Our Entrepreneurs in Residence

In 2018, she was named one of Canada's top 100 Accomplished Black Women. Through enticing pitches and building strong brand partnerships, she has helped to secure approximately $11M in funding for local entrepreneurs, start ups and community organizations. Recently, she co-founded Pitch Better, a market research start up that led Canada’s first and largest open market study on Black women entrepreneurs. This led to North America’s first interactive and dynamic dashboard identifying 1500+ Black women businesses across Canada... http://foundhers.ca. Currently, Amoye and her partner have partnered with CILAR through Facebook Canada to deploy hundreds of thousands of dollars to help support Black entrepreneurs through the pandemic.

In addition to running Pitch Better, Amoye co-founded and Executive Produced the AfroChic Cultural Arts Festival. Since its inception in 2010, AfroChic has created opportunities for over 350 local and international artists, entrepreneurs and cultural practitioners. As a cultural arts leader, she has advocated for the broader Canadian society to embrace, recognize and respect the cultural and historical contributions of people of African descent, bringing communities together. AfroChic is now a global entity having produced content in Canada, United States and West Africa.

A recent graduate at Ivey Business School’s Executive MBA program - Amoye continues to lift as she climbs the corporate Canada ladder and works to create more representation for people of color within the capital markets, by supporting up and coming women and diverse people.

Anita has managed brands with $100MM+ in annual revenue across AI, tech, finance, lifestyle and end of life categories. Currently, she is the Director of Marketing at Fraction, a fintech company that provides fairer financial solutions to homeowners across North America.

Expertise:
Business Strategy | Pricing | E-commerce | Channel Strategy | Category Management | Consumer Research

Elliott is an educator and serial entrepreneur. Elliott spent 20 years in sales and sales leadership roles with high-tech companies including Microsoft and Dell before catching the entrepreneurship bug. He started his first business, AddMirror, in 2019 and sold it in 2017 after hitting seven figure sales numbers. His current venture includes a patented smart home platform. Elliott has a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA in Marketing from the Schulich School of Business.

Today, Erin is back to her fractional CMO roots, working with high-growth companies, as well as teaching the next wave of digital marketing professionals.

Helen has been advising artificial intelligence and emerging technology startups since 2014, including within in her own incubator, which she co-founded in 2015: The UofT's Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL). Where she supported students and faculty to commercialize their innovations.

Expertise:
Business Strategy/KPI | Pricing | Category Management | Sales (Broker/Dist rel’n) | Leadership | Team-building | Negotiation | Retail Strategy and Execution | Commercial Strategy

Expertise:
Business Strategy/KPI | Pricing | Category Management | Sales (Broker/Dist rel’n) | Innovation development | Marketing | Social Media | Financial | Inventory Control | Production Optimization | Co-packing

Prior to founding Diligen, Laura was the Managing Director of Distility. Laura holds undergraduate and honors degrees from the University of Cape Town and a Masters from Oxford University. She tweets as @lauravanwyn about legal technology, artificial intelligence and the future of work.

Margaret is a recognized expert in supporting senior leaders advance to and be highly effective within the C-Suite, and purpose-driven organizations achieve revenue growth.

She works with leaders to help them develop a path to achieve their professional goals; and senior teams to rapidly grow revenue through expansion into new markets, new geographies, innovative offerings, new capabilities, and new programs.

Margaret is a highly skilled executive advisor, strategist, entrepreneur, diversity champion and leadership coach with over 30 years of experience in Fortune 100 and private equity-backed early growth & start-ups in Canada, the US, and globally. Her industry experience is in the high-growth sectors of technology, cannabis, and retail health & wellness.

Margaret is the Founder & Partner of Wentworth Strategy Group Inc., a diversified management consultancy focused on helping small and medium enterprises thrive. She leads the Strategy and Leadership practice. Margaret is also President, Zanel Advisory Group Inc., supporting senior leaders advance to and be effective within the C-Suite, through leadership advancement coaching and strategic advisory.

As a passionate advocate of diversity, equity and inclusion, Margaret works tirelessly to support women's advancement in the c-suite and the boardroom. She is co-instructor of the inaugural DeGroote School of Business, Executive Education Program on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace. Margaret is the first women facilitator of the Board of Trade's Trade Accelerator Program (TAP) for women-led and women-owned business cohorts across Canada. She is an Entrepreneur In Residence with the Ella Accelerator, Ontario's first accelerator focused on supporting women-led product and service-based businesses. Margaret is the Founder of the Women Entrepreneurs Network, a social platform to inspire and educate the next generation of women entrepreneurs. She was also the Executive Director, Mentorship Programs for Women Get on Board Inc.

