed to environmental sustainability, is an excellent way to support projects and businesses that reflect your passions and lifestyle choices. It’s growing in favour among Canadian investors, but there are some considerations investors should be mindful of. Let’s review some green investing options and what to look out for.

Green Bonds

Green bonds are a fixed-income instrument where the proceeds are put toward climate-related purposes. In 2022, the Canadian government launched its first Green Bond Framework, which saw strong demand from domestic and global investors. This resulted in a record $11 billion green bonds being sold. One warning: Because it’s a smaller market, green bonds tend to be less liquid than many other investments.

It’s also important to note that a “green” designation can mean a lot of different things. And they’re not always all that environmentally-guided. Some companies use broad, vague terms to explain how the funds will be used, and they end up using the money they raised with the bond sale to pay for other corporate needs that aren’t necessarily eco-friendly. There’s also the practice of “greenwashing,” labelling investments as “green” for marketing campaigns without actually doing the hard work required to improve their environmental footprint.

To make things more challenging, funds and asset managers themselves can partake in greenwashing. Many funds that purport to be socially responsible still hold oil and gas stocks, just fewer of them than other funds. Or they own shares of the “least problematic” of the oil and gas companies, thereby touting emission reductions without clearly disclosing the extent of those improvements. As with any type of investing, it’s important to do your research and understand exactly what you’re investing in.

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and Impact Investing

SRI and impact investing portfolios hold a mix of stocks and bonds that are intended to put your money towards projects and companies that work to advance progressive social outcomes or address a social issue—i.e., investing in companies that don’t wreak havoc on society. They can include companies promoting sustainable growth, diverse workforces and equitable hiring practices.

The main difference between the two approaches is that SRI uses a measurable criteria to qualify or disqualify companies as socially responsible, while impact investing typically aims to help an enterprise produce some social or environmental benefit.

Related: Climate Change Is Influencing How Young People Invest Their Money

Some financial institutions use the two approaches to build well-diversified, low-cost, socially responsible portfolios that align with most clients’ environmental and societal preferences. That said, not all portfolios are constructed with the same care. As with evaluating green bonds, it’s important to remember that a company or fund having an SRI designation or saying it partakes in impact investing is subjective. There’s always a risk of not knowing exactly where and with whom the money is being invested.

All three of these options are good reminders that, even though you may feel helpless to enact environmental or social change in the face of larger systemic issues, your choices can still support the well-being of society and the planet. So, if you have extra funds this April (maybe from your tax return?), green or social investing are solid options. As long as you do thorough research and understand some of the limitations, you’re sure to find investments that are both good for the world and your finances.

The post Make It Make Sense: How Can I Invest in Green Companies? appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

On April 11, trailblazing entrepreneurs and business leaders convened for the second annual CB Innovation Awards Luncheon at the Toronto Region Board of Trade’s contemporary office and event space on the waterfront. Presented by signature partner BMO Financial Group and thought leadership partner Paralucent, the awards luncheon brought attendees together to honour some of Canada’s most innovative companies.

The luncheon’s patron table sponsors included Air Canada, Canadian Western Bank, Café William, Moderna Canada, Parvis Investments, Qohash, 369 Global, Mastercard Canada, Flygreen and Tricon Residential. The event also coincided with the launch of Canadian Business’s Spring 2024 issue.

The CB Innovation Awards luncheon held at the Toronto Region Board of Trade at The Quay on the waterfront. Cameron Williamson, vice president client solutions, media & content at SJC Media (right) with guests at the CB Innovation Awards.

In an intimate fireside chat, Fatima Zaidi, co-founder and CEO of award-winning podcast agency Quill, and Katie Green, co-founder of &Or Collective, a clothing brand working to reduce textile waste in the retail industry, joined Charlotte Herrold, editor-in-chief at Canadian Business, to discuss some of the challenges Canadian entrepreneurs face in growing their companies, from securing funding to a need for more mentorship opportunities.

Charlotte Herrold, editor-in-chief of Canadian Business (left) hosted a fireside chat with Fatima Zaidi, co-founder and CEO of Quill (center) and Katie Green, co-founder of &Or Collective (right). Guests during the fireside chat featuring the CEO of Quill, Fatima Zaidi and co-founder of &Or Collective, Katie Green.

On top of the existing hurdles business owners face, turbulent market conditions over the past few years have created a difficult fundraising environment for entrepreneurs, particularly those who are women and visible minorities, Zaidi and Green pointed out. “I never want to be at a point in my life where I’m complacent as a CEO or founder,” said Zaidi. “Take the risk, invest in PR…and do whatever you think you don’t necessarily deserve because of that imposter syndrome.”

Robin Stewart, head of Canadian business banking headquarters operations at BMO gave the keynote address.

