PORTFOLIO.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine | Volume 4 | Issue 14

PORTFOLIO.YVR

BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURS M A GA ZINE

WEB SUM M IT SPECIA L EDITION VOLUM E 4 | ISSUE 13

K ERRI K INNA

NEEL SINGH

HA SSA N PA RDA WA LLA

PA SCHA L OK WUNDU

TRUC TRA N

DA NA RA M NA RINE

M A RY CA RM ICHA EL

A M A RJEET K A UR

M A RGA RET DIBOR

LYNDSA Y M A LCHUK

PORTFOLIO.YVR



0 0 1 EIC & PUBLISHER M ESSAGE:

HELEN SIWAK

0 0 3 KERRI KIN N A:

BARTR

0 13 N EEL SIN GH:

TROPOLY

0 23 HASSAN PARDAWALLA:

PARDA SEN SE SOLUTION S IN C.

0 33 PASCHAL OKWUN DU:

BIN TA FIN AN CIAL

0 43 TRUC TRAN :

AN ERA LIFE IN C.

0 53 DAN A RAM N ARIN E:

RHUM.HR

0 63 QUICKTAKE: M ARGARET DIBOR:

DIM A RISK SOLUTION S

0 67 QUICKTAKE: M ARY CARM ICHAEL:

BELL CYBER

0 71 QUICKTAKE: AM ARJEET KAUR:

YALI- CYBERSHIELD

0 75 QUICKTAKE: LYN DSAY M ALCHUK:

APATON GROUP

0 79 M ASTHEAD &

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

EIC & PUBLISHER M ESSA GE:

001

If the inaugural Web Summit Vancouver

taught us anything in 20 25, it was that

Vancouver was more than ready to

invite the world. The second edition

confirmed it. What began as a bold

experiment in bringing a global

technology conversation to Canada's

west coast has settled into something

the city can genuinely call its own, and

Portfolio.YVR has been honoured to

document it from the inside.

This special edition brings together ten

voices we encountered across both

years of the summit. Our six features

introduce founders and operators

whose work spans entrepreneurship,

strategy, operations, financial

infrastructure, human resources, and

longevity and wellness.

Kerri Kinna of BARTR, N eel Singh of

Tropoly, Hassan Pardaw alla of

Parda Sense Solutions, Truc Tran of

Anera Life Inc., Paschal Okw undu of

Binta Financial, Dana Ramnarine of

rhum.hr, and each bring a story of

building something meaningful under

real conditions, with real stakes.

Our QuickTakes section returns to four

women featured in last year's edition to

find out what the year of building

actually looked like.

M ary Carmichael stepped into a new

role at Bell Cyber as Field CISO,

Western Canada, reshaping how

Canadian organizations think about

cyber resilience. Amarjeet Kaur of

Yali- CyberShield paused to sharpen her

thesis and emerged with a stronger

foundation. Lyndsay M alchuk has taken

her capital markets storytelling to a

global stage with the Apaton Group.

And M argaret Dibor has replatformed

her original vision into Dima Risk

Solutions, building trust as currency in

the Canadian market.

For entrepreneurs, visibility has never

mattered more ? digitally and IRL. At

Portfolio.YVR, we exist to create content

that provides visibility, validation, and

searchability for West Coast

entrepreneurs and SMBs ? distributed

internationally, amplified across social

channels, and placed in front of the

investors, collaborators, and

communities our subjects are working to

reach. Every founder deserves an

affordable platform equal to their

ambition ? and if yours is ready

for the spotlight, we would love to

work with you and your team.

We cannot wait to see what

Web Summit Vancouver 20 27 brings!

Helen Siwak

PUBLISHER'S M ESSA GE

K ERRI

K INNA .

BA RTR.

003

Kerri Kinna is a M etro Vancouver

entrepreneur, app developer, and

founder of BARTR, a peer-to-peer

trading platform built around the idea

that the things you already own have

more value than you think.

Her path to tech was anything but

linear, and that is precisely what

makes it worth paying attention to.

Most people in Vancouver know Kerri

from Cocoa Tanning, the tanning

studio business she took over while still

a university student in 20 13. For more

than a decade she ran the tanning

studios, built a loyal community brand,

growing locations ? learning the full

weight of what it means to operate a

customer-facing business, manage

leases, carry debt, and show up every

day regardless.

What fewer people knew was that,

behind the scenes, she had been

quietly building mobile apps for years,

collaborating with developers across

time zones during the hours the studios

were closed. When the time came to

close Cocoa Tanning?s original

Gastown location, that parallel life

became the main event.

Kerri?s story is not about any single

industry. It is about the willingness to

evolve, trust hard-won instincts,

and keep building when life forces

a restart.

THE BUSINESS.

BARTR is a peer-to-peer trading app

built on a straightforward premise: the

things you already own have more

value than you are giving them credit

for. Instead of letting items collect dust

or spending money on something new,

BARTR lets you trade directly with

other people for things you actually

want.

The concept is as old as commerce

itself, but the execution is entirely

modern. BARTR removes the friction

that has historically made informal

trading impractical, connecting

people through a clean,

community-driven platform that

handles the logistics most traders

dread.

Built-in delivery through Uber and

integrated shipping options mean

users never have to coordinate

meetups or figure out handoffs

on their own.

The result is a platform that does three

things at once: it saves money, reduces

waste, and unlocks value from the

items already sitting in people?s homes.

In a culture increasingly focused on

sustainability, conscious consumption,

and making the most of what already

exists, BARTR arrives at exactly the

right moment.

This is not a resale platform. It is a

trading community, one where the

currency is what you already have and

the reward is getting something you

actually need. BARTR makes that

exchange simple, seamless, and worth

showing up for.

005

IN HER WORDS.

007

"I have never fit comfortably into the

idea of a steady paycheque or a

predictable routine. Not because

there is anything wrong with that path,

it just never quieted whatever was

going on in my head. Growing up on

Vancouver Island, I felt restless long

before I had the words to explain it. By

seventeen, I was gone.

I moved to N ew Brunsw ick and

started working at my first Fairmont

hotel. Twenty-hour shifts became my

best friend. Exhaustion, both mental

and physical, was welcomed,

especially when I could see my hard

work contributing to something bigger

than myself. I was fascinated by what I

was capable of when pushed to my

limits. Looking back, I do not think I

chose entrepreneurship as much as

entrepreneurship chose me. I have

always had an appetite for

uncertainty and a tendency to dive

headfirst into things I do not fully

understand.

The earliest sign of entrepreneurship

showed up in school. My first venture

was doing other kids?homework. I

loved reading, and usually had read

the books people needed reports on. I

charged $10 per book report and

guaranteed an A or a B. In one class I

wrote eight reports, changing my

prose and point of view for each

student. The telling detail is that I often

neglected my homework.

I was writing reports for students in

grades above me while struggling with

my own attendance. Chasing only

efficiency, even then.

DEBT AN D EARLY LESSON S

The first time real money entered the

picture, it arrived as loss. Taking over

Cocoa Tanning in 20 13 while still a

university student meant converting

years of carefully saved student loan

money into startup capital, practically

overnight. One day I had savings. The

next, I was looking at loans that

dwarfed my student loan, leases

personally guaranteed by me, and a

security complex that had gone

fully haywire.

I had told myself: I started with

nothing, so how bad can it go? The

answer arrived quickly. The debt that

followed would sit on my chest for a

long time. But I kept going, because

the alternative was not something I

was built for.

What followed was more than a

decade of building Cocoa Tanning

into a genuine community, growing its

locations, learning operations,

managing a team, and carrying the

full weight of a customer-facing

business through every season. I also

ran Vegan Organic Essential Oils,

spending considerable time in Los

Angeles, learning manufacturing and

brand-building from the ground up."

009

"The products were strong, and they

are still sold at Cocoa Tanning today.

But the economics of shipping physical

goods made the ceiling visible early.

Canada Post charged $16 to ship a

single essential oil from BC to Ontario.

The more I ran that business alongside

my early app experiments, the more

the contrast became impossible to

ignore. Software does not ship.

That matters.

THE PARALLEL LIFE

What most people did not know during

the Cocoa Tanning years was that I

had been building mobile apps on the

side for a long time. It started as a

creative outlet, something I worked on

outside salon hours, collaborating with

developers across time zones while the

studios slept. It was in Los Angeles,

targeted by a Facebook ad of all

things, that I first learned how to work

as a non-technical project manager

on app development. That education

quietly changed everything.

The decision to close the original

Gastown location was data-driven but

also very emotional. The location was

not following the growth pattern the

others had. When that trend became

clear, we knew. Closing it meant

packing everything up and throwing it

away by hand. It was heartbreaking

in the way that only something you

built yourself can be. But it also

created space.

The app side of my life was no longer

a hobby running alongside a business.

It was the business.

