Our Entrepreneurs in Residence

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.

Futurist Cherry Rose Tan is a General Partner at Renew Venture Capital, whose mission is to solve society’s biggest challenges by purposely renewing how we invest in and help build companies, all while leading with empathy. Alongside a diverse and talented team of ex-operators, she brings expertise in early-stage B2B SaaS, network effects, and regulated industries like fintech and healthtech.

With over 15 years of experience in Tech, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, she has built a reputation as the First Mover in several industries, including crypto, edtech, and mental health. Tan served as Pre-Seed Investor of Paycase Financial, a Canadian blockchain pioneer that provides infrastructure and liquidity to global financial markets, where she and her brother worked on financial inclusion for the bottom billion.

Her previous company #REALTALK, the mental health movement for the tech industry, is known for being North America’s first and largest platform on Founder Mental Health. Specializing in working with high-net worth and C-Suite clientele, Tan grew the movement to 40,000 leaders and 70 national champions in four years, with a synonymous Top 14 Business podcast on iTunes as well.

As an Innovation Keynote Speaker, Tan is represented by the Speakers Bureau of Canada. She is the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Schulich School of Business, based in Canada's third largest university, where she advises a global ecosystem of 200 startups and 3,000 members. Her companies have been featured on Forbes, Inc., The Globe and Mail, CBC, Nasdaq, Reuters, and Insider for being disrupters in their industries.

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.

Hannah Lau is originally from Canada who has since built a career in Asia for the past 15 years. She has a diverse background of international corporate experience and also entrepreneurship where she founded her own consulting company - Astera Asia (www.astera.asia).
She is skilled in helping organizations (especially smaller outfits like nonprofits, startups, small/med businesses) build, fix, and change. This includes areas like strategic/business planning, organizational development, crisis/change, marketing/communications, etc. She’s passionate about helping fellow entrepreneurs in foundational ways so that their ventures have a strong start.

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.

A strategic and visionary chief executive with over 25 years of industry expertise and extensive experience in distribution, go-to-market for product development, consumer goods, and operational management, Indu Bains is a Principal with The Osborne Group, an Executive Consultant and Founder of Bainsco Consulting Group. Her mainstays are Interim/Fractional COO Roles, Operational Reviews, Strategic Plans, Leadership Coaching, and Sales/Marketing Strategies.
An energetic leader, Indu has international experience with negotiating contracts and developing sales pipelines, managing multifunctional teams, building and leveraging strategic relationships, and addressing organizational needs. As COO for SIMS Medical Corp for over 17 years, Indu led coast-to-coast operations for the distribution of medical goods via B2B and D2C channels, strategically propelling the growth of several major healthcare brands from zero Canadian sales to multi-million revenues. She has built her own e-commerce stores and partnered with third parties such as Amazon, Staples, Best Buy, etc.
Indu recruited, trained, and directed an award-winning customer service team, national sales force and management leadership team for operations, administration, finance, sales/marketing, and warehouse divisions. She has outfitted a full-service FIFO warehouse operation from purchase of building, to flow and design, to staffing and automation integrations, and created a strong supply chain with transport and logistics effectively importing products across the Canadian border with a 97% compliance rate. Additionally, Indu has founded and started up multiple successful small businesses, both brick & mortar and e-commerce.
In addition to executive consulting, Indu is a director on several boards in commerce, education, and healthcare. She has effectively negotiated several contracts & agreements, is a subject matter expert on many MedTech expert panels and advised on numerous mergers and acquisitions for global corporations leading to a very high 90% rate of successful execution.
Indu has a passion for healthcare systems, public education, commerce development, and DEIB initiatives, as reflected by her elected board positions and multiple community involvements. An avid learner, Indu excels in market research and application of data to develop operational and sales plans and thrives in providing mentorship for startup entrepreneurs.

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

Kavita Srivastava is an accomplished finance, accounting, and valuations executive with an impressive track record spanning over 25 years. Currently holding the position of Senior Director at a prominent global firm, her primary focus lies in valuations and dispute consulting. In addition to her corporate role, she serves as the fractional CFO for a technology startup, bringing her extensive financial expertise to guide the company's growth.

Beyond her professional commitments, she actively participates in various organizations to foster women's empowerment and entrepreneurship. As an Activator and member of the Loan Committee at Coralus (formerly known as SheEO), she plays a pivotal role in reviewing and approving funding applications from the Perpetual Fund. Additionally, she contributes as one of the Toronto City Leads at the Canadian Women's Network (CWN), where her responsibilities include engaging and building a vibrant community of members in Toronto.

Kavita Srivastava is also a mentor at She Raises Capital where she helps women funded startups with the accounting and finance side of their businesses.
She has also served twice as a judge for the Rhyze Ventures (through Innovation Guelph) program pitch competition.

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.

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.

Nana is a Fractional COO and coach with 20 years of experience working in dynamic environments across various industries (from pharmaceuticals to not-for-profit to temporary tattoos). As a fCOO she partners with small CPG and physical product-based businesses to stabilize operations, eliminate confusion, and boost productivity through team alignment and streamlined processes.

As a coach, she employs a mentoring-coaching hybrid approach to help entrepreneurs set priorities, achieve goals, and grow their businesses. Leveraging her experience as an entrepreneur and former corporate senior leader, she fosters collaborative partnerships and accountability.

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.

Susan Goebel, has over two decades of senior operations and business leadership experience spanning a variety of industries. Susan started out in the pharmaceutical industry where she developed and honed her skills in contract management, team building and leadership, mergers and acquisitions, funding, operations, business management and lobbying.

Susan also co-founded a pharmaceutical company and found herself fully vested in the Chief Operations seat. While using both her business and science background in the Bioscience Boardroom, helping doctors and veterinarians who were solving unmet needs bring their products to market as well as providing operational support.

Understanding the needs of scaling businesses, Susan founded Scaling Management Consulting Group, Inc, which offers scaling companies access to experienced executives on a fractional basis, allowing them to grow faster at a fraction of the cost.

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.

Email: longo.tara@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-longo/

Expertise: Financing | Operations | Business management | Divesting business | Retail locations | online grocery

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.