Margaret currently serves on the Advisory Board of HerRide, Canada's first women driving women ride-hailing membership-based company. She is also an Advisor to a game-changing global conservation tech start-up WildTechDNA. Margaret served for two years on the McMaster Alumni Board. She also served on the board of Xerox Canada Inc. She is an alumnus of the Judy Project. In 2018 Margaret was selected as one of Diversity MBA Magazine's "Top 50 over 50", and in 2020 Margaret was recognized as one of Diversity MBA Magazines, "Top 100 Women of Influence".

Mick began his entrepreneurial journey after having worked for the financial services and card payment industries as a product marketing executive. Since beginning his first company, he has pivoted twice and now leads a highly innovative cybersecurity company. Mick possesses a very strong knowledge base in business development strategy, marketing, sales, operational management, technology & security strategy, and relationship building/management. He continues to be front and center at the crossroads of advancing technologies and user experiences, with a particular focus on privacy and security.

Natasha Freidus is a social entrepreneur and trailblazer re-imagining the future of tech for good.  She is the co-founder and CEO of NeedsList, a software company powering a new model of crisis response. With over one million in ARR, Natasha has secured partnerships for NeedsList ranging from Google to USAID to Grand Challenges Canada. 

Natasha has over two decades of experience applying human centred design for social impact. Prior to NeedsList, Natasha founded Creative Narrations, a training and consulting firm grounded in storytelling as a tool for social change. Her clients included HP, YMCA of the USA and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Natasha enjoys supporting other women and non-binary entrepreneurs on everything from business strategy to pitching investors to brand development. She currently serves on the advisory boards of Sitti Soap and Atelier MBOKA. 

Prior to BWI, Rishabh was the CEO of Lake Finance, working on bringing multi-asset wealth management to retail audiences. He also worked within the Facebook Messenger monetization team to scale revenue, and was the Chief Product Officer at Bunz.com, a bartering community which scaled to 500,000+ members in 250+ cities globally. Rishabh has been building and scaling teams across financial services, marketplaces and community-driven applications since 2010.

Sandra Bekhor founded Bekhor Management in 2005 to enable lawyers, architects, accountants and other professionals to realize the vision for their practice through business and marketing strategies, from start-up through to succession planning.

Sandra regularly writes about practice development for CBA PracticeLink and SlawTips. In partnership with the Toronto Lawyers Association, Sandra co-founded, ‘Keeping it Social’, a LinkedIn group for Toronto lawyers.

Sandra is the instructor for the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s 'Marketing for Architects' course. She also contributed a chapter to the 2nd edition of ‘Marketing Techniques for Law and Professional Practices’, published by the American Bar Association.

Tara Longo is an entrepreneur with a deep passion for food.  In early 2005, she became a leader in the food industry by opening the first Certified Organic retail store in Ontario called The Healthy Butcher.  Over the next 15 years, she expanded into 3 locations in Toronto and Kitchener, and opened an online grocery delivery business.  Moreover, she made an impact on how animals were raised, how farmers were treated, and how food was sold in Ontario.   

Tara has a business education, with strong skills in finance and operations and has been recognized for her accomplishments several times, including Impact’s Green Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Star Women in Grocer, and Excellence in Corporate Responsibility Award.  Tara brings her passion to the business community through various programs and groups working with entrepreneurs to help them succeed. 

Valerie Fox is on a mission to help entrepreneurial communities thrive locally, nationally, and internationally based on a triple win practice of partnership, collaboration, and iteration. Valerie has over 30 years of experience in the digital world, where she initially founded a graphic design business. She was later pursued by IBM to be part of their innovation intrapreneurial network, where she led design teams for enterprise software design, and was the creative director for large experience sites, such as the Sydney Olympics. Valerie was also awarded 5 patents, including one for the Universal Shopping Cart for the Web, which is in the top 5% of IBM patents. Additionally, she also won the Sara Kirke Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the 2016 CNE Woman of Distinction award, and had the honour of being part of the 2016 Canada Innovation Leaders team. Valerie is able to lend her expertise to foster innovation throughout Canada and is a valuable contributor to the ELLA program.