STARTIN G OVER WITH BARTR

Bringing BARTR to life introduced a

new category of setback I had not

encountered before. I thought having

built successful businesses in the past

meant I had it figured out but I got a

whole new set of challenges. I have

been tested not to give up more times

than I can count.

In software, failure is largely invisible.

Most of the work happens on a screen.

There is no physical space filling up

with evidence of effort, no community

walking through the door to remind

you that what you are building matters.

Sourcing honest feedback on an early

product is brutal, and the consistent

feeling that you are throwing money

into a void can be all-consuming. I

have had to learn to open my ears,

accept support from the people

around me, and in the moments when

my own self-doubt becomes

paralyzing, borrow their words until I

can find mine again.

The milestone that shifted things was

Web Summit. We had been building,

testing, and gathering feedback for a

year, adding features and listening to

what users actually needed. Walking

into that environment and facing

serious scrutiny changed the nature of

the questions being asked."

011

"It was no longer, ?what is this?? It was,

?why does it work this way?? That is a

different conversation entirely. It

meant we had outgrown our minimum

viable product. The next phase is a full

rebuild from the ground up, keeping

what users told us they needed and

designing a scalable experience

from scratch.

PEOPLE WHO SHOW UP

My mentors are better described as

friends who are equally tormented by

creative work.

Kat Pellatt was a client I built an app

for, and working with her became one

of the more unexpectedly meaningful

professional relationships of my life. I

had braced for the version of

leadership I had always feared.

What I found instead was a genuine

collaborator whose feedback

consistently elevated the work and my

confidence alongside it. Good

leadership produces good work.

Working with Kat proved that.

At an art show called N eo N oir, I

volunteered for artist Caliden Paint

and watched the organizers finish a

night of relentless physical work only

to look at each other and quietly say,

"you just never know." I later learned

each of them had experienced

success in other industries and see

success as somewhat of a spontaneous

combustion.

Tamar Kate, and I were colleagues at

Tiffany and Co. years ago and

reconnected as entrepreneurs outside

a Home Depot . We have shared

victories and heartbreaks in equal

measure ever since, the kind that only

other small business owners in

Vancouver truly understand. We find a

way to laugh it off and keep moving.

I wish I had slowed down to enjoy the

ride earlier. Closing a location and

launching something new puts the past

in sharper focus than I expected. The

old days were not easy, but looking

back at them now is like flipping

through a photo album of things you

did not know you were building until

they were already built. That nostalgia

surprised me. It also reminded me why

I keep going.

WHAT COM ES N EXT

Scared money cannot win. If you see a

vision, spend the money, even when no

one else can see it yet. Just do not

forget to follow through.

What BARTR needs now is the right

kind of attention. Users who are

curious about trading rather than

selling. Partners who understand

community-driven platforms and want

to help build the network that makes

BARTR indispensable. And

collaborators, whether in

development, growth, or brand, who

believe that the things people already

own deserve a better second life."

K E R R I

B A R T R

K IN N A

NEEL

SINGH:

TROPOLY.

013

N eel Singh is a business leader who

has spent nearly 25 years helping

organizations grow through inflection

points, market shifts, and complex

transformations.

As Founder and Managing Partner of

Tropoly, he works with CEOs and

leadership teams as a strategic

advisor and fractional CMO, bringing

integrated thinking that bridges

brand, go-to-market, and capital

markets into a single commercial

strategy.

Neel has led through every growth

phase, from startup to hypergrowth to

exits. He has built multinational

departments, positioned and launched

hundreds of brands, and mentored

junior staff into leaders.

His experience crosses several

industries including technology, AI,

energy, cybersecurity, deep-tech,

education, and media, and he has

worked with the likes of the N BA, G20 ,

YouTube, and HuffPost.

Neel regularly keynotes at

conferences, facilitates executive

workshops, and mentors entrepreneurs.

He sits on the innovation council for

The Salvation Army and has

supported entrepreneurship and

education initiatives through

organizations like YELL Canada

and TiE.

He is based in Vancouver, travels

extensively, trains profusely, and is

learning a third language.

THE BUSINESS.

Tropoly is a strategy and marketing

consultancy focused on helping firms

succeed through major milestones,

whether attracting capital, conquering

new markets, transforming marketing

programs, or repositioning against

uncertainty.

Tropoly focuses on helping companies

in technical industries, including

technology, AI, energy, finance,

infrastructure, deep-tech, and

healthcare, with complex sales cycles,

ensuring harmony between growth

objectives, operational maturity, and

market dynamics.

The Advisory practice focuses on

strategic development, market

readiness, growth planning, and

guidance, delivered through strategic

projects such as investor readiness,

product launches, and market

expansion. Tropoly can also integrate

as fractional CMOs to build and

manage the entire marketing function

across department oversight, team

management, strategy, brand

positioning, tech stack, growth,

and analytics.

The Brand Studio offers end-to-end

branding solutions across brand

strategy, brand identity, brand

marketing, and activation, driving

transformation through major rebrands

and strategic brand management.

Tropoly OS focuses on the design,

development, and optimization of

systems and processes underneath the

operations of client go-to-market

programmes and customer journeys,

with a specialization in AI adoption

that helps clients integrate this

technology durably into their

operations.

Tropoly also offers workshops through

Impact Labs to enhance teams and

departments with new capabilities

and executive-level thinking on growth

strategy, marketing, and AI adoption.

015

IN HIS WORDS.

017

"I was in grade one when I built a toy

vehicle out of cardboard, plastic, and

whatever else I could find. I painted it,

sat my He-Man figurine inside, and

brought it to school. The other kids

laughed. I was not embarrassed. I was

fascinated that I had made it at all.

Around the same time I started

drawing and writing stories. By the

time I was a few years older I was

creating my own comic books,

complete with original characters and

storylines. What I did not fully

understand then was why I also

created advertisements inside those

comics, for entirely imagined products.

It seemed natural. Looking back, it was

the first signal of something that would

take decades to fully name.

The second signal came when I was

working as a bank teller. I had already

started a graphic design freelance

business on the side, and I hid my

freelance business cards underneath

my bank business cards. Every time I

finished a customer?s transaction, I

handed them both. I pitched my design

services to bank clients across the

counter until my manager found out. I

got in trouble. I also landed my first

paying clients.

THE CLASS THAT CHAN GED M E

At BCIT, I enrolled in a design course

expecting to learn craft. The instructor

had other ideas. He taught us how to

set up, run, and grow a design business,

going deep on entrepreneurship,

networking, and pitching. Most

students were frustrated.

I was transfixed. That teacher laid the

foundation and mindset for everything

I built next. The desire to understand

the business side had always sat

alongside the creative instinct, and

that class was the first time someone

showed me they could live together.

THE LETTER ON THE WALL

There came a point where I felt I

should commit fully to a creative path.

Emily Carr had the right programme.

I had studied animation at VFS, was

already freelancing, and had a

creative background that seemed to

fit. I put everything into the

application: illustrations, digital

design, music, poetry, printed

materials, and customized crafts. The

concept scored high. The aesthetics

scored high.

I was rejected. I had not shown my

process. That single oversight

brought my score below the

acceptance threshold.

I taped the rejection letter to the wall

and circled the part where I had

failed. Not to punish myself, but to

remember it. That obsession with

process became one of the most

important capabilities I have ever

developed, showing up behind

billion-dollar rebrands, pricing

strategies, and market entry plans.

The ability to take stakeholders down

a journey with logic and precision,

helping them understand deliverables

at a visceral level, became the

left brain to my right brain.

The rejection built it."

019

THE RESTAURAN T M BA

"A friend found a listing for a

restaurant for sale. I quit my banking

job, put my freelance business on hold,

and bought it. We renovated and

rebranded it into a tapas bar in

Kitsilano and ran it for two years.

I call the restaurant my M BA. I learned

to build, manage, hire, and fire a team,

price products, negotiate with

suppliers, manage cash flow, and

navigate government. All from zero

prior experience. The restaurant

taught me what it means to take real

risk, invest real capital, absorb a loss,

and find a way back.

HYPERGROWTH AN D ITS COST

After the restaurant I launched a

marketing and branding consultancy,

first with partners and then solo. That

work led me to a fast-growing

media-tech startup focused on

solutions for content creators

and enterprises.

I joined to build and lead marketing. A

year later the company raised $36M

and entered hypergrowth. My

department scaled to roughly forty

people. The company grew to nearly

40 0 across 22 countries. We built

large enterprise partnerships, created

early AI-driven products, acquired

verticalized media firms, and exited a

$172M IPO.

It was exhilarating. It was also the

place where my leadership nearly

fell apart.

As the company transformed, I made

significant errors leading a

department in transition.

My team wanted me out. Two directors

pulled me back. One told me the team

needed to see my action, not hear my

words, and to get back into the weeds

enough to prove I was not full of hot

air. The other told me the department

was not about me: ask for help, give

them culture-building projects, have

them recognize each other openly.

Both turned things around. That first

director is now my partner at Tropoly.

