Canadian Immigrant - November 2023

VOLUME 20, ISSUE 5
2023
Group Publisher
Sanjay Agnihotri
Editor
Ramya Ramanathan
rramanathan@metroland.com
Editorial Design
Safi Nomani
FUSION
People. News. Information.
ALDO
DE JONG
Leveraging innovation
to drive change
By Ramya Ramanathan
4
Brand Manager
Ricky Bajaj
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Tel: 416 856 6304
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CANADIAN IMMIGRANT Volume 20 Issue 5 | 2023
Aldo de Jong is on a mission to make the
world a better place through innovation
and entrepreneurship. With experience in
multinational organizations like Meta (formerly the
Facebook company) and GE, he has spent most of his
career creating and working with leading startups.
Born in the Netherlands, de Jong lived in Spain for
over a decade and, in 2016, moved to Canada with
his family to establish a North American presence for
a company he had co-founded in Barcelona. He soon
decided to make Canada home. A father of two kids, in
his free time he can be found walking his dog or playing
the clarinet with the RCM Latin Jazz band at events
across Toronto.
What brought you to Toronto?
I’ve been an entrepreneur seeking to make an impact
by making the world better since high school in the
Netherlands, where I grew up. Toronto is the best
place to be for that. It is the fastest-growing tech hub
in North America, and it has great talent coming out of
the universities and to the city. I moved here with my
family six years ago to continue building the product
innovation and strategy firm Claro Partners, a company
I co-founded in Barcelona. Since 80 per cent of our
work was for American clients, Toronto was the best
choice for establishing a hub for serving clients across
the US, for many reasons including the political and
social climate, the cost of living and ease of immigration
for ourselves and future colleagues.
The single most important aspect of Toronto, that is
dear to my heart and core to my approach to building
companies, is what I call inclusive diversity. Leaders
should work for diversity itself to be inclusive, where
cultural and other differences between people are
sought to be understood and celebrated. This not only
makes anyone feel more welcome, but it also fosters a
work environment that is more enriching, creative and
productive!
What were a couple of challenges?
Making new friends was a key challenge. As a
newcomer, it is very important to build a strong circle
of friends. The welcoming attitude of Canadians to pay
it forward, watching the cherry blossoms, bringing us to
do pumpkin and apple picking with them, and inviting us
for brunch helped a lot. The Internations.org community
[a website connecting expats] has been great as well. This
is where I made most of my new best friends and it’s also
how I met my new love and partner for life!
Another challenge was finding good and reasonably
priced services, like banks and telecoms, since there’s
little competition leading to sub-par services compared
to what I was used to in Europe. In real estate I was
lucky to contribute to changing this, serving as the CEO
of Justo.ca for a couple of years to deliver the best-rated
service in the industry for half of the price.
How did your kids manage the transition?
The transition was quite easy for my children, who
were eight and four years old when we moved here from
Spain as they quickly made friends at their school. After
only seven weeks of living in Canada, my daughter, when
asked by my mother whether she felt Canadian, Dutch
or Spanish, said “Canadian, obviously, grandma!”. The
funny thing is that a couple of months later I started
feeling the same. Even though I lived in Spain for close
to 15 years, I always was the “guiri” there, which is a
term they use for foreigners, a bit like “gringo”.
What are you working on?
I am one of the co-founders and the CEO of Paddio.
ca, a climate-fintech company. We finance and facilitate
climate retrofits for homes, to help homeowners to
reduce their energy bills and their carbon emissions by
replacing the fossil fuel heating system with an electrical
heat pump and improving the insulation, for example.
With many different providers and government rebates,
it’s complex to manage and finance, which is what we
do, free of charge to the homeowner!
What keeps you going when things are tough?
What motivates me most is to see people grow.
That’s why I focus my leadership on empowering people
working with me to grow faster than they imagine
possible. This leads to great results from a high level of
motivation and engagement as well as an organization
that grows in capabilities.
What is your advice for newcomers?
Get out there doing whatever activity you like doing
to meet people and make friends. Do this at least once
per week.