Trying to figure out which grocery store products are produced in Canada? You’re not alone.

Amid news regarding potential tariffs on some Canadian goods and products by the U.S. government, many Canadians have been motivated to shop for domestically produced items. So, Sasha Ivanov, a local computer science researcher and mobile app developer with a background in human and AI interaction, decided to make the process of supporting and shopping locally easier and more efficient with Maple Scan, an app that launched in late February.

With Maple Scan, users can take photos of products on store shelves while they shop, and within seconds, the app uses the label to identify if the product is Canadian-made or Canadian-owned and whether tariffs affect that product or not. The app also generates a “Canada Score Card,” a mini profile on the product that includes background information on the producer and where the product was manufactured.

One standout feature of Maple Scan is that if a product is not made in Canada (or the app cannot confirm whether the product is Canadian-made), the app provides users with a list of alternative Canadian-made products to consider, with information on where the products can be purchased online or even in nearby stores.

Staying true to its support of Canada, Maple Scan is also available in both official languages, English and French.

“This moment is really underscoring and highlighting the need and the benefits of supporting local communities,” says Ivanov. “Our goal really is to just help people buy local and buy Canadian.”

Since its release, Maple Scan has had more than 100,000 downloads. It’s available on the Apple app store and on Google Play.

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Many mining operations are run by giant corporations, rarely by small independent, Indigenous-owned businesses. Beth and Tracy Day Chief are bucking that trend by acquiring ammolite jewellery company Korite — something Beth sees as a full circle moment.

Ammolite, Alberta’s official gemstone, comes from the ammonite fossil, a finite resource found only in southern Alberta on Indigenous reserves. Through their company, Buffalo Rock Mining, the Day Chiefs acquired Korite in late 2024, bringing the ammolite producer under Indigenous ownership and​​ honouring ammolite’s heritage and cultural significance for the Blackfoot people.

“It’s hard to explain, but it’s really difficult for Indigenous people, Indigenous entrepreneurs to break out into a place off your reserve,” says Beth. “We’re limited within treaties, with our status, what we can do off the reserve through the Indian Act, especially financially. For us to be one of the first people that have acquired a company such as this that deals internationally, it’s a big story.”

The couple from Kainai Nation have decades of construction and ammonite mining experience thanks to their entrepreneurial spirit. In 1989, they founded Chiefs Construction when a large project proposal for installing irrigation lines on their reserve was announced. They started the small construction business with a single gravel truck in response. The project started in 1991 and while it was underway, the Day Chief’s business continued to expand.

“You always have to look out for what opportunities are coming out for your business,” says Beth.
Since acquiring the company, the Day Chiefs have appointed a new president and launched the sale of Korite’s finished jewellery on Taobao, Asia’s largest online marketplace, expanding Alberta’s ammolite jewellery and products to a broader global audience.

“We’ve paid our dues in this and we [are] hands on,” says Tracy.

This story has been edited since original publication for clarity.

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Sheena Virmani’s love of fashion runs deep. From pairing outfits together on online mood boards to starting a fashion blog, she has always had an affinity for a good look.

However, pursuing a career in fashion never crossed her mind as she took a business degree. Later, through her work in the tech industry doing corporate consulting, she met future Lewk co-founder Tianna Going, who was working at a fintech startup. After an initial coffee conversation and months of research, the pair founded AI fashion software tool Lewk in August 2022.

Lewk is a tool that helps users create cohesive outfits on its platform and is also a search engine that helps users find product recommendations for clothes online. The AI software works like an online fashion stylist by searching hundreds of products and retailers to curate complete outfits and shoppable clothing items based on a prompt or image from the user, removing the need for endless browsing on clothing retailer websites. With Lewk, users are given personalized fashion inspiration based on the user’s input or preferences.

“There is a very fragmented online shopping experience, and there’s so many different options.” says Going. “Being the core search engine for fashion would be our ultimate goal long term.”

The first iteration of the software launched in June 2023. Thanks to a small but talented team that teaches the AI and develops the website platform, Lewk’s beta version launched in September 2024. Many of the platform’s early customers have also helped educate and develop the AI through customer feedback and data. The current beta version in use is what users can expect to use for the foreseeable future as the co-founders rely on feedback to improve each iteration of the software.

“We really care about our customer’s shopping experience,” says Virmani, co-founder. “We have been really purposeful about trying to make it about that.”

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Jefferson Roc’s life has shaped his current entrepreneurial journey. Like many people, Roc has experienced mental health struggles. He also immigrated to Canada from Haiti in 1989. Because of experiences like these, Roc believes that mental health support should be culturally inclusive and provided by professionals with similar lived experiences to their clients.

In 2024, he launched his startup PeerX.AI, an AI-enhanced mental health program that allows users to have one-on-one, confidential conversations with peer support specialists online. While the peer support specialists go through a hiring process conducted by humans, the AI operates in multiple ways once they’re ready to speak with clients: it evaluates the peer support specialists for their soft skills and monitors them to make sure they adhere to their training, it matches users with specialists who have similar cultural and social lived experiences, and it monitors the conversations between users and specialists and suggests resources or makes recommendations to the user based on their needs.