THE M ASTER OF M AN Y

I sacrificed being a specialist, and it

cost me in ways that took decades to

understand. We grow up inside a

narrative that tells us to find one skill,

pursue it through school and career,

and climb a ladder narrow enough to

require both hands. That path was

never natural to me.

I have a personality trait called

multipotentiality: the intellectual

curiosity and pursuit of multiple

subjects with genuine depth, and the

capacity to be an expert across many

of them. Over time those areas

overlap, generating connections and

ways of thinking that a linear path

would never produce. I have come to

call it being a Master of Many, rather

than accepting the label of jack of all

trades, master of none. In a world that

demonizes generalists, I have stopped

seeing that as a liability.

PEOPLE WHO SHAPED IT

I have never had a formal mentor, but

several people have fundamentally

shaped who I am."

021

"My sister Surti Singh is probably the

smartest person I know. A PhD,

Associate Professor, and Director of

Graduate Studies in Philosophy at

Villanova University, she has been my

de facto guide through the major

decisions of my life, especially when I

was most lost.

My mother Surjeet Kalsey taught me

that once a minute is gone, it never

comes back. She holds four master?s

degrees, authored twenty-five works of

literature, and was a social activist

who brought awareness to violence

against women during a time when

South Asian women were heavily

suppressed. I trace my entrepreneurial

drive directly to her.

My father Ajmer Rode read science

books to me at five years old and

never stopped pushing me to trust the

full range of what I could do. He is the

founder of Canadian Punjabi drama,

one of eight international poets whose

work is permanently inscribed in

bronze outside the Bill and M elinda

Gates Foundation in Seattle, and a

Lifetime Achievement Award recipient

from the University of British

Columbia. He walked away from

engineering at fifty-four to write full

time. That instinct to bridge science

and story is something I absorbed

early and have never let go.

I also want to name Am M ann, Sunny

Rodhey, and N av Rode, who have

supported me from the beginning and

inspire me daily.

And my soon-to-be wife

Robyn Ainscough, whose resilience,

warmth, and steadiness has meant

more than I can properly articulate.

WHAT COM ES N EXT

Tropoly works with companies

approaching inflection points: investor

readiness, go-to-market and

commercialization, AI adoption,

new market entry, rebrands and

brand expansions.

Much of our pipeline grows through

partnerships with EMDs, investment

banks, government relations firms,

private equity, and investor relations

professionals who see the value of our

work for their portfolios. We are

actively looking to establish more of

those partnerships. A referral is

always welcome.

The legacy I am working toward is

two-fold. I want to help transform

education, because the system that

failed me has failed millions of others.

Student debt, outdated curriculums,

and the declining utility of four-year

degrees are symptoms of a system

built for factories, not fluid markets.

I hope to leave a framework that

tackles this directly, informed by the

insights Tropoly continues to build. If

we transform education, we transform

the world.

And when the time is right, I will return

to my creative roots and build a body

of literary and media work, like my

parents have. Everything I am doing

now is feeding into it. I can feel it."

N E E L

T R O P O L Y

S IN G H

HA SSA N

PA RDA WA LLA:

PA RDA SENSE

SOLUTIONS.

023

Hassan Pardaw alla is a chemical

engineer with an MBA and more than

25 years of experience building, fixing,

and scaling operations across

industries and continents. He has lived

and worked in over ten cities, held

more than twelve distinct roles, and

spent the better part of three decades

at the intersection of culture, systems,

and scale.

Hassan is the founder of Parda Sense

Solutions, where he works as a

fractional COO, business development

executive, and executive operations

leader for founders and growth-stage

businesses in cleantech, energy and

materials, hard-tech, agri-tech,

sustainability, and advanced

manufacturing.

His background spans supply chain,

talent development, business strategy

and transformation, regional

operations, and programme direction.

He has founded three ventures,

invested in others, and taught at the

MBA level.

As an educator, Hassan works with

MBA candidates, engineers,

executives, and students. He volunteers

with Innovation UBC, N ew Ventures

BC, Junior Achievements BC, Black

Business Association of BC, Vantage

Point, The Improv Centre, and the

Vancouver Fringe Festival.

He is not the ideas person. He is the

one who builds the machine, trains the

people, and clears the path so others

can succeed.

THE BUSINESS.

Parda Sense Solutions exists because

too many good companies fail for the

wrong reasons.

Not because of bad ideas or lack of

ambition, but because their culture

drifted, their systems could not keep

up, or their leadership was carrying

too much alone.

Parda Sense works with visionary

founders and growth-stage businesses

in energy, cleantech, sustainability,

hard-tech, and AgTech that have

found product-market fit and need the

operational engine to match.

The work sits across three areas.

1. Building intentional, human-friendly

culture where values are lived rather

than laminated.

2. Designing systems people actually

use, including sales and operations

planning, cross-functional workflows,

and process redesign that makes

the complex simple and the

invisible visible.

3. Preparing leaders for the

unexpected through smart,

grounded planning so that when

something goes sideways, there is

already a plan in place.

The flagship engagement is a 71-hour

deep dive covering three strategies,

three business plans, resource

planning, ROI analysis, and a

high-level execution roadmap, with a

retainer pathway for teams ready to

keep building.

Parda Sense is for founders who are

serious about scale and understand

that the right operator in the room

changes everything.

025

IN HIS WORDS.

027

"Moving into entrepreneurship came

not as a boardroom moment but as a

twelve year old, standing in a kitchen

in Pakistan. I had decided to bake

cakes and sell them to people in my

neighbourhood. No business plan. No

brand. Just flour, heat, consistency, and

the very fast realization that if you

burn the cake, you lose the money. I

baked and sold around ten to twelve

cakes that first run. That was my first

lesson in cash flow: every burned cake

is a cost, not just a mistake.

Around the same time, I noticed my

brother had exceptional notes. Other

students needed those notes. I became

the distribution channel. Nothing I

would put on a resume, but everything I

needed to understand that spotting an

unmet need and building a bridge to it

is the core of what entrepreneurship

actually is.

The word entrepreneur did not fully

land until around 20 20 , when someone

asked me directly: are you one? I had

to sit with that question. When I did, I

realized the spirit had been running

since I was twelve. It just took me a

few decades to name it properly.

TWEN TY- EIGHT, THE FIRST BET

Five years of corporate life behind me,

and I thought I was ready. A friend and

I co-founded a venture sourcing and

repackaging specialty chemicals for

Pakistan's textile dyeing industry.

The idea was solid. The demand was

real. We found clients, started selling,

started delivering. For a moment it felt

like we had cracked it.

Then the wheels came off quietly. Not

dramatically. No single blow-up

moment. Just a slow erosion of trust

between two people who had never

agreed on how to actually run a

business together. Communication got

patchy. Information stopped flowing

both ways. Business practices we had

each assumed were shared turned out

to be very different in practice.

By the time I did the full accounting, I

had lost close to $5,0 0 0 . At

twenty-eight, having just walked away

from a steady salary, it felt like the

floor dropping out. I walked away, left

my investment on the table, and

parted ways. The venture is still running

today, now a family business managed

by my former co-founder.

What I took from it has shaped every

partnership conversation since.

Due diligence is not just for the market.

It is for the person sitting across from

you. Before you talk revenue splits and

client lists, talk about what happens

when things go wrong. Find out if you

would trust this person with your prized

possessions before you trust them with

your business. The $5,0 0 0 was tuition.

Expensive at the time.

Cheap in retrospect.

IN TRAPREN EUR TO OPERATOR

For years I was what I now call an

intrapreneur: sitting inside large

organizations, pushing new products,

challenging the status quo, introducing

new processes and technologies. I was

entrepreneurial in spirit but using

someone else's capital and runway."

029

"When I stepped out of corporate and

started working directly with startups

and smaller businesses, the nature of

the risk became visceral. You are the

one putting everything on the line.

Nothing is guaranteed.

These two ventures laid the

groundwork for where I am today.

Portable Electric brought me in to

expand their scrappy cleantech

startup into California. Within

eighteen months we were delivering

mobile power and EV charging

solutions during public safety power

shutoffs in wildfire season, setting up

protocols, building logistics systems,

and scaling into a new market under

real pressure with real stakes. This was

the engagement that crystallized what

I do best: take a founder's vision into

new territory and build the

operational machine to make it work.

TrendiTech wanted to reduce food

waste. The company eventually went

into receivership, but the story

underneath that headline matters

more. We connected farmers across

borders.

Then set up processing facilities in

Ecuador, built partnerships with

government and agricultural

stakeholders, and designed an

end-to-end project management

system built around continuous quality

and culture alignment. The mission was

real. The impact was real. The systems,

the relationships, and the proof that

culture built right makes teams

perform even when conditions get

hard, all of that survived.

The common thread across the

ventures that worked best: they

started small, grew the community

around them, gave people room to

develop, and built systems that did not

gatekeep knowledge.

