Take The Lead – Trailblazing In Technology To Infinity And Beyond

Yvonne Pilon founded her first Tech Company — AD2IT — at 24 and at 29 became the youngest female to lead a Regional Innovation Centre in Ontario.

She was recently appointed to the Technology Councils of North America’s Board of Directors. TECNA represents 60 IT and technology trade organizations that, in turn, represent more than 22,000 technology-related companies in North America.

This prestigious appointment gave Pilon an opportunity to play a role in growing and advocating for the North American technology economy alongside 12 other executives from the U.S. and Canada, clearly defining her as a leader in technology.

More proof Pilon is a leader is evident in the number of awards she has racked up — the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce “Young Professional of the Year”; Leadership Windsor/Essex “40 Leaders Under 40”; Biz X magazine “2017 Powerhouse Professional” and University of Windsor “Odyssey Award”. She received the “Digital Influencer of the Year” Award from the Economic Developers Council of Ontario and the “Top Social Media Influencer” in Canadian Tech as well as the Leadership Windsor/Essex “Alumni Distinction Award”.

Currently, she is the President/CEO of WEtech Alliance, Windsor Essex’s technology accelerator, an industry-led organization focused on driving the growth and success of technology centric companies and entrepreneurs through leadership connections and promotion.

A natural entrepreneur, Pilon started young with lemonade stands and ticketed carnivals. A business school entrepreneurship class opened her eyes to new opportunities, ultimately leading to the creation of her first tech venture. After this undertaking she began working for a small IT Consortium called Softech Alliance Network, which led to WEtech.

Pilon created YKNOT Windsor-Essex (a youth retention and attraction initiative); the “Windsor 180 Summit” and hosts the “Tech in the City” Podcast. She is Co-Founder of Branded Sisters, a marketing services agency and was an Instructor at St. Clair College, MediaPlex.

“Being in the tech and economic development space could not be more satisfying,” Pilon comments. “I get the chance to be surrounded by passionate entrepreneurs every day, connect with tech leaders across the globe, help build a more resilient and diversified region, learn every day and most importantly, work alongside a brilliant team and board.”

Her advice to young girls is to “quit following stereotypes, never be the smartest person in room, work hard and have fun, learn how to ‘sell’ yourself (you are a brand after all), embrace change and failure, and let the haters be the reason you rise up, not fall down.”

She continues by suggesting to: “Always go the extra mile because it’s never crowded and surround yourself with people who talk about ideas, not people.”

If she could change one thing in the tech world it would be to solve the diversity/inclusion challenges and ultimately, enable all tech to be used for good.

As a passionate advocate of the Windsor and Essex County region she thinks: “We have an amazing story to tell and I look forward to sharing it across all wavelengths.”
She believes in throwing the ladder back down to help mentor/support other young people to reach for their goals.

Last year I had an opportunity to interview Dean Kamen, the Founder of First Robotics and inventor of the Segway. We spoke about the work Pilon was doing and he was impressed with her contributions, passion for technology and use of social media to inspire and encourage women into tech fields.

“Pilon is the poster-child for the new image of women in technology — she will go far,” Kamen stated.

I couldn’t agree more. I am positive she will be CEO of a Fortune 500 company someday. Hopefully she will have the power to make that happen in Windsor Essex.

Sherrilynn Colley-Vegh is an award winning leadership consultant and former Director of Leadership Windsor/Essex, Principal, Chief Communications Officer and business owner with over 30 years of experience in education, administration, mentoring, consulting and community leadership. If you know a leader in the community to profile here in this column, please email: Sherrilynn@BizXmagazine.com.

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Matthew Nahdee – Leading A Community Of Entrepreneurs

When I first met, Matthew Nahdee, Executive Director of the Can-Am Indian Friendship Centre, I was instantly impressed by his passion and varied experience.

I arrived hoping to get him involved in projects I was working on, and left wanting to get involved in his projects at the centre.

His enthusiasm is infectious and I was struck by his vision, powerful advocacy and desire to inspire entrepreneurial skills in his community.

Nahdee grew up in poverty between rural Chatham-Kent and London, observing that a lot of people had a lot more. This led him down an academic/athletic path that brought him to six different institutions and three different law schools. He found that his passion wasn’t in academia; it was in people that liked academia.

As Nahdee explains, “Humans connect in different ways. For me, the most productive, safe and efficient ways, with like-minded articulate individuals, tend to be at institutions. I had a private career in law for a short time, but value systems aren’t the number one goal of law so I prefer social development and non-profit.”