In his keynote address, Robin Stewart, head of Canadian business banking headquarters operations at BMO, applauded the unique qualities founders must possess to build an innovative business from the ground up: agility, focus, perseverance and drive. “There may be shooting stars like overnight successes, but this is not the reality for 99.9 per cent of small business owners,” said Stewart. “Add to that the complexity of technology, the demand to be heard in an already crowded space and the overwhelming amount of competition—the path to success is not always clear and definitely is not easy.”

Guests enjoyed lunch by Oliver & Bonicini.

Following the lunch provided by Oliver & Bonacini, speakers Jeff Miller, CEO at Paralucent; Bindhu Alvar Thiruvenkadathan, CIO at BMO Wealth Management; Fardeen Khan, CIO at RBC Wealth Management; and Sladjana Jovanovic, CIO of personal & business banking technology and B2C data transformation at BMO, joined Jason Maghanoy, group publisher at SJC, for a marquee panel. Together, they discussed innovation in the financial sector and how technological advances in quantum computing, cybersecurity and generative AI will impact how entrepreneurs run their businesses.

The luncheon panel featured (left to right) Fardeen Khan, CIO at RBC Wealth Management; Jeff Miller, CEO at Paralucent; Sladjana Jovanovic, CIO of personal & business banking technology and B2C data transformation at BMO, and Bindhu Alvar Thiruvenkadathan, CIO at BMO Wealth Management. Moderated by Jason Maghanoy, group publisher at SJC. Jeff Miller, CEO of Paralucent speaking on the luncheon panel.

“Our top strategy is digital-first, which is to modernize and make our technology more flexible in order to meet the needs of our customers, and that goes for our entire technology stack,” said Jovanovic. “Then, when we think about AI, that is our position as well: How can we use AI to project that?” Miller, who has been at the helm of Paralucent for over 20 years, pointed out that companies tend to put too much focus on shiny new technology, instead of focusing on the impact of their products.

Charlotte Herrold, editor-in-chief of Canadian Business (left) with representatives of the 2024 Top 10 Innovators list. Guests got a first look at the spring issue of Canadian Business, which features the 25 disruptors and the Top 10 Innovative companies.

To cap off the luncheon, Herrold presented the awards to the winners of the 2024 CB Innovation Awards. Together, with judges Krista Jones, interim CEO of MaRS Discovery District, and Takara Small, award-winning tech reporter and podcaster, Canadian Business selected 25 finalists from a pool of applicants. From there, the judges further narrowed down the finalists to 10 companies that are redefining what it means to innovate. Here, the recipients of the 2024 CB Innovation Awards:

• Café William
• Flygreen
• Rebelstork
• Lightspeed
• Pontosense
• Quill
• Spring
• Jelly Academy 
• &OR
• Moderna Canada

Click here to read more about the recipients of the 2024 CB Innovation Awards.

The post Here’s What Went Down at the CB Innovation Awards 2024 Luncheon appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

Not long ago, the word “prosperity” might have evoked an image of financial security. But new research shows Canadians’ perceptions of wealth are changing.

“Factors such as record-high inflation and the shifting nature of work continue to reshape Canadian perspectives on our economy and individual prosperity,” says Sasha Krstic, President of Mastercard Canada. “Canadians’ view of prosperity is evolving in tandem with global challenges and societal shifts.”

Canadians Split on Views of Prosperity

New research from Mastercard on Canadians’ economic outlooks reveals polarized views of the country’s prosperity. Forty-one per cent of Canadians say we are prosperous as a nation, while 45 per cent say we are not.

But who you are affects this perception, Mastercard found. Women are less likely than men to say Canada is prosperous-37 per cent, compared to 45 per cent. And less than half of youth and students, LGBTQ+ individuals and disabled Canadians report feeling personally prosperous, compared to 60 per cent overall.

A New Definition of Prosperity

How we define prosperity is changing, too. “In the face of adversity, Canadians are adopting and reimagining ‘prosperity’ for themselves, their families and for future generations,” Krstic says.

Prosperity isn’t just about money, Mastercard found. While 46 per cent say “financial stability/economic freedom” is a top factor influencing personal prosperity, other important factors are less fiscally focused. Forty-nine per cent of respondents say health and well-being are most important and 39 per cent mention strong family and personal relationships.

Carving out a new path to economic—and overall—wellbeing

For example, Mastercard knows small businesses are the heartbeat of Canada’s economy, so the company makes significant investments to support women and Indigenous entrepreneurs. In 2021, Mastercard launched the Global Intelligence and Cyber Centre of Excellence, a Vancouver-based technology and innovation hub focused on creating solutions in cybersecurity, AI and other advanced technologies. Through the Centre of Excellence, Mastercard partners with post-secondary institutions and non-profits to cultivate Canada’s tech pipeline with diverse talent who might not otherwise have the opportunity to build careers in STEM.