COST OF CARRYIN G TOO M UCH

The honest list of sacrifices includes my

health, my personal relationships,

financial stability, and a long stretch

of comfort and certainty. The least

visible cost was health. Taking on too

much, focusing outward instead of

inward, and accumulating stress

without real community support

led to type 2 diabetes. The body

eventually sends you an invoice you

cannot ignore.

Balance, I have learned, is not a

destination. It is a setting you adjust

constantly based on what the season

requires. For a long time I believed

that being able to do something was

sufficient reason to do it. That belief

did serious damage to relationships

and to me.

What shifted things was community.

Not just the concept of it, but the

actual practice: finding people I could

be vulnerable with, peers who would

sit with me in the mess and help sort

through it. When I stopped trying to

carry everything alone, things

changed. Now weekends belong to

me. That is not negotiable. Humour is

not a luxury on a founding team. It is a

pressure valve, and if the people you

are building with are not finding some

version of joy in the difficulty,

it is time to look at what you

are doing and why."

031

THE ROOM THAT CON FIRM ED

"The moment I knew the work was

resonating happened at a workshop I

ran on networking and storytelling.

More than fifty people showed up,

people I had never met, who then

stayed, offered to help, and

connected me to others. That room

was a signal.

When organizations like the

Black Business Association of BC

started asking me to run workshops,

when Vantage Point brought me in to

work with non-profit executives on

leadership capacity, and when

referrals started arriving before the

pitch did, that was the confirmation.

The work was meeting a need in the

market. Now the job is to scale

the access.

I have been fortunate to find support

from people spread across every

continent, and I work constantly to pay

that forward. Kyle Cheriton pushed

me to reframe everything and showed

up when I was at an extremely low

point in 20 22 and 20 23. M ark Rabin

taught me about entrepreneurship,

grit, fundraising, and leading with

passion. Dana Ramnarine brought

depth of perspective on people,

culture, and organizational leadership,

including how to manage a great

deal while still making time for oneself.

Prashant Agarw al is the constant

questioner, value-aligned but never

short of a different opinion.

Chang Han slowly became a friend

who is always there with sound advice,

the right questions, and a genuine

understanding of how to build founders

and ecosystems by simply showing up.

The wider community, including

Ruby Sandhu, N eel Singh,

M ichele Wallcraft, M ichelle Sklar,

N erissa Allen, and Paschal Okw undu,

has each shown up with different

angles and the willingness to tell me

when I am wrong. I will take a valuable

no over an empty yes every time.

WHAT COM ES N EXT

I am looking for warm introductions to

Series B founders in cleantech, energy

and materials, sustainability and

infrastructure, who are ready to scale

internationally and need an

experienced operator to build the

machine.

I am also seeking connections to

established SMBs generating $10 M or

more annually who are plateauing and

need executive operational leadership

to unlock their next phase, along with

collaborators in cleantech and

manufacturing, and

speaking/ workshop engagements at

events where founders and executive

teams are wrestling with culture,

operations, and scale.

The legacy I want to leave is a

community that thrives on curiosity,

grit, humour, and adaptability. People

will remember how I made them feel

and the connections I helped them

make. Hassan showed up for people

who did not have the platform yet, and

then he introduced them to someone

who did."

H A S S A N

P A R D A S E N S E

S O L U T IO N S

P A R D A W A L L A

PA SCHA L

OK WUNDU:

BINTA

FINA NCIA L.

Paschal Okw undu is the Founder and

CEO of Binta Financial, a Canadian

fintech building the infrastructure for

global credit mobility. Born and raised

in N igeria and now based in Canada,

Paschal has spent his career at the

intersection of technology, finance,

and systems transformation, drawn

consistently to complex problems

where human behaviour, economic

opportunity, and institutional

design converge.

Trained in engineering, finance, and

management consulting, and holding

an MBA from the University of

British Columbia, Paschal brings

a rare cross-market perspective

shaped by experience on both sides

of the emerging and developed

world divide.

Before founding Binta, he worked in

credit risk management for financial

institutions in Nigeria, then continued

in Canada with RBC, BM O, and

Slalom, helping large organizations

navigate transformation, risk,

and innovation.

It was his own immigration journey that

revealed the problem Binta was built

to solve: that a person can spend

years earning financial trust, cross a

border, and find that none of it travels

with them. That firsthand experience,

sitting inside the very institutions

making those decisions, gave him both

the conviction and the credibility to

build something different.

Paschal is building infrastructure for a

world where financial reputation

moves with people.

033

THE BUSINESS.

Binta Financial is building the

infrastructure for global credit

mobility. Every year, millions of people

cross borders in pursuit of education,

work, family, and opportunity. When

they arrive, they discover that one of

the most valuable assets they spent

years building, their financial

reputation, did not make the journey

with them.

A person can spend a decade paying

loans on time and meeting every

obligation, cross a border, and be

treated as if none of it ever happened.

They struggle to secure housing, access

financial services, and qualify for

everyday opportunities, not because

they are high risk, but because the

system cannot recognize the trust they

have already earned.

Binta solves that problem. The

company works with financial

institutions, housing providers,

telecommunications companies, credit

bureaus, and fintechs to help them

access and understand trusted

international credit information,

enabling better decisions while

helping people unlock opportunities

based on the financial behaviour they

have already demonstrated.

The conviction at the centre of

everything Binta builds is

straightforward: trust should not stop

at a border. In a world where talent,

capital, and people move globally,

financial reputation should move too.

The next generation of financial

infrastructure will travel with people,

wherever opportunity takes them.

035

IN HIS WORDS.

037

"Early on, I did not recognize the

entrepreneur within me. Growing up in

N igeria, I was simply curious about

how things worked and, more

importantly, how they could work

better. I enjoyed organizing projects,

solving problems, and finding

opportunities in places others had

written off. That orientation stayed

with me through engineering, through

finance, through consulting, and

eventually into the work I do today.

What connected those phases was not

a title or an industry. It was a

consistent pull toward systems, and a

persistent question: why does this work

the way it does, and what would it

take to make it work better?

Entrepreneurship turned out to be the

most direct answer to that question.

Rather than working within systems, I

became interested in redesigning

them.

EFFORT IS N OT EN OUGH

Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I

learned a lesson that still shapes how I

build today. Effort does not

automatically create value. I invested

significant time and energy into ideas I

was convinced would succeed. Some

worked. Others failed entirely, and

those failures were far more instructive

than the wins.

They taught me to listen before

building. To validate assumptions early

rather than fall in love with a solution.

To understand the problem deeply

before becoming attached to any

particular answer.

Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as

a sequence of breakthroughs, but the

reality is closer to a sequence of

lessons that arrive disguised as

setbacks. Every project that did not

work sharpened my thinking and

pushed me toward a clearer

understanding of what customers,

markets, and people actually need.

Before Binta Financial, I built ventures

and projects across EdTech, PropTech,

and digital services, and worked with

organizations on process improvement

and market access. Not all of them

became long-term businesses. Some

were closed when the market

opportunity proved limited. Others

evolved as my understanding of the

underlying problem deepened.

Looking back, I do not see those as

separate chapters. They were

preparation.

ARRIVIN G IN CAN ADA

Immigrating to Canada became one

of the defining experiences of my life. I

arrived with an excellent credit history

built over years in Nigeria, a career in

banking and credit risk, and an MBA

from the University of British

Columbia. By every reasonable

measure, I was a responsible borrower

with a demonstrated track record.

None of it transferred. I was turned

down for multiple rental applications.

Declined for a line of credit despite

working in finance. Offered vehicle

financing near 13.5% when many

Canadians with established credit

could access rates closer to 4.5%."

039

"The rejections were not personal. The

system simply had no reliable

mechanism to recognize trust earned

outside the country. That distinction

made it no less frustrating.

What made the experience formative

rather than merely difficult was what

came next. Working inside RBC, BM O,

and Slalom, I began to understand the

institutional side of those same

decisions. I met the people making

them. I understood the constraints they

were operating within, the data they

had access to, and the data they did

not. I went from being the newcomer

who was declined to sitting inside the

system that had to decline others

facing the same challenge.

That is when everything came

into focus.

A STRUCTURAL GAP

The more I looked, the clearer it

became that this was not a niche

frustration affecting a small number of

people. It was a structural gap

affecting millions of immigrants,

international students, temporary

workers, and globally mobile

professionals every year. Behind every

statistic was a real person being

asked to start over, despite having

already earned trust somewhere else.

Friends who had immigrated to

Canada began calling me for help.

Some needed guarantors to rent

apartments. Others could not access

basic financial products. The more I

tried to help, the more I recognized I

was treating symptoms rather than the

root cause. That realization became

the foundation for Binta Financial.

The name itself carries meaning. Binta

is a name of African origin meaning

?beautiful daughter.? For me, it

represents something worth

protecting: the trust and dignity that

people carry across borders, and the

systems that should recognize them.