His mentors are his parents, family and Juan Carlos Reyes, a displaced Honduran.

“Reyes is an indigenous, professional that has worked with our first nation communities in Canada,” Nahdee comments. “He helped me use my emotions and passions in productive ways and taught me a lot.”

When I asked Nahdee whom he admires, he named Mary Duckworth, Faith Hale and his mom.

“They are three hard working indigenous women who support me and only care about our future generations,” he states.

The Friendship Centre movement is based around indigenous people helping all people.

“Everything we do today impacts the next seven generations so we offer inclusion, acceptance, friendship, future planning and any type of positive social group for anyone in Windsor Essex,” says Nahdee.

He talks about how important it is to serve future generations and their socio-economic progress.

Nahdee shares one of the projects they are developing — a language web-based application with augmented reality, so everyone can identify indigenous plants, species, animals and territories within our region.

He continues by stating, “Our youth and child development programming is over capacity with over 200 youth at their last Pow Wow.

When asked about his goals Nahdee mentions, “Life is easy; as an Anishinabe man I have to protect my family, community, and the eco-aspect of this globe, so I maximize the impact of those three tenants every day.”

One of the items on his agenda for the centre involves moving into more regional services for the 50,000 indigenous between Sarnia, London and Windsor.

“Less than 10% own homes, as our people can’t get mortgages and must use cash — we need to build safe housing for our community,” he reports.

The centre has a grant program for building capacity, developing entrepreneur skills and business acuity. And this program gives a positive school experience that many haven’t had in the past, with the reserve system.

“For some, it is the first time they have experienced academic accreditation, as they were scarred from what has happened in the past,” Nahdee clarifies. “I see positive sustained growth for Can-Am in all three aspects of capital, human, financial and physical. If you want to help our people, go meet our people, sit by our fires, come to our centres, learn with us, share with us, we will all be better off.”

I will wrap up now with a perfect quote from Nahdee who believes, “There is no such thing as win or lose — it’s only win or learn.”

Learn more about the centre online or stop by their location at 1-1699 Northway Avenue in Windsor.

Sherrilynn Colley-Vegh is an award winning leadership consultant and former Director of Leadership Windsor/Essex, Principal, Chief Communications Officer and business owner with over 30 years of experience in education, administration, mentoring, consulting and community leadership. If you know a leader in the community to profile here in this column, please email: Sherrilynn@BizXmagazine.com.

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New Initiative Supports Women Pursuing Entrepreneurship In Emerging Technologies

With perfect timing for this edition’s content on “Small Business Month,” my column is the perfect spot to inform our readers about a new government investment seeking to double the number of women-owned businesses by 2025. Since I am a female business owner and the only woman to date to be chosen “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Windsor Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, I am thrilled to share this wonderful news.

In late August 2019, the Government of Canada through FedDev Ontario announced it would be providing up to $692,000 over the next four years to provide coordinated support to women entrepreneurs to start and grow a business with a focus on emerging technologies.

The first ever “Women Entrepreneurship Strategy” (WES) is led locally by the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation’s Small Business Centre and “will help more of our women-owned and women-led businesses grow, innovate and export to new markets,” states Sabrina DeMarco, Executive Director, Small Business Centre (SBC). “The program will provide mentorship, skills training, and programming to help women scale their businesses through access to financing, talent, networks and expertise.”

To help achieve a more inclusive economy, this funding also supports more young women to pursue education or career paths that lead them to choose starting or growing a technology company.

Working as an integrated and coordinated ecosystem, the local organizations will help foster women to start and grow tech businesses across all stages of business development.

Moreover, WES aims to ensure outreach and participation of a new generation of women entrepreneurial leaders. Considering that the Windsor Essex region is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Canada this only makes sense!

With the support of the Government of Canada these partner agencies are committed to this project over the next four years and are focused on:

• Increasing the number of young women pursuing education and entrepreneurship opportunities in emerging tech
• Establishing mentorship activities that support the matchmaking of aspiring women entrepreneurs with successful leaders in the emerging tech space
• Delivering boot camps and mentoring targeted at educating women entrepreneurs on accessing capital
• Hosting supplier diversity workshops to encourage existing companies to develop and adopt diversity plans
• Identifying and recruiting organizations to participate in workplace diversity programs

To learn more, stop by the SBC main office: 119 Chatham Street West, Unit #100 in Windsor or their satellite office: 39 Maidstone Avenue East, Essex. Information is also available online.