“At Mastercard, we know innovation and technology drive economic growth and can foster inclusivity,” Krstic says. “The stakes to get it right have never been higher. By working together as leaders we can shape the future of the digital economy for the benefit of all Canadians.”

Survey methodology

The Mastercard survey was fielded in the first quarter of 2024. Response data are derived from a representative sample of the Canadian population (N = 1,000) that includes an oversample of small business owners (N= 200). The margin of error for commensurate nationally representative survey responses is ± 3% at the 95% confidence interval. Results shown are weighted using age and gender demographic indicators from the 2021 Canadian Census.

The post Mastercard Is Using Innovation to Empower People and Power Canada’s Economy appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

In the past year, businesses have had to navigate a landscape marked by whiplash-inducing technological advancements, undeniably urgent evidence of climate change and ever-shifting consumer values that increasingly prioritize social responsibility. The companies that simply keep up with digital transformation, sustainability best practices and workplace wellness trends can survive, but it takes a future-focused commitment to driving meaningful impact to truly thrive in 2024 and beyond.

Together with judges Krista Jones, interim CEO of MaRS Discovery District, and Takara Small, award-winning tech reporter and podcaster, Canadian Business selected 25 companies that exemplify resilience, adaptability and an unwavering dedication to bettering lives both within and beyond our borders. Meet the companies that are redefining what it means to be an innovator.

Illustration: Nada Hayek Pontosense

Founded 2021

Headquarters Toronto

Founders Alex Qi, Yihong Qi and Muxin Ma

In 2017, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas’s annual gizmo circus, tech entrepreneur Alex Qi watched a presentation for a biometric monitoring device that was unlike the heart-rate-tracking smartwatches already common at the time. Two wireless routers captured the heartbeat of an audience participant without any physical contact, instead using the same radio waves that Wi-Fi utilizes. He remembers Yihong Qi, a BlackBerry alum who was also attending the event, turning to him with a revelation: You could get even more detailed data using higher-frequency millimetre waves, or mmWaves, through a singular but more efficient sensor.

In 2021, the pair, along with health-tech entrepreneur Muxin Ma, officially co-founded Pontosense, with the aim of using mmWave technology to analyze environments, recognize patterns and offer actionable insights in a variety of settings. The applications of this technology could save lives on numerous fronts, they thought, from health care to vehicular safety to home security.

The underlying science is deceptively simple. Pontosense’s proprietary four-square-centimetre sensor emits high-frequency electromagnetic waves into the air. After bouncing off objects, those mmWaves reflect back onto the sensor, identifying micro-movements as subtle as a heartbeat with medical-grade accuracy from up to 15 metres away. Qi likens it to a bat’s echolocation—except Pontosense takes it to the next level. Using artificial intelligence and proprietary machine-learning tools, the company’s software is able to quickly isolate and remove unwanted noise from data—like a car’s vibrations when trying to measure the driver’s heartbeat—solving an issue that plagued previous iterations of mmWave tech.

Imagine the safety and security enhancements possible with a Pontosense sensor incorporated into a vehicle’s system. This sensor could flag a potential thief’s hand slipping through an open window or recognize signs of a driver being dangerously close to nodding off and trigger warnings accordingly. And it could significantly bolster child-presence detection, alerting a distracted parent to a toddler left in the backseat. Qi says Pontosense is already working with most major car manufacturers, including Tesla. He estimates that 100,000 Pontosense boosted vehicles will roll off assembly lines in 2024.

Homes are a bigger challenge for the sensors to map out, but there is great potential for life-saving interventions in this realm too. Pontosense’s AgeTech arm is personal for Qi; had the technology been around, he says, it would have alerted his family when his elderly grandfather fell in the middle of the night, an event that led to his untimely death from pneumonia. It’s a scenario that older adults must increasingly consider. Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among seniors. With further advancements, Qi anticipates a future where Pontosense sensors could help identify signs of other potential health issues “weeks, months and maybe even years in advance.”

The versatility of Pontosense’s technology has found its way into unexpected applications too—such as monitoring cheetahs’ stress levels at an African wildlife sanctuary to help in their mating efforts— illustrating Qi’s aspiration to create universally accessible innovations beyond what he initially envisioned: “You want to create something that anybody can use.”

Illustration: Nada Hayek Spring

Founded 2014

Headquarters Vancouver

Founders Keith Ippel and Bonnie Foley-Wong

A decade ago, Keith Ippel noticed major gaps in Canada’s venture-capital landscape. Despite start-ups having access to practical tools, mentorship programs and networking opportunities, none of these resources truly prioritized positive social impact as much as they did financial returns. Without intervention, he thought, corporate Canada appeared destined to continue treating social responsibility as an afterthought.