BUILDIN G THE IN FRASTRUCTURE

Once I became convinced the

problem was real and global, the work

shifted from validating the idea to

building the credibility and momentum

required to solve it. That process

required patience.

We spent considerable time listening.

We spoke with newcomers, housing

providers, banks, credit bureaus,

telecommunications companies,

regulators, and community

organizations, learning the problem

from every angle before committing to

a solution. One of the most important

early realizations was that Binta was

not a consumer product. It was

infrastructure. That distinction changed

everything about how we approached

growth. Rather than chasing

short-term adoption, we focused on

trust, institutional partnerships, and

long-term relationships that could

scale across borders.

Innovation UBC, Creative

Destruction Lab, N ew Ventures BC,

Fintech Cadence, and HATCH

Venture Builder at UBC each played

a meaningful role in shaping both the

company and my development as a

founder. These programs provided

mentorship, accountability, and access

to networks that would have taken

years to build independently."

041

THE PERSON AL COST

"Like most founders, I sacrificed

certainty. Building a company means

choosing an uncertain future over a

comfortable present, and there were

extended periods when financial

security, personal time, and simple

peace of mind had to give way to the

mission. The hardest part was not the

workload. It was carrying responsibility

through stretches when very few

people could see what I was building

or understand why it mattered.

Immigrating while founding added

another layer. Establishing a new life,

raising a young family, and building a

company simultaneously demanded a

kind of resilience that is difficult to

describe and impossible to prepare

for in advance. What made it

navigable was my family. Their belief

in what I was doing provided the

stability I needed to keep moving

when the path ahead was far from

clear.

WHAT LEADERSHIP TAUGHT M E

Early in my career, I believed

leadership meant having the answers.

That belief did not survive contact with

the reality of building a company.

What I learned instead is that

leadership is about creating clarity,

asking better questions, and building

conditions where other people can do

their best work.

As Binta grew, my role shifted from

solving problems personally to building

systems and attracting people who

were better than me in the areas that

mattered most.

P A S C H A L

B IN T A

O K W U N D U

F IN A N C IA L

The biggest shift came when I stopped

thinking of Binta as a startup and

started thinking of it as a mission. That

change in framing altered how I hired,

how I approached partnerships, and

how I made decisions under pressure.

Conviction and humility, it turns out,

are not opposites. The best founders

hold both at the same time.

WHAT COM ES N EXT

As we move through 20 26 and into

20 27, Binta is looking for

mission-aligned investors, strategic

banking partners, credit bureaus,

telecommunications providers, housing

organizations, policymakers, and

exceptional talent who believe in the

future of global credit mobility.

We are raising capital to accelerate

the next phase of growth, deepen

international data partnerships,

strengthen our technology platform,

grow our team, and expand our

infrastructure across key migration

corridors. We are especially interested

in investors who understand what it

means to build category-defining

infrastructure, and who see the scale

of the opportunity in a world where

people move across borders in

growing numbers every year.

The legacy I hope to leave is a simple

one. A world where people do not

have to start over financially simply

because they crossed a border. If

Binta succeeds, future generations will

find it strange that financial reputation

was ever trapped within a single

country. That is the problem worth

solving. That is the work."

TRUC TRA N:

A NERA

LIFE INC.

043

Truc Tran is the Founder and CEO of

Anera Life Inc., a Canadian longevity

and wellness company built on the

belief that healthspan and vitality

should be accessible to everyone.

Driven by personal experience with

adversity, recovery, and

transformation, Truc has channelled a

deeply human journey into a company

focused on science-driven health

innovation, education, and human

optimization.

Under his leadership, Anera Life has

grown into an emerging brand

recognized for its premium

nutraceutical formulations, modern

positioning, and forward-thinking

vision within the global wellness and

longevity space.

His mission extends beyond the

product: Truc is focused on building an

ecosystem that bridges science,

community, and everyday living,

helping people move toward

stronger, more energized, and

more purposeful lives.

Before stepping into the role of

founder, Truc describes himself as

naturally introverted and unlikely to

seek the spotlight. Entrepreneurship

changed that. The process of building

Anera pushed him to grow publicly,

lead with authenticity, and use his own

story as both compass and calling

card.

Guided by the philosophy ?Help Heal

Humanity,? Truc continues to expand

Anera internationally while advocating

for a future where longevity and

optimized living become part of

mainstream culture.

THE BUSINESS.

Anera Life Inc. is a Canadian

longevity and wellness company

dedicated to helping people optimize

their health, vitality, and quality of life

through science-driven innovation and

modern wellness solutions. Founded on

the belief that longevity is more than

simply living longer, Anera is built

around supporting healthier, more

energized, and more purposeful living.

The company brings together premium

nutraceutical formulations, wellness

education, and a lifestyle philosophy

centred on human optimization,

preventative health, and personal

growth. Rather than functioning as a

conventional supplement brand, Anera

is building toward a complete wellness

ecosystem that connects science,

community, and everyday life, with a

growing international footprint and an

expanding vision that reaches beyond

the product shelf.

That vision includes AI-driven wellness

platforms, personalized longevity

programming, wellness-focused

physical spaces, and hospitality

concepts designed around optimized

living. The ambition is for people to

engage with Anera not as a

transaction, but as an ongoing

relationship with their own health.

With its philosophy, ?Help Heal

Humanity,? Anera leads with purpose

first. The goal is to inspire individuals

to take ownership of their health

while contributing to a future where

longevity, performance, and wellbeing

are woven into the fabric of

everyday culture.

045

IN HIS WORDS.

047

"I did not grow up with a business plan.

I was not the kid running a lemonade

stand or flipping things for a profit. By

my own honest account, I was quiet,

introverted, and focused on finding my

footing in the world rather than

building something in it. The

entrepreneurial identity came later,

and it came the hard way.

There was a period in my life when I

was dealing with severe inflammation,

persistent bruising, and difficulty

walking. I visited doctors, looked for

answers, and found little that truly

helped. The physical toll was real, and

it wore on me mentally and

emotionally in equal measure. It was

during that stretch, one of the more

difficult periods of my life, that my

closest friend stepped in.

That friend was Arthur Leung,

someone I had known for over thirty

years. Arthur introduced me to N M N

and to the broader world of longevity

science and wellness. The introduction

was not just practical. It was a turning

point. I began to experience real

change, and with that change came a

shift in how I understood health,

resilience, and what I wanted to build

with my life.

FROM PAIN TO PURPOSE

What followed was not an overnight

transformation. It was a gradual and

deliberate process of learning.

I began studying longevity science,

human optimization, and preventative

wellness with the focus of someone

who had a personal stake in every

answer.

The more I learned, the clearer it

became that the gap between what

science understood

and what most people had access to

was enormous.

That gap became the business. Not a

business built from a spreadsheet or a

market analysis, but one built from

lived experience and a genuine

conviction that other people deserved

access to the same tools that had

helped me recover my quality of life.

Anera Life Inc. was founded on that

conviction. The name, the philosophy,

the mission of ?Help Heal Humanity?

? all of it traces back to a single

period of physical struggle and the

friendship that helped illuminate

a way through it.

BUILDIN G LEAN

I have been open about the fact that

Anera has been built bootstrapped

and lean. There were no early rounds

of outside capital, no large teams, no

infrastructure inherited from a previous

venture. What there was instead was

persistence, a willingness to learn in

public, and a founder who understood

that in the absence of large budgets,

authenticity becomes a competitive

advantage.

One of the more significant personal

shifts that came with building

Anera was stepping out of the

introversion that had defined much

of my earlier life."

"I recognized early that as a founder, I

would eventually become the face of

the company, and that people

connect with story and purpose as

much as they connect with product.

That realization pushed me to build a

public presence, share the mission

behind Anera genuinely, and embrace

the discomfort of visibility.

Social media, branding, and emerging

tools including AI have all become

part of how Anera extends its reach

and connects with a global audience,

creating opportunities that would have

previously required teams and budgets

well beyond what a lean operation

could support.

THE SCIEN CE BEHIN D IT

As Anera grew, so did its scientific

foundation. Dr. Andrew Willoughby,

President and Chief Science Officer of

Anera, brought a depth of credential

and innovation that strengthened the

company considerably.

A scientist and innovator holding over

ninety patents, Dr. Willoughby?s

knowledge and mentorship have

shaped both the product direction

and the broader vision of what Anera

is capable of becoming.

The combination of Arthur?s original

introduction and Dr. Willoughby?s

scientific leadership reflects the kind

of ecosystem I have been deliberate

about building: one where purpose,

relationships, and rigorous science

sit alongside one another rather

than in competition.

WHAT WELLN ESS M EAN S

There is a version of the wellness

industry that is transactional,

trend-driven, and disconnected from

the people it claims to serve. I have

been deliberate about building Anera

as something different. The philosophy

that guides the company is not about

selling a product cycle. It is about

helping people develop a genuine

and ongoing relationship with their

own health.