In conclusion, DeMarco sums up this new strategy with hope: “We are excited to be making these resources available to support women entrepreneurs pursuing technology businesses. If you are a woman with an entrepreneurial spirit, there’s never been a better time to start a business in Windsor-Essex!”

I agree!

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Entrepreneurial Summit 2018

The Downtown Windsor Business Accelerator hosted the 5th annual Entrepreneurial Summit on Monday November 19th at the Fogolar Furlan Club.

The event featured 22 business owners from a range of industries who lead a group of nearly 170 students through a range of discussions, activities and competitions. The goal of the event was to give students an opportunity to pick the minds of business owners and gain deeper insights on the opportunities and challenges affiliated with entrepreneurship. In the process, students had a chance to develop key entrepreneurial qualities, such as networking, developing presentation skills and creating products to meet consumer needs.

In the days following the Summit, students created a LinkedIn profile which is a business oriented social media networking website. A photographer was at the event to take professional headshots of each student in attendance. These photos were provided for free to each student and served as the ideal LinkedIn profile picture. Entrepreneurs from the Summit were actively
adding the students on LinkedIn to help them build a business network.

Awards were given at the end of the Entrepreneurship Summit based on outstanding performances in a marketing challenge, trivia session and in presentation skills. Dozens of students who have previously attended the Summit have gone on to start their own companies and helped shape the future of the Windsor-Essex business community.

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Photo: How fast the tables are turned! Melissa Schenk (left) becomes the interviewee with Biz X’s Sherrilynn Colley-Vegh asking the questions.

Take The Lead – Leading Live with Melissa Schenk

Melissa Schenk, the Executive Producer and CEO of MS2 Productions (on the web: MS2.ca) is someone you instantly like as soon as you meet her.

She lights up the room with her energy and her greatest asset — emotional intelligence — makes you want to be her new best friend. I had the good fortune of meeting her when I joined a May 30 Facebook Live workshop sponsored by Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island.

It was one of the best workshops I have ever attended, giving many practical tips/ideas and ensuring we had the tools to implement them.

A key concept we learned about posting on social media, was the importance of asking people to share your content and how sharing in the first few minutes of your post impacts your overall reach. This makes offering incentives to people who share even more important.

Another key point is being an “influencer” or getting an “influencer” to help promote your product or brand.

The best part of the workshop was being able to have a one-on-one with Schenk. This was an opportunity to test the skills I learned in a Facebook Live video interview to promote what I do. It was a perfect opportunity to try this format and turn the tables on Schenk by interviewing her for this column.

The first question I asked was “what is your dream job?” This was an easy question for Schenk as she applied for Tourism Queensland Australia’s “Best Jobs in the World” competition online and ended up in the top 10 out of more than 35,000 entries competing for the position of spokesperson and ambassador of Queensland.

“I really think (now) I have found my dream job, I love working with brands I believe in and helping them be successful like Crafty Elk,” she reveals. Schenk helped a school friend market his beverage now sold at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.

Next I gave Schenk a scenario — Barack Obama calls you and says “Michelle and I were just given a production company and we thought there is no-one else more qualified than Melissa Schenk to give us three things that we can do to brand ourselves.”

Schenk quickly responds outlining the three key areas for success as content, creativity and consistency.

You must have content — what are you live streaming or talking about? It has to be unique so people want to stop and watch it. And it also must be presented in an interesting creative way that is consistent with your brand image.

Schenk also talks about the “Triggers of Influence.” They are Likeability: people need to like and trust you; Social Proof on-line: the evidence that shows you are successful through your social media presence and your Authority Level: what gives you clout and showcases why you are an expert in the field.

Schenk also refers to the three touch points of marketing being passion, values, and expertise.

She certainly has had an interesting career as a business consultant, TV personality, producer, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker, spokesperson for the shopping channel and author.

Using her skills acquired by working at a variety of networks for over 18 years, such as CTV, CNN, Shop NBC and The Shopping Channel, she is a risk taker who specializes in the “Power of Video” using high impact “online video” marketing to promote business for her clients through corporate storytelling.

I have always believed that when you meet someone you should think about what you can do to help that person, not how that person could help you. Schenk is the type of leader that wants to help others to succeed and it shows in her genuine interest and belief that “the impact you have on others is the greatest currency there is!”

Sherrilynn Colley-Vegh is the Director of Leadership Windsor/Essex at United Way. She is a former Principal, Chief Communications Officer and business owner with over 30 years of experience in education, administration, mentoring, and consulting and community leadership. If you know a leader in the community to profile here please email Sherrilynn.

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