Founded in 2014, Spring was created to empower socially minded capitalists, from founders to angel investors, through a variety of educational and acceleration programs.Early on, start-ups were its logical focal point—Ippel says that getting mature companies to account for their environmental and social impact can be more challenging. Starting with seedlings meant that Spring could invest its time (and often its capital) in people who already held social responsibility as elemental to their business. With a bit of nurturing, these ventures could soon be investment-ready.

Meanwhile, many would-be impact investors simply didn’t know where to start. They had the resources but still needed help identifying opportunities to generate returns on investment and impact. Spring offers coaching in this area too, including through its Impact Investor Challenge, a series of multi-week programs aimed at navigating the fundraising process.

Now, Spring could influence venture capitalism from all angles: as a coach to both sides, as the referee brokering deals and, occasionally, as a player in its own right. Through its Spring Impact Capital fund, Spring typically invests $250,000 per start-up.

Last year, Spring bolstered its institutional knowledge with the purchase of Future Capital, an accelerator focused on Black- and women-founded start-ups. The acquisition brought founder and CEO Marlon Thompson into Spring’s C-suite as chief experience officer.

A decade into Spring’s mission, the numbers tell the story of the firm’s far-reaching impact. It has worked with more than 3,100 entrepreneurs and 900 investors and helped facilitate over $50 million in funding. But as much as the first decade was about nurturing socially responsible capitalism, the theme of Spring’s next decade is standardization. In Ippel’s ideal future, companies would “no longer even be using the word ‘impact’” to qualify socially minded entrepreneurs and investors. If all goes to plan, impact may just be a given—a foundational shift toward a brighter business world.

Photo illustration: Nada Hayek Café William

Founded 1988

Headquarters Sherbrooke, Que.

Founder Serge Picard

It was a brainstorming session in 2020 that sparked one of Café William’s most unique innovations. The coffee roaster and wholesaler was in pursuit of an even greener supply chain for its organic and ethically sourced coffee, and co-owner Serge Picard had an idea: They could import their beans from South America to the company’s roasting plant in Sherbrooke, Que., via sailboat instead of gas-powered cargo ships.

Partnering with the Costa Rica-based Sailcargo, Café William invested in the construction of a zero-emissions cargo ship, which took its maiden voyage in December from Santa Marta, Colombia, to Quebec with almost 75,000 kilograms of green coffee beans. The month-long journey made Café William the first commercial coffee roaster in the world to use a zero-emissions ship to transport beans.

“This initiative is not just about reducing emissions; it’s also aimed at inspiring an industry shift toward more sustainable logistics solutions,” says Rémi Tremblay, Café William’s president and CEO. “We are setting a new standard for environmental responsibility in the coffee sector.”

Next, Tremblay and Picard collaborated with German manufacturer Neuhaus Neotec to develop an electric industrial roaster. The first 100 per cent electric commercial roaster debuted in Café William’s new Sherbrooke plant, which opened in February and has an annual roasting capacity of up to nine million kilograms of coffee.

Café William’s efforts to grow sustainably are paying off. The company experienced a 53 per cent increase in sales revenue from 2022 to 2023, making it the fastest-growing of the top 10 coffee brands in Canada.

Photo illustration: Nada Hayek Rebelstork

Founded 2019

Headquarters Toronto

Founder Emily Hosie

Roughly 100 million pieces of kid and baby gear are thrown away in the U.S. alone every year. Once a child has outgrown a stroller or no longer needs their car seat, it can be a challenge for parents to figure out what to do with this equipment. That’s why Emily Hosie, founder of online marketplace Rebelstork, is on a mission to ensure that these items find a new home—while helping parents recoup a bit of expense at the same time.

Rebelstork uses a proprietary AI-powered pricing technology called REV to generate real-time resale value on over 50,000 baby-gear models so customers can make smart decisions before deciding to buy or sell. Items are sold via a consignment model in which Rebelstork shares the profits with the seller. It’s a big step up from the free buy-andsell sites where fair pricing is anyone’s guess and, even when both parties have the best of intentions, deals often fall through.

Hosie, who was previously a merchandising executive for The TJX Companies, also aimed to tackle the problem of waste generated by retail returns. When she learned that many baby-gear brands and retailers don’t have the capacity to manage their returns (and, as a result, dispose of nearly $1.6 billion in product returns annually), she introduced ReLuvable. The re-commerce partnership program gives brands like Bumbleride and BabyBjörn the technology to process returns and resell items on Rebelstork’s marketplace.

Whereas a traditional retailer acquires inventory by purchasing it and marking it up for sale, Rebelstork acquires retailers’ returns and overstock and pays them a percentage after an item is sold on its marketplace. Hosie estimates that by doing so, they have successfully prevented 200,000 products from being discarded. Meanwhile, families are able to get like-new products at a discount.

Rebelstork also supports Canadian charities such as The New Mom Project, which provides basic baby necessities and resources to marginalized families, and Mamas for Mamas, which provides poverty relief to mothers and caregivers, through its year-round donation-matching program.