That means leading with education as

much as formulation. It means investing

in community alongside product

development. It means being honest

about what science supports and what

it does not, and building trust with an

audience that is increasingly

sophisticated about both.

The long-term vision reflects that

ambition. Anera is working toward a

complete longevity and wellness

ecosystem that brings together

nutraceuticals, AI-driven wellness

platforms, personalized longevity

programming, wellness-focused

physical spaces, and hospitality

concepts centred on optimized living.

The goal is for people to engage with

Anera not as a one-time purchase, but

as a sustained part of how they live.

GROWTH AS A FOUN DER

I will be candid about the personal

cost of building a company. There

have been long hours, sustained

uncertainty, and real sacrifices in my

personal life."

049

051

"What has kept me oriented through

those periods is the clarity of the

mission and the support of my family,

who have been a consistent and

grounding presence throughout

the journey.

I am equally candid about the

personal growth that entrepreneurship

has demanded. The person who

founded Anera was not naturally suited

to public leadership, to building an

audience, or to carrying the weight of

a company?s vision in every

conversation. That person had to be

developed, and I speak about that

development not as a challenge

overcome, but as an ongoing process.

My advice to other founders reflects

that perspective. I am not interested in

offering shortcuts or formulas. What I

come back to consistently is the value

of continuous learning, the importance

of seeking mentors and building

genuine relationships, and the

discipline of staying connected to

purpose when the conditions get

difficult. Growth, in my experience,

begins precisely at the edge of

what is comfortable.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

Anera is entering a stage where its

ambitions have outgrown its current

resources, and I am direct about

what the company needs to reach

the next level.

The priority is a strategic investor and

long-term partner who understands

the longevity and wellness space and

believes in Anera?s ecosystem vision.

T R U C

T R A N

A N E R A L IF E IN C .

This is not a search for capital alone. It

is a search for alignment ? someone

who sees where the industry is heading

and wants to help build infrastructure

that will matter in 20 26, 20 27, and

well beyond.

Alongside investment, I am looking to

deepen partnerships with innovators,

scientists, and builders working at the

intersection of health, technology, and

human performance. The ecosystem

vision, spanning AI-driven platforms,

personalized programming, physical

wellness spaces, and

longevity-focused hospitality, requires

collaborators who bring both

expertise and shared conviction.

The legacy I hope to leave is

straightforward in its ambition and

human in its framing.

I want Anera to be remembered not

simply as a company that sold wellness

products, but as a movement that

helped shift how people think about

their health, their longevity, and

their capacity to live with vitality

and purpose.

I want people to look back and say

that Anera showed up when the

conversation around human

optimization was still being defined,

and that it helped move that

conversation in a direction

worth following.

That mission started in a difficult

moment, with a friend, and a molecule

most people had never heard of. It is

still being written."

DA NA

RA M NA RINE:

RHUM .HR.

053

Dana Ramnarine (she/ her) is a

seasoned entrepreneur and

people-operations leader recognized

for empowering innovative ventures

and driving operational excellence

within collaborative, creative teams.

With nearly 15 years of experience

supporting startup founders and

building purpose-driven organizations,

she brings together strategic vision

and hands-on leadership in

equal measure.

As Chief Operating Officer at rhum.hr,

Dana leads initiatives focused on

streamlining business operations and

scaling emerging companies with the

kind of HR infrastructure that founders

actually use.

Her approach is grounded in the

belief that performance, retention,

and culture all begin at the emotional

foundation of an organization.

Add to this equation an honest,

rigorous people strategy and that is

what separates companies built to last

from those built to pitch.

Dana also serves as Head of Talent at

BKR Capital, a Toronto-based

venture capital firm investing in

diverse founders, where she designs

HR programs, advises on talent

strategy, and supports portfolio

companies through the complexity

of early growth.

A board member of QueerTech and

member of the Canada Queer

Chamber of Commerce, Dana brings

her full self to the work of building

more equitable, human-centred

ecosystems.

She is a mother, a builder, and

someone who has learned, the hard

way, that sustainable leadership starts

from within.

THE BUSINESS.

rhum.hr is what happens when

HR consulting grows a spine and a

heart at the same time. No bloated

playbooks. No corporate jargon. Just

sharp, honest strategy built on an

obsession with creating organizations

where people actually want to stay

and do their best work.

rhum.hr designs systems that put

humans before org charts, because

performance, retention, and culture all

start at the emotional foundation of a

company. That means hard

conversations, clean data, and

policies that do not treat people like

liabilities to be managed. It means

showing up as a genuine partner to

founders rather than an arm?s-length

consultant, getting under the skin of

what a company is actually trying to

build and helping them build it

with intention.

The clients who find rhum.hr are

founders and ecosystem builders who

want companies that last, not just

logos for pitch decks. Less

performative people-first messaging,

more honest, heart-led leadership

backed by rigorous, pragmatic HR

operations built for a world that keeps

changing.

rhum.hr is a member of the Canadian

Queer Chamber of Commerce, and

that membership is not incidental.

Inclusion, equity, and community are

not afterthoughts here. They are the

starting point.

055

IN HER WORDS.

057

"I have always been career-driven.

From early on, I knew I wanted to

design a life where I could feed my

passions and creative outlets while

navigating an ambitious career. What

I did not know was how long it would

take to understand what that actually

meant, or how much it would cost me

to figure it out.

The first signs showed up early. As a

teenager, I ran a side hustle selling

used sneakers and shoes out of our

school store, a Facebook

M arketplace before M arketplace

existed. My marketing teacher was not

exactly thrilled, but he appreciated

that I had spotted a real opportunity

and moved on it. That instinct, seeing a

gap and filling it without waiting for

permission, has never left me.

What I could not have told you then

was that the deeper entrepreneurial

reckoning was still decades away,

waiting on the other side of one of the

hardest seasons of my life.

A SEASON OF RECKON IN G

My son was born, and something in me

broke open in ways I had not

prepared for. I was experiencing

postpartum depression and career

boredom simultaneously, a

combination more common than

anyone talks about and more

disorienting than I had words for. I was

physically present and emotionally

adrift, simultaneously grateful and

grieving a version of myself I was not

sure I would find again.

What became clear in that fog was

something I could no longer ignore: I

am not built for a standard nine to five.

It has to be all heart or nothing. That

realization arrived as a slow,

uncomfortable certainty that the life I

had been living no longer fit.

I started a community during my

maternity leave connecting parents to

caregivers. While that project gave

way to what came next, it taught me

something essential: my deepest

instinct is toward people, toward

connection, toward building structures

that make someone else?s life a little

less impossible. That instinct led me

back to human resources with a

different intention. My business partner

Pierre- Luc Labbée and I dreamed of

a genuine departure from arm?s-length

consulting, wanting to get under the

skin of founders and help them build.

rhum.hr was born from that dream.

THE COST OF EVERYTHIN G

In the early years, I held everything

together by sheer will. I said yes to

almost every opportunity,

over-functioned for everyone around

me, and pushed through exhaustion to

prove I could be a great founder,

mother, and operator all at once.

On the outside it looked impressive. On

the inside it was quietly eroding my

health, my joy, and my ability to be

present with the people I love most."

059

"Burnout is not a buzzword. It is the

moment you realize you are physically

in the room but not actually there, that

your drive to succeed is costing you

your humanity. I arrived at that moment

more than once.

I am the mother of a bright, beautiful

twelve-year-old, and becoming a

mother changed me in ways I never

expected. I fought to hold three

identities at once: the present,

nurturing mother; the ambitious,

career-driven woman; and the

individual who still needed space to

simply be. More than once that

pressure boiled over into burnout that

left me empty and disconnected from

the people I loved most.

Learning to name that tension, to ask

for help, to redesign my life around

what actually matters, has been a

long, messy, and genuinely beautiful

process. I am still figuring it out. But I

show up now with more honesty, more

boundaries, and considerably more

compassion, for myself and for anyone

else trying to hold all of these worlds

at once.

BUILDIN G WITH IN TEN TION

Losing a client who abandons

commitments after your team has

devoted everything is one of the more

quietly devastating experiences in

consulting. It has happened more than

once. Those experiences taught us to

be intentional about who we say yes

to, spending real time understanding

what someone is trying to build and

whether they have the resources and

will to follow through.

The rebrand rhum.hr is currently

moving through is not a new logo or

fresh copy. It is a decision to speak in

our real voice, stand firmly in our

values, and accept that not everyone

will be for us. Getting clear on who we

are has become our greatest

differentiator. The clearer we are, the

more we attract aligned founders who

care about building sustainably rather

than scaling at any cost.

Over the years, we have done work

that still surprises me: staffing

post-production for major productions,

supporting the launch of new game

studios, building nationwide talent

programs, designing learning

experiences for some of the most

visionary people I have encountered.