According to Roc, while there are no standardized guidelines for peer support specialists in Canada, specialists who work with PeerX.AI follow the startup’s mental health guidelines which are based on certifications from Peer Support Canada and the Canadian Mental Health Association. He hopes this software will help destigmatize conversations about mental health and create safer spaces for sensitive conversations.

“We want to eradicate mental health stigma, and we want to decrease death by suicide,” says Roc. “We believe both can be achieved if we can increase the number of safe conversations people are having.”

In 2024, the business-to-business software was selected as one of eight startups for the Canadian Technology Accelerator program for digital health to be exported for use in the U.S.

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According to Wunmi Adekanmbi, who immigrated to Canada from Nigeria in 2011, current immigration policies favour people with backgrounds in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). When Adekanmbi learned about Alberta’s economic diversification strategy — an attempt to move the province from oil and gas dependency — while working for an oil and gas company herself, she started looking for opportunities in the technology sector, where she learned that attracting more talent was a big topic of conversation.

So, in 2019, Adekanmbi founded Immigrant Techies Alberta, a registered non-profit, membership-based organization that provides networking, mentorship, programs and events for immigrants who are looking to transition their careers to tech.

“On one hand, I saw there was a need to open up the tech space so that immigrants can claim that space,” says Adekanmbi. “On the other hand, our economy actually needs that immigrant talent pool to push forward.”

Since then, Immigrant Techies has hosted more than 100 virtual and in-person events and has supported more than 500 immigrant professionals through their programs. Jobseekers include people who already have tech backgrounds from their home countries, like software developers, or people from fields like banking and academia.

Last year, Immigrant Techies announced a partnership with RBC Calgary Innovation Lab to create technology roles in high-demand areas including artificial intelligence, data engineering and machine learning by integrating employer input in tech training and reskilling programs. While the official mentorship program will begin in 2025, Immigrant Techies hosted a pilot speed mentorship event with RBC senior technical staff in December 2024 from six departments: software development, cybersecurity, UI/UX design and frontend development, Salesforce, quality engineering, data science and data engineering.

“We need active participation with industry to make training programs successful,” says Adekanmbi. “It cannot be an afterthought.”

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Brett Colvin started his legal career at a traditional law firm. “I was always internally kind of known as ‘Mr. Ideas Guy,’ which in the firm was not a compliment,” says Colvin.

In 2019, Colvin (a member of Avenue‘s Top 40 Under 40 class of 2022) left and put one of his big ideas into practice by becoming the co-founder of Goodlawyer, a platform for businesses to connect with experienced lawyers.

Goodlawyer’s mission is to be “the most desirable way to practice law.” The company vets and curates a roster of lawyers (currently around 180) and matches them up to specific clients and needs. The company has become known for its fractional legal services in which Goodlawyer lawyers can provide a fraction of their time to companies, eliminating the need for that company to hire a full-time employee instead.

“Over the last year or two in particular, as we moved into this fractional in-house legal space, it became super apparent that the biggest impact Goodlawyer was having — you know, we’re saving clients a ton of money providing them with more value — but the biggest impact we were having was on changing the lives of the lawyers that we were working with by giving them this totally new sort of career path that didn’t really exist before,” says Colvin.

Since its founding, Goodlawyer has served more than 5,000 clients across Canada such as Neo Financial and Loblaws Corporation, and was named Canada’s 15th top growing company of 2024 by The Globe and Mail. On November 21, Colvin and his team at Goodlawyer are hosting the second annual Future of Law Summit, a free, one-day virtual event that features keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki, a legendary marketing expert known for his roles with Apple and Canva.

“The core product that I’m selling [to Goodlawyer’s clients] is a damn good lawyer who understands their business and what it means to support an in-house legal team or legal function,” says Colvin.

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September 20th isn’t just Rod Stagg’s parent’s anniversary. In 2022, it also became the day he formed Indigenous Incubator Inc. The founder says he made a pact with his father and his own two sons to empower young Indigenous entrepreneurs and tradespeople throughout Canada.

“My father and my two boys, Joel and Jeremy, signed a family pact that this is something that we were going to do for Canada,” says Stagg. “That this was going to be our mission, to do what was right and to develop a system that would help our Indigenous youth get trained, educated [and] apprenticed in the trades.”

Part of the incubator’s mission is to promote the long-term sustainability of Indigenous-led enterprises. Participating in the incubator includes mentorship from seasoned Indigenous business owners who transfer knowledge and expertise to Indigenous youth. The hope is that this will help youth leverage their skills into also becoming business owners in the future.

Since 2022, Stagg has hosted three stakeholder summits attended by banks, universities, municipalities, governments, national companies and more to promote awareness and support for the incubator and develop a pathway for the organization to support that mission.

“There is a huge opportunity for generational wealth to come [to] and be created by our Indigenous youth … instead of just finding a labourer job,” says Stagg. “Our Indigenous youth [are] some of the most creative, innovative, intelligent young minds of Canada.”

