On Tuesday October 28, the Telfer Entrepreneurs' Club hosted the 17th annual Excellence in Leadership and Legacy in Entrepreneurship Wine and Cheese. This yearly event features the entrepreneurial stories of Canadian female entrepreneurs. This year, we welcomed two women, Rebecca Graham and Hélène Joncas.
Rebecca Graham is the founder of No Borders Fitness, a fitness studio in Midland, Ontario. As an English student at the University of Waterloo, she found her passion in fitness, and channeled it into a job she loved. Rebecca bootstrapped her business, working around the clock teaching 40 hours of fitness a week for 3 years before opening her studio. Rebecca believes in taking risks and believing in yourself, surrounding yourself with people that challenge you, and force you to think outside the box. Rebecca is this year's recipient of Simcoe's Entrepreneur of the Year.
Hélène Joncas, our keynote speaker, joined the technology world early in her career where she combined her love for innovation with her passion for building and growing companies. She was co-founder of start-ups imGenie and SIPquest (now CounterPath), and acted as an intrapreneur developing global solutions at Nortel, or implementing strategic alliances with Microsoft, IBM and Rogers. Hélène has applied her knowledge and experience to help guide and nurture startups in her role as Vice President at Wavefront, Canada's National Centre of Excellence for wireless and as Chief Strategy Officer at CANARIE, Canada's high-speed research and education network. She continues to ensure that Canadian entrepreneurs are set up for success in her current capacity as a Director of the Board with Startup Canada. She is a graduate of the University of Ottawa where she earned her MBA and is a recipient of the Trudeau Medal. Hélène also sits on the Dean's Advisory Board.
The ELLE Wine and Cheese also hosted a raffle draw of donated prizes, raising $150. We would like to thank our raffle donors for their contributions. Prizes included merchandise and giftcards from Fruit Couture, Jump 106.9, Starbucks, CarlsCakes, Mill St. Brew Pub, Mabel's Labels, SAAB Salon, The Wine Garden, TEAZE hair Salon and Spa, Bel fiore Flowers, Bloomfields Flowers, Pub 101, Lowertown Brewery, Upward Dog Yoga Centre, Surmesur, and Telfer. Proceeds of the charity will be donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ottawa, a charity chosen by ELLE Wine and Cheese Chair Aryan Habib, in memory of her late cousin whom died at the age of 26.
The Entrepreneurs' Club would like to thank its sponsors EY, PWC, Enterprise, BMO Bank of Montreal, CPA, Shopify, and Surmesur. Without our sponsors, the Entrepreneurs' Club would be unable to hold entrepreneurial events for the students of the Telfer School of Management.