When you expand your sense of what

is possible and pair it with execution,

the opportunities that arrive are often

larger than anything you could have

scripted for yourself.

PEOPLE WHO CHAN GED M E

Caroline Stokes was my executive

coach when I was a new founder on

the edge of burnout, and she

fundamentally changed the way I lead

and care for myself.

She held space when everything felt

fragile and helped me build the

practical and emotional tools I

needed to become a more resilient,

grounded entrepreneur.

She has since written Elephants

Before Unicorns and Aftershock to

20 30 , both speaking directly to

founders who are ready to do the

inner work and lead with courage."

061

"Pierre- Luc is one of the most

generous, beautiful humans I have ever

known. Sharing values with the person

you are building with changes

everything. He brings deep

foundational knowledge and

heart-forward leadership in equal

measure, and our styles complement

each other in ways that make the work

feel both expansive and sustainable.

Hassan Pardaw alla, whom I originally

hired years ago, has since become a

collaborator, co-creator, and trusted

confidante. He does not network in a

surface-level way. He brings real

presence, curiosity, and warmth into

every room, and his ability to genuinely

connect with people is something I

admire deeply.

Samantha Pow ell, a mother of two

who has just launched Crème, a new

product line celebrating menopause

and the powerful transformations

women experience, inspires me

constantly. Her creativity, her vision for

community-building, and her rare gift

for making the people around her feel

truly seen, these are qualities I return

to when I need to remember why this

work matters.

GROWTH PLAN IN ITIATED

rhum.hr is looking for a senior

fractional finance partner, a

Fractional CFO or Controller, to help

model sustainable growth, price

thoughtfully, and structure the business

for scale without losing what makes it

worth building.

Alongside that, we are seeking a

part-time content and community

partner who can help us share stories,

frameworks, and practical tools more

consistently with founders, studio

heads, and talent leaders across our

ecosystems.

We are also calling in deeper

embedded partnerships with venture

capital firms, accelerators, and

ecosystem builders who want a

dedicated people and culture partner

for their portfolios, particularly in

creative tech, games, and the future of

work. And we are actively looking for

values-aligned clients in growth mode,

early-stage and scaling companies

ready to invest in real people strategy

rather than firefighting.

The legacy I hope to leave is

straightforward. I want people to look

back and say that rhum.hr helped build

companies that were as good to work

inside as they were impressive from the

outside. That we helped founders

understand that caring for their

people and caring for their business

were never separate things. That we

showed up honestly, built with integrity,

and made the ecosystem a little more

human than we found it.

You do not have to burn yourself down

to build something meaningful. That is

the thing I most wish I had known. The

point is not to do it all. The point is to

do what matters, in a way you can live

with, and live well."

D A N A

R H U M .H R

R A N M A R IN E

QUICK TA K E:

M A RGA RET

DIBOR:

DIM A RISK

SOLUTIONS.

063

M argaret Dibor arrived at Web

Summit Vancouver 20 26 with a new

build, a sharper product, and a

philosophy refined by a year of

hard-won development. When

Portfolio.YVR spotlighted her in the

20 25 Web Summit Special Edition,

she was advancing a bold premise: a

virtual CISO and privacy officer,

accessible to the small and medium

businesses that needed it most but

had never had access to that level of

expertise. The platform has since

evolved from Chataw ork ?

accepted into the Web Summit

Alpha programme in 20 25 ? into

Dima Risk Solutions, a name that

reflects full ownership of both the

company and its direction.

What the year of building revealed

was not a flaw in the original vision,

but a more honest understanding of

where businesses actually stand.

?Small businesses do not need

another compliance checklist. They

need to understand risk in business

language, financial exposure,

prioritized actions, clear rationale,?

Dibor explains. That insight has since

shaped everything.

SIM PLICITY AS STRATEGY

The virtual CISO concept assumed a

level of security maturity that many

SMBs simply do not possess. Early

users were not arriving with

sophisticated questions.

They were arriving with uncertainty

about where to begin, anxiety about

liability, and frustration with tools

designed for enterprise teams. The

response was to rebuild around a

cleaner, more practical core.

?You cannot skip steps with this

audience, and the year of

development made that undeniable,?

she adds.

065

PARTN ERSHIPS WITH PURPOSE

The past year of outreach has

produced something Margaret values

over headline figures: a small,

committed team and relationships

grounded in shared purpose. A formal

partnership with Cornerstone College

and an active collaboration with a

second university provide structured

feedback, real-world testing

conditions, and credibility with the

institutional market. She continues to

work with Etuteki on specific

engagements, but Dima Risk Solutions

remains her primary focus and her own

product. The pipeline reflects exactly

what she set out to build.

THE URGEN CY SHIFT

The risk conversations Dibor is having

with SMB clients have undergone a

fundamental change. A year ago, she

was explaining why AI-enabled social

engineering was a growing concern.

Today, clients are arriving with

incidents. The velocity of threat has

outpaced most small businesses?

awareness, let alone their defences.

The question has shifted from whether

to act, to how to act without

paralyzing operations or budgets ?

precisely the conversation Dima Risk

Solutions was built to have.

TRUST AS CURREN CY

Building a business in Canada as an

international founder has reshaped

how Dibor works.

Her involvement with ISACA

Vancouver, the South Surrey

Chamber, and speaking engagements

are not marketing activities in her view

? they are demonstrations of

long-term commitment. The clearest

evidence that the mindset shift toward

security is taking hold, she observes, is

not a metric.

?It is the nature of the conversations I

am now having. A year ago I was

explaining why cybersecurity mattered

to SMB owners. Today they are coming

to me with specific concerns, asking

better questions, and looking for

frameworks they can actually use,?

Dibor shares.

In the past year, Margaret has

replatformed her product, secured

academic partnerships, grown a

committed team, and established

herself as a trusted voice in the

Canadian cybersecurity market. That

momentum is finding a new outlet

soon when she launches her own

security awareness masterclass ? a

programme designed specifically to

help business owners and their teams

understand risk in practical,

non-technical terms.

When awareness stops being passive

and people begin seeking solutions

rather than warnings, the culture, she

believes, is beginning to change.

M A R G A R E T

D IB O R

D IM A R IS K S O L U T IO N S

QUICK TA K E:

M A RY

CA RM ICHA EL:

FIELD CISO, W. CA NA DA

BELL CYBER.

067

M ary Carmichael stepped into one of

the more consequential roles of her

career when she was appointed Field

CISO, Western Canada w ith Bell

Cyber. The position is deliberately

outward-facing, less internal mandate,

more market engagement, and it suits

her.

?I spend time with customers, partners,

and the broader cybersecurity

community, listening to what leaders

are dealing with and where the

market is moving,? she explains.

Advisory, advocacy, research, and

industry engagement are all part of

the remit, as is connecting market

insight to Canadian-led innovation.

Alongside that appointment,

Carmichael continues her leadership

role with the ISACA cyber community,

providing guidance on how to turn

technology risk into business-aligned

strategy.

Together, the two roles place her at

the centre of how Canadian

organizations are thinking about

cybersecurity right now. ?What I like

most is the impact: helping leaders

make better decisions and build

stronger cyber capability across

Canada,? she adds.

The word Carmichael hears most

often when she sits across from

security leaders is resilience.

Organizations know they cannot

prevent every disruption ? the

question is whether they are ready

when something happens.

069

?Do they understand their critical

dependencies? Have they tested their

assumptions? Can they recover?? It is a

framing that cuts through the noise of

compliance checklists and technical

controls, and it reflects how she

approaches every client discussion:

cyber risk is a business issue, and it

belongs in the same conversation as

strategy, growth, and decision-making.

AI GOVERN AN CE ON THE GROUN D

As a Fellow with Toronto M etropolitan

University?s Rogers Cybersecure

Catalyst, Carmichael leads research on

third-party AI risk with a focus on public

sector use ? and what she is seeing in

that work is directly shaping how she

advises organizations on emerging

technology readiness.

The progress is real: leaders are

beginning to ask better questions

about AI governance before tools are

deployed, and about the value AI

actually delivers beyond efficiency

gains.

The persistent gap, however, is in the

handoff from principle to practice ?

many organizations can articulate their

AI values but have not yet built out the

approval processes, vendor

accountability structures, or monitoring

frameworks that responsible adoption

requires. That is precisely where her

advisory work in the cyber field focuses.

At the heart of Carmichael?s advisory

philosophy is a conviction that security

works best when it is embedded in the

business rather than bolted onto it.

Her ABC model ? awareness,

behaviour, and communication ? is the

practical expression of that belief,

designed to make security a cultural

asset rather than a compliance burden.

Her GRC guidance builds on the same

foundation, helping organizations move

from reactive compliance to proactive

risk management, with frameworks that

support board oversight, operational

planning, and clear metrics. The goal

is not more controls. It is better

questions, stronger governance, and

leadership that understands what it is

actually managing.