The company’s growth has been impressive too. Sales have risen from around $1 million in 2021 to over $10 million in 2023. It expanded into the United States in 2022 and now operates three returns-and-recommerce facilities, in New York, Tennessee and Toronto.

“As we go forward, we are continuously working to partner with more retailers, large and small,” says Hosie. “We want to further drive the circular economy and divert as much product from landfill as we can.”

Illustration: Nada Hayek Moderna

Founded 2010

Canadian headquarters Toronto

Founders Derrick Rossi, Timothy A. Springer, Kenneth R. Chien, Robert S. Langer and Noubar Afeyan

Founded in Cambridge, Mass., in 2010, Moderna became a household name a decade later thanks to its mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. This wasn’t just a scientific breakthrough; it was a game-changer in the global fight against the virus. Its momentum led to the announcement of Moderna Canada in 2020, setting the stage for the country’s first mRNA-manufacturing facility.

The Canadian subsidiary is one of several (there are also new divisions in Asia, Europe and Africa) that Moderna announced following the start of the pandemic. It’s part of a larger company movement to ensure equitable access to vaccines globally. The company’s 9,300-square-metre manufacturing facility in Laval, Que., was finished in February, and it will become the first facility in Canada to provide domestic commercial mRNA vaccine production.

This growth will allow Canada to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on vaccine supply from other markets, says Stefan Raos, Moderna Canada’s general manager. The Canadian subsidiary has already grown from 20 employees to more than 80, and the launch of the facility in Laval is expected to add even more to the team.

Though the science behind mRNA medicine is hardly new, its success as a vaccine against the Covid virus has brought forth new possibilities for treating other conditions. Currently, Moderna has a pipeline with 45 development programs in five therapeutic areas: cancer immunotherapy and infectious, cardiovascular, autoimmune and rare diseases. With the new facility in Laval, it will be easier for the organization to collaborate with local universities to explore this research while also providing better access to clinical studies for Canadians.

The company is at the cutting edge of sustainable operations too. The Laval facility is working toward LEED certification, the worldwide standard for energy efficiency in buildings. And Moderna Canada is the first pharmaceutical company in the country to join Environment and Climate Canada’s Net-Zero Challenge, which encourages businesses to implement strategies to transition their operations to net-zero emissions by 2050.

With the new manufacturing facility set to produce up to 100 million mRNA respiratory vaccine doses and provide more opportunities for domestic research, Moderna Canada represents a big leap forward in biotech innovation.

Illustration: Nada Hayek &Or Collective

Founded 2020

Headquarters Montreal

Founders Kristen King, Katie Green, Rosa Halpern and Drew Green

Starting a fashion brand that balances style with environmental responsibility is no easy feat, especially with textiles accounting for an estimated 450 million kilograms of waste annually in Canada. Enter retail-industry veterans Kristen King, Katie Green, Rosa Halpern and Drew Green, the co-founders of &Or Collective, who previously worked for companies like Aldo and L’Oréal. They launched their women-led clothing brand last summer with a collection of zero-to-landfill garments that form the basis of a conscious capsule wardrobe.

The company uses organic cotton and sheep’s wool certified for ethical treatment and sustainability. But what really sets &Or apart is its highly technical production. “Our ‘secret sauce’ is our use of flatbed knitting, a solution to the fashion industry’s alarming waste problem,” says Katie Green. Flatbed-knitting machines are digitally programmed so that only the precise amount of yarn needed to create a particular garment is used.

Circular-knitting machines, which are more commonly used in mass garment production, work faster than flatbed ones but have limited design flexibility. Moreover, traditional cut-and-sew manufacturing requires several panels of fabric and multiple machines—for shaping, cutting and sewing—to create a single piece of clothing. With &Or’s process, a ready-to- wear garment can be made on single machine, significantly reducing the amount of energy consumed and materials used. Green says their production methods reduce pre-consumer textile waste from an industry average of roughly 15 per cent to less than one per cent.

And that one per cent? &Or recycles it through a partnership with SuperCircle, a company that links consumer brands to specialized recyclers and also manages circularity for global retailers like Uniqlo and Reformation.

“Every step of the way has been about making thoughtful, deliberate choices,” Green says. By sustainably producing adaptable and highquality clothing, the company hopes customers will keep these staples in their wardrobes for years, not seasons. “We are set on redefining fast fashion by championing conscious consumption.”

Illustration: Nada Hayek Lightspeed

Founded 2005

Headquarters Montreal

Founder Dax Dasilva

For nearly two decades, Dax Dasilva has been dedicated to transforming outdated cash registers into relics of the past. According to the founder and CEO of point-of-sale software giant Lightspeed, those surprisingly still-prevalent payment terminals are literal and figurative black boxes. For business owners to truly seize control of their retail operations, he says, they need actionable, up-tothe- minute insights.