Following Indigenous Incubator’s March 2024 summit, Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) announced an investment of $1.59 million for Cougar Technical Services Ltd., of which Stagg is the founder and CEO. The mechanical plumbing service company is one of eight companies collaborating with the incubator to provide employment opportunities to Indigenous youth. The companies range in sectors and services that include project and construction management, green energy solutions, engineering, HVAC, janitorial services and more.

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When Philippe Burns worked at Neo Financial, his responsibilities revolved around building interpersonal relationships — like creating a 50-person customer experience team to onboard half a million new Neo customers in just four months. But when Burns, who had studied sociology and social entrepreneurship at university, was tasked with helping Neo hire more senior-level tech staff, he quickly noticed a lack of social and networking events for the tech community at-large.

So, instead of hosting recruitment events for Neo, Burns opted for a weekly networking event series, Tech Thursday. Tech Thursday was run through Neo until this past July, when it became its own company with Burns as the co-founder and Neo as the title sponsor for its events. It’s been running in Calgary for one-and-a-half years (and in Winnipeg for two-and-a-half years).

Tech Thursday in Calgary usually meets at The Pioneer and averages around 100 attendees per event, which are all listed on Eventbrite. Each event focuses on a topic that falls into one of four pillars: business topics, technical topics, local trends and DE&I topics. Past events have discussed innovations in hydrogen, the impacts of AI and cloud in investment management, mental health tech, or featured panels and fireside chats with various organizations. The company has city-specific steering committees who generate event and topic ideas. Around 67 per cent of the audience is made up of senior-level folks in tech such as managers, c-suite executives and founders, while the remaining audience is mostly intermediate and junior folks.

“What we wanted to create is this environment where you could go meet with your peers, learn from what they were building and creating, and really showcase some of the awesome work being done in these two communities,” says Burns.

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How is your cat feeling today?

Odds are, your feline friend is fine. But cats aren’t expressive animals, which often leaves owners truly unaware if they’re in pain. When entrepreneur Susan Groeneveld noticed that cats were underserved in the veterinary space for that exact reason, she partnered with Alberta venture studio AltaML to start Sylvester.ai, a platform to assess the micro-expressions of cats to better their health outcomes.

“This species does not go to the vet regularly,” explains Groeneveld, founder and CEO of Sylvester.ai. “Most cats who are euthanized haven’t been to a veterinarian in the year previous. I wanted something to help pet owners know when it’s time for their cats to go into a clinic.”

Sylvester.ai has assessed hundreds of thousands of cat photos against validated veterinary pain scales that the company says is highly accurate, with more than 85 per cent precision. Users upload a photo of their cat to the Sylvester.ai website, and the photo is examined for five key facial cues (ear position, orbital tightening, muzzle tension, whisker positions and head position). If the cat appears unhappy, suggestions to check again and consider a trip to the vet will be made. While this can often help lead to diagnoses, it also gives pet owners peace of mind.

“I always say if we help one cat, then it’s worth it,” says Groeneveld. Though, with the original app getting over 50,000 downloads in its first week, that number is sure to be far higher. In 2023, Groeneveld was one of the top five Women in AI’s Entrepreneurs of the Year in North America, while Sylvester.ai won the 2023 Purina Pet Care Innovation Award. This summer, Sylvester.ai received a $400,000 investment from Metiquity Ventures in a $1 million pre-seed investment round.

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Kelsey Hahn and Amanda Julian are the co-founders behind Monark, an AI-powered app that provides customized leadership and educational resources for high-achieving leaders. Hahn, CEO, and Julian, chief science officer, came up with the digital leadership app while operating a boutique consulting firm together.

“We saw a gap in the market and that was a need for leadership development that would scale to all levels of an organization,” says Hahn.

Monark includes self-assessments and assessments from your colleagues. It also provides each user with AI-powered resources like role-playing, as well as experiential learning opportunities, live, cohort-based training modules, personalized micro-learning exercises, and regular feedback mechanisms tied to goals and performance metrics. The content is based on the latest behavioral research and enables users to practice critical leadership skills in realistic scenarios, while offering instant feedback on strengths or areas for improvement.

“We do a lot of pre- and post-training assessments,” says Julian. “We like to say that we’re outcomes-obsessed because it allows us to articulate an ROI (return of investment) to companies, which a lot of other service providers don’t.”

According to the co-founders, users typically use the platform two times a week, and approximately 84 per cent of those users have demonstrated some level of positive behaviour change according to assessments from their peers and colleagues.

“That’s not self-reported,” says Julian. “That’s their actual teams and people that report to them saying, ‘My leader is noticeably better.’ So, we’re really proud of that.”

Monark, which launched in 2020, recently became one of 11 North American startups selected for the Google for Startups’ Women Founders class of 2023, and the team of 14 people serves organizations of 50 to 50,000 people across North America.

“We’re very lucky to be able to work with some amazing leaders that truly do believe in getting better,” says Hahn.

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