COM M UN ITY AS PRACTICE

Carmichael?s influence extends well

beyond client work. She authors the

Tips column for over 20 0 ,0 0 0 ISACA

professionals worldwide and speaks

regularly at RSAC, ISACA N orth

America, and ISACA Europe. Recent

recognition ? including a place on

SC M edia?s Women to Watch list and

ISACA Global?s Leadership Aw ard ?

reflects a career built as much on

contribution as on expertise. ?Those

moments meant a lot because they

reflect the work I care about:

leadership, visibility, community, and

helping the profession grow,? she

shares. For Carmichael, community has

never been incidental to the work. ?I

have had people share advice, make

introductions, and open doors for me. I

know how much that can matter, so I try

to do the same for others.?

M A R Y

C A R M IC H A E L

F IE L D C IS O , W . C A N A D A

B E L L C Y B E R

QUICK TA K E:

A M A RJEET

K A UR:

YA LI-CYBERSHIELD.

071

Amarjeet Kaur, CEO and

Co- Founder of Yali- CyberShield,

returns to the Portfolio.YVR spotlight

with a sharper product thesis and a

year of deliberate,

foundation-building work behind her.

When the publication profiled her as

part of the 20 25 Web Summit

Special Edition, she had set an

ambitious target: 10 0 -plus active

customers and strategic partnerships

with incubators, legal firms, and

accelerators by year?s end.

A year later, she is candid about

where the focus actually landed.

?The past year was less about

chasing growth targets and more

about gaining clarity on where

we can create the greatest value,?

Kaur explains.

AI has expanded the cybersecurity

conversation well beyond

compliance into governance,

privacy, and trust.

Yali-CyberShield refined its ideal

customer profile, strengthened its

offering, and sharpened its

understanding of the challenges

founders actually face.

THE STRATEGIC PAUSE

When the planned Sales and

Partnerships Lead role went unfilled,

it was not an oversight ? it was a

deliberate read of the market. AI

disruption, budget realignment, and

category saturation made the timing

wrong for a conventional sales hire.

In its place, Kaur invested in

founder-led discovery and

relationship-building across the

startup ecosystem.

The result was a stronger foundation

rather than a faster pipeline ? a

distinction she considers essential in

a market where trust is now the

operative currency.

073

WHAT EARLY ADOPTERS REVEALED

The early access programme, which

offered startups lifetime discounted

pricing in exchange for real-world

compliance feedback, produced

one of the most instructive insights

of the year.

?Founders rarely underestimate the

importance of compliance ? they

underestimate how operational it is,?

Kaur observes. Many approached

SOC 2 and ISO 270 0 1 as audit

milestones rather than as disciplines

requiring consistent, daily habits. The

risks that surfaced were embedded in

ordinary decisions: access

management, third-party tools, data

handling, and the rapid adoption of AI

without governance frameworks in

place. The takeaway was unambiguous

? startups do not need more

complexity. They need practical

guidance that helps them build secure

habits early.

RETHIN KIN G SACRIFICE

The personal cost of building

Yali-CyberShield ? the late nights, the

weekends traded for pitch decks and

grant applications ? has not

disappeared. But Kaur?s relationship

with it has changed. Early-stage

intensity gave way to a more

considered approach to where energy

is invested. ?Building a company in

cybersecurity is a long-term

commitment."

A M A R J E E T

K A U R

Y A L I-C Y B E R S H IE L D

"Today, success is less about hours

worked and more about creating

meaningful impact, making thoughtful

decisions, and building a business and

culture that can endure,? she reflects.

SECURITY AS A M OVEM EN T

The Security for Startups Fellow ship,

Kaur?s most forward-facing initiative,

was never conceived as a technical

programme alone. It was designed to

help founders build security

confidence earlier in their journey ?

through education, mentoring,

practical guidance, and sustained

conversation within the startup

ecosystem. The goal is to reframe

cybersecurity not as a compliance

exercise, but as a foundation for trust,

resilience, and growth.

In the past, Amarjeet has repositioned

the company around a sharper market

thesis: that cybersecurity is no longer a

technical function ? it is a business

trust function. Enterprise buyers,

investors, and regulators are asking

tougher security questions earlier, and

startups are expected to demonstrate

maturity long before they have

dedicated security teams. In a

managed security services market

valued at $94.5 billion across Canada

and the United States,

Yali-CyberShield is staking its

ground not on complexity, but on

making risk understandable ? and

security something every founder

can actually own.

QUICK TA K E:

LYNDSA Y

M A LCHUK :

GLOBA L ON-CA M ERA

REPORTER.

075

When Portfolio.YVR featured

Lyndsay M alchuk in the 20 25 Web

Summit Special Edition, she was

already making her mark as a

capital markets reporter with an

instinct for uncovering what lies

beneath the polished surface of

corporate communications.

A year on, the most significant shift

has been one of scale. What has

changed most in her career is the

move from local storytelling to

international conversations ? ones

that connect investors, business

leaders, and decision-makers across

multiple markets and jurisdictions.

While Vancouver remains her home

base, Lyndsay now operates as a

global on-camera reporter for the

Apaton Group.

She brings the same depth and

emotional intelligence that defined

her earlier work to stages and

screens around the world.

BEHIN D THE CURTAIN

What continues to surprise her is how

many compelling stories go untold.

Too many conversations with

executives stay firmly on the surface

? cycling through information

already available in a press release

or a corporate deck. ?The moments

that matter happen when you move

beyond the pitch deck,? she says.

What keeps a leader awake at night,

why they chose one path over

another, where they exercised

restraint and where they took risks ?

these are the questions that define

her approach, and the answers that

shape the stories worth telling.

077

LEADIN G THROUGH UN CERTAIN TY

Her proximity to publicly traded CEOs

across mining, technology, medical

innovation, and cryptocurrency has

given her a particular vantage point on

leadership in volatile conditions.

Periods of uncertainty, she notes, are

extraordinary truth tellers. When

markets tighten, the distinction between

genuine leadership and performed

confidence becomes impossible to

conceal. The executives who stand out

are those who can hold conviction and

humility in the same breath ?

transparent about the challenges,

clear-eyed about risk, and unwilling to

hide behind rehearsed talking points.

?In today?s environment, trust is built less

by projecting certainty and more by

demonstrating clarity, consistency, and

sound judgment when certainty simply

doesn?t exist,? she shares.

THE HUM AN STAN DARD

As AI-generated content reshapes the

media landscape, Lyndsay remains

deliberate about what technology

cannot replicate. Human intuition, she

argues, processes credibility long

before words are consciously

registered. The ability to read a room,

ask an unexpected follow-up question,

or sit comfortably in silence belongs to

no algorithm.

Her focus remains on meaningful

conversations over perfect ones ?

and on protecting the standard

that genuine connection cannot

be manufactured.

COM PETIN G FOR M EM ORY

For the growth-stage founders and

companies she advises, her central

argument cuts through the noise: they

are not competing for attention. They

are competing for memory. What

differentiates the brands that endure is

not a larger budget or a louder

message but clarity ? who they are,

what they stand for, and how

consistently they communicate that.

Lyndsay says, ?People may forget

statistics, technical details, or quarterly

milestones. They rarely forget how a

company made them feel.?

Looking ahead, Lyndsay is focused on

expanding her global presence,

moderating high-value forums, and

sitting across from the decision-makers

shaping industry and policy worldwide.

Through it all, the one asset she is most

deliberate about protecting is curiosity

? the force behind every better

question, every better conversation,

and every story still waiting to be told.

L Y N D S A Y

M A L C H U K

G L O B A L O N -C A M E R A

R E P O R T E R

PORTFOLIO.YVR

VOLUM E 4 / ISSUE 13 / WEB SUM M IT SPECIA L EDITION

Helen Siw ak , EIC & Publisher

EcoLux Luv Communications & M ark eting Inc.

PHOTO CREDITS:

FRONT/BA CK COVER, 003-012: COURTESY OF K ERRI K INNA

002: A LY DOLA TI, PHOTOGRA PHER

013-022: ERICH SA IDE PHOTOGRA PHY

023-032: COURTESY OF HA SSA N PA RDA WA LLA

033-042: COURTESY OF PA SCHA L OK WUNDU

043-052: COURTESY OF TRUC TRA N

053-062, 079: COURTESY OF DA NA RA M NA RINE

063-066: HELEN SIWA K

067-070: COURTESY OF M A RY CA RM ICHA EL

071-074: COURTESY OF A M A RJEET K A UR

075-078: COURTESY OF LYNDSA Y M A LCHUK

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K ERRI K INNA

NEEL SINGH

HA SSA N PA RDA WA LLA

PA SCHA L OK WUNDU

TRUC TRA N

DA NA RA M NA RINE

M A RY CA RM ICHA EL

A M A RJEET K A UR

M A RGA RET DIBOR

LYNDSA Y M A LCHUK

PORTFOLIO.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine | Volume 4 | Issue 14 | 2026

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