Lightspeed’s path toward a current-day market cap of $2.9 billion began with Dasilva learning to program on a Mac when he was 13. The computer’s design-forward hardware represented something aspirational— a future built at the intersection of high art and deep science. “When I started Lightspeed in 2005, it wasn’t to build a public company,” the now 47-year-old Dasilva says. “It was to win a design award from Steve Jobs.”

But even as an Apple acolyte, Dasilva saw a missed opportunity in its software, especially programs designed to support business functions. “The original Lightspeed had an almost iTunes-like interface to manage different elements of inventory, transaction flow and employee management,” he says.

For retail businesses, where cash is largely tied up in inventory, an omni-channel platform that enables visualization and optimization was a game-changer. Lightspeed’s ensuing advancements, including the incorporation of AI tools, further democratized data-driven decision-making within the retail and service sectors.

As Lightspeed scaled, the company sought out ways to innovate beyond its software through social-enterprise initiatives. For instance, with its Carbon Friendly Dining program, which it rolled out in 2017, diners at select restaurant partners could opt to offset the carbon footprint of their meal directly through Lightspeed’s POS software. The program, which costs restaurants nothing, has funded the planting of more than 1.5 million trees to date.

Lightspeed has also found ways to institute progressive people policies within its world-spanning offices. Most recently, the company, which now totals around 3,000 staff worldwide, overhauled its relocation policy to support employees who face potential health and safety issues due to anti-transgender legislation in their home state. Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have always been core tenets of Lightspeed’s office culture, Dasilva says. In fact, the firm’s first four employees—its founder included—are members ofthe LGBTQ2S+ community.

Dasilva, having stepped back as Lightspeed’s CEO into an executive chair role in early 2022, returned to his former position in February, ready to oversee what he expects to be a profitable growth phase. In March, the founder hinted at the possibility of going private, driving up share values overnight.

Photo illustration: Nada Hayek Flygreen

Founded 2023

Headquarters Saint-Laurent, Que.

Founders Matt Keezer and Ryan Saroli

When you think about eco-friendly transportation, a private flight probably isn’t top of mind. After all, private jets are shown to be five to 14 times more polluting per passenger than commercial flights. But they aren’t going away any time soon—as of last year, there were about 23,370 private jets operating around the world—so Flygreen is working to significantly reduce their environmental footprint.

The company developed Jetpro, a tool that uses artificial intelligence to track flight options based on cost, convenience and environmental considerations. This helps Flygreen’s customers—the majority of whom are in Canada and the U.S.—select lower-impact flights. At the end of each trip, travellers get a report with a detailed overview of their flight’s environmental impact, including fuel consumption, CO2 emissions and the number of tree plantings required to capture the carbon emissions from their journey. So far, the company says it has contributed to the planting of 20,000 trees in Canada and the U.S. with the goal of supporting carbon sequestration and biodiversity preservation.

Co-founders Matt Keezer and Ryan Saroli are dedicated to making private jet charters as sustainable as possible until the industry transitions to electric aircraft. In the meantime, Flygreen is also working to make change on the ground with its Drive Green initiative. The internal program encourages the company’s staff—which has grown from two to 20—to switch to electric vehicles by providing monthly subsidies.

Photo illustration: Nada Hayek Jelly Academy

Founded 2018

Headquarters Fort Langley, B.C.

Founder Darian Kovacs

In 2018, Darian Kovacs, a Metis entrepreneur from B.C., founded Jelly Academy with two main objectives: to make Canadian education more inclusive for marginalized groups and to help arm the country’s workforce with the digital skills demanded by today’s job market.

Since its inception, the academy has trained around 3,000 students, emphasizing support for women, Indigenous individuals and people of colour. “We wanted to build a program that is intentionally accessible for under-represented people,” says Kovacs.

Jelly’s training focuses on the “new collar” industry: jobs that didn’t even exist a decade ago. With virtual courses on topics like digital marketing and website building, Jelly has caught the attention of both governments and industry partners that are looking to upskill their staff at scale. It recently collaborated with the Canadian Professional Sales Association to certify a B2B-sales course for its members and has been contracted through Upskill Canada and Digital, both parts of federal government initiatives designed to boost skills training and work-placement opportunities in digital industries across Canada.

This March, Jelly Academy joined the Digital Marketing Skills Canada consortium, a Canadian Marketing Association initiative that is funded by a $10.8-million grant from the federal government and will train 15,000 Canadian workers. It has also partnered with the Calgary-based Influence Mentoring Society to provide mentors for Indigenous learners navigating the post-secondary system.

Most of Jelly’s courses are aimed at post-secondary students or early-career professionals looking to gain specific accreditation, but the academy has recently licensed its introductory course to the governments of B.C. and Alberta so that students in Grade 12 can take its courses and receive credit as part of a workforcereadiness curriculum.

