Haltech Celebrates 10 Years of Innovation & Growth

By August 19, 2021August 23rd, 2021Newsroom

A lot can happen in just one decade, and the past 10 years at Haltech have been anything but ordinary. On August 18th, we celebrated our 10th Anniversary by inviting our fabulous community of clients, partners, sponsors, and supporters to join us for a virtual celebration. In case you missed out, we summarized the key happenings below.

Haltech and the Innovation Community

Led by Executive Director, Shann McGrail, the afternoon started off with some deserving thank you’s acknowledgments to our fabulous community who has made everything we do possible. On the other hand, we also wanted to capture the impact that Haltech has made in the innovation ecosystem over the years.

Shann McGrail kicks off the event

Pam Damoff delivers Land Acknowledgement

Client & Community Panels

Haltech clients Andrew Lee, Maja Maher, and Anthony Khoraych joined us on the Client Panel to share their personal and inspiring stories with the community, highlighting the role Haltech has played in their journeys.

Client Panel

Giacomo Angelini, Stephanie Mazhari, and Veeren Naidoo joined us for our Community Panel. Sharing their professional stories as part of MNP and Halton Region, respectively, Veeren had a unique story to share: Veeren is a tech investor who comes all the way from South Africa where he discovered Haltech’s website. Eventually, he moved from South Africa to Canada and got in touch with our team.

Community Panel

A Look Back

We are thrilled to share that in the 2020/21 Fiscal Year, we onboarded 88 new clients, joining our active client base of 207 companies. Of our total client base, 19% have youth founders, 27% are social innovation companies, and 41% have women founders. This continues the trend of our consistently growing women-identifying client base, up from 32% in 2018/19.

2020/2021 Annual Report statistics

Haltech 10 year timeline

Some of our notable highlights throughout the years

A Look Forward

Next, Marybeth Edge took the stage to share a special announcement on behalf of Haltech. She states:

“I think we all know what diversity, equity, and inclusion are and why it’s so important for all companies of all sizes to make it part of our culture and how we do business. It’s my pleasure to share with you that Haltech has signed up with the Canadian Government’s 50-30 Challenge”

What is the 50-30 Challenge?

The 50 – 30 Challenge is an initiative between the Government of Canada, business and diversity organizations. Together with project co-creators, many of whom have been striving to increase corporate diversity for decades, the government has developed a plan to improve access for  women, racialized persons including Black Canadians, people who identify as LGBTQ2, persons living with disabilities, as well as First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to positions of influence and leadership on corporate boards and in senior management.

The 50 – 30 Challenge asks that organizations aspire to two goals:

  1. Gender parity (“50%”) on Canadian board(s) and senior management; and
  2. Significant representation (“30%”) on Canadian board(s) and senior management of other under-represented groups: racialized persons including  Black Canadians, persons living with disabilities (including invisible and episodic disabilities), Canadians who identify as LGBTQ2, and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples as founding peoples of Canada are under-represented in positions of economic influence and leadership.

Diversity & Inclusion Committee

To ensure everybody continues to have equal access to opportunities and that nobody is left behind, we’ve assembled an amazing Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Haltech. The committee is Chaired by Marybeth Edge and includes Julia Matthews of Not Your Child Corp, Peter Jowahir of Precision E-Business Group, Perla Lopez; Product Management Consultant, Stephanie Mazhari of Halton Region, Elizabeth Plouffe of Spero Careers Canada, and Shane Ropp of Haltech.

 

Wrap-up and Networking

The event concluded with a networking session as members of the Haltech community spent some time catching up, getting to know each other, and congratulating the Haltech team for 10 amazing years.

Shane Ropp

Author Shane Ropp

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