In 2023, 700 students completed Jelly Academy programs, and 75 per cent were from demographics that are under-represented in their respective sectors. Jelly provides scholarships for Indigenous learners and women, and in 2022, it was named a finalist in the DEI category of the B.C. Tech Association’s Technology Impact Awards.

Tech skills, says Kovacs, should be accessible to everyone, not just those with privilege or those who happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Illustration: Nada Hayek Quill

Founded 2019

Headquarters Toronto

Founder Fatima Zaidi

In 2018, Fatima Zaidi, who was then a VP of business development for a marketing agency, noticed a growing demand from clients interested in producing podcasts. In the afterglow of sensations like This American Life’s “Serial,” brands were starting to identify audio-format shows as an opportunity to engage their customers. But Zaidi found there was little, if anything, on the market that provided an end-to-end solution for podcasting—from production to audience growth to analytics management. So, in 2019, she launched Quill, a women-led full-service agency specializing in the production and marketing of high-quality podcasts.

When the pandemic took in-person events and other forms of experiential marketing off the table, many more companies turned to audio-format shows when it came to investing their ad dollars, and Quill’s customer base grew exponentially, attracting a host of new clients, such as Microsoft, Expedia and TD Canada Trust. In less than a year, Quill turned Zaidi’s initial investment of $10,000 into $1 million in revenue.

These big brands also wanted metrics for their podcasts to gauge their reach and success. And while platforms like Google Analytics and Semrush were available for analyzing website traffic, there was nothing comparable for analyzing podcast performance. In 2022, Quill launched CoHost, the first techenabled podcast-hosting platform to offer built-in demographic-based analytics. Within the first year, it gained more than 200 sign-ups. Quill also developed an additional tool called Prefix that enables podcasters and marketers to gain analytics and audience insights through the CoHost platform without having to change their podcast hosting provider. Currently, there is a trademark underway for the technology that enables both CoHost and Prefix.

Today, Quill produces an average of 30 branded podcasts per quarter throughout Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Last year, the company made almost $4 million in revenue and is on track to reach $6 million in 2024. Currently, Zaidi and her team are working to integrate artificial intelligence into their products, which would allow clients to access more specific data with ease.

By turning a traditional content-marketing agency model into a leading software-as-a-service product, Quill is changing the podcast landscape globally. Having grown from a team of two to 25, the agency is continuing to collect podcast data from around the world and refine its platforms with the goal of making high-quality audio storytelling more accessible to brands everywhere.

Skip the Dishes

Founded 2012

Headquarters Winnipeg

Founders Chris Simair, Josh Simair

The food-delivery company, which helped establish Winnipeg as a tech hub, recently introduced innovations that make ordering easier and help couriers get paid faster. Also cool: Its new Skip for Business vertical lets companies provide staff with delivery credits as an alternative to in-office catering.

University Health Network

Founded 1999

Headquarters Toronto

Last year, Canada’s top research and teaching hospital network established a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence hub and appointed a chief AI scientist with the goals of better predicting surgical outcomes, improving techniques and personalizing treatment.

Turo

Founded 2009

Canadian headquarters Toronto

Founder Shelby Clark

Last year, the San Francisco-founded carshare service integrated a ChatGPT plug-in that enables users to input their travel details and receive a tailored list of vehicles, with the option to refine searches for specific features like bike racks or sunroofs.

Pinterest

Founded 2009

Canadian headquarters Toronto

Founders Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, Ben Silbermann

Everyone’s favourite digital-moodboard platform just introduced a novel technology that leverages AI to deliver more diverse body-type representation in search results within its fashion and wedding verticals.

Maple

Founded 2015

Headquarters Toronto

Founders Brett Belchetz, Stuart Starr, Roxana Zaman

The digital-health-service company recently partnered with provincial governments in Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick to fill the health-care gap, improving accessibility for tens of thousands of Canadians without access to primary and urgent care.

Wahi Realty

Founded 2022

Headquarters Toronto

Founder Benjy Katchen

Using generative AI, Wahi lets prospective homebuyers search for property characteristics through images, making it easier to narrow in on things like “renovated kitchen” or “finished basement.” In 2023, it also introduced the industry’s first AI-powered realtor-recommendation system.

Willful

Founded 2017

Headquarters Toronto

Founders Kevin Oulds, Erin Bury

In 2023, the estateplanning disruptor expanded its digital business to sell physical kits that include a planning checklist, a documentstorage box and a code to redeem a will online, opening the door to new retail partners.

Qohash

Founded 2018

Headquarters Quebec City

Founders Jean Le Bouthillier, Dany Grimard, Guy Veilleux, Jean-Pierre Pelletier

As part of its mission to protect sensitive information, data-security company Qohash expanded its technology to cover more platforms, enabling organizations to monitor information and track potential breaches across multiple cloud environments.

Arcana

Founded 2019

Headquarters Toronto

Founders Alan Gertner, Felicia Snyder, Jeremy Hill

The experiential hospitality company, which has biophilic cabins across Ontario, just launched Arhome, a line of design-forward prefab cabins for individual purchase as private guest dwellings or short-term rental units.

Knix

Founded 2013

Headquarters Toronto

Founder Joanna Griffiths

Following a $400-million acquisition in 2022, the period-underwear brand just surpassed 3 million customers thanks to recent innovations like the new Ultra Leakproof briefs, which can absorb the equivalent of nine tampons.

Opentext

Founded 1991

Headquarters Waterloo, Ont.

Founders Frank Tompa, Gaston Gonnet, Tim Bray

After decades of helping companies with data and information management, OpenText launched its Aviator AI platform in the fall of 2023 to help its customers automate workflow processes and identify patterns and anomalies in data.

Xyon Health

Founded 2022

Headquarters Vancouver

Founders Victor Hasson, Simon Pimstone

Serial founder and clinician Dr. Simon Pimstone launched a DTC hair-growthsolutions brand that uses nanoparticle technology to slowly release medication, reducing drug side effects. The company is now expanding with a line of products for women.

Mejuri

Founded 2015

Headquarters Toronto

Founders Noura Sakkijha, Majed Masad, Masoud Sakkijha

Last spring, Mejuri invested US$1.5 million in sustainability programs that help restore habitats around precious-metal mining sites. The fine-jewellery brand also recently launched labgrown precious stones as part of its commitment to responsible sourcing.

Tadiem

Founded 1993

Headquarters Toronto

Founders Jack Bensimon, Peter Byrne

In 2022, creative-agency collective Tadiem set out to answer the question “Why would people want to return to an office?” Last year, the team unveiled their answer: The Combine, an innovative workspace in Toronto that co-functions as a social club where employees and guests alike can learn, shop, podcast, view art and more.

Busch Systems

Founded 1985

Headquarters Barrie, Ont.

Founder Craig Busch

Focused on waste management, diversion and reduction, this certified B corporation recently partnered with Plastic Bank to stop over 45,000 kilograms of waste from entering the ocean.

The post The 25 Most Innovative Companies of 2024 appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.

This month, CB Insider welcomed Adam Froman, the founder and CEO of Delvinia, for a virtual fireside chat. In conversation with Jason Maghanoy, head of business development at SJC Media and publisher of Canadian Business, the two chatted about how Delvinia has evolved alongside digital technology and what the future of digital business in Canada looks like.

The chat kicked off with Froman sharing his career journey: first earning a degree in engineering with an emphasis on human factors before earning an MBA in finance and entrepreneurship. It was then that he discovered his passion for digital—or as it was called back then, multi-media. From there, Froman  worked at Deloitte in their strategy consultant group where he learned a lot about telecommunications in Canada. When he left Deloitte in 1998, he started his own firm. “I wanted to take this discipline Deloitte had taught me to help people think strategically about this emerging technology called the internet, especially from a user point-of-view” he said, recalling his goals when starting up what would become Delvinia. Froman also talked about the amount of time and funds that went into R&D in those early days as he, and everyone else, explored the internet’s capabilities.

The conversation then shifted to talking about Delvinia and Froman’s role in Canada’s economy. Froman said that, from his vantage point at the highest point of policymaking, he’s concerned about Canada’s long-term economic prosperity and wants to be a part of future-proofing Canada’s tech economy. Maghanoy then brought up that Froman has said that conservative policies are “critical to a strong business ecosystem,” and asked what he meant. “Conservatism is about fiscal responsibility,” Froman responded. 

The two then delved into a discussion about the importance of cash flow, which Froman learned when his company struggled during the dot com crash. Following up, Maghanoy asked Froman about how this conservative take has helped his business weather so many storms—and what three things entrepreneurs should do to give their business staying power. Froman explained that the three most important traits for entrepreneurs to develop are cash flow discipline, a strong mental state and company culture. On that last point, Froman said the pandemic’s erosion of company loyalty was one of the hardest things he’s experienced during his long career.

Finally, the two ended the conversation with a discussion about how to make Canada better for business—and what the government can do. Froman said that he was lucky to receive government assistance during his time as an entrepreneur which helped him reinvest in himself and his company—so the most important thing the government can do is support entrepreneurs and provide opportunities to scale globally from Canada. Another important point is the importance of protecting Canadian IP and keeping it in the country. “If we can make IP in Canada, keep it in Canada and turn it into a global standard, that will bring revenue back to Canada without having to work at it,” he said. “That will have a huge impact on the long-term economic prosperity of Canada.”

The post What went down at CB’s Virtual Fireside Chat with Adam Froman, Founder and CEO of Delvinia appeared first on Canadian Business – How to Do Business Better.