An Ottawa-based Canadian startup accelerator designed to help entrepreneurs grow their great ideas into thriving tech companies celebrated the graduation of its ninth cohort Thursday.
The event was meant to highlight women in STEM who have advanced their careers, and the important work being done to help hire and promote more women into leadership positions.
Four women-owned or led companies from Ottawa have been selected to participate in the third cohort of SheBoot, a bootcamp that prepares women entrepreneurs to secure investment.
They join 11 other founders from across Canada, marking the first year SheBoot has expanded the application process nationally. More than 100 applications were received, according to the Capital Angel Network (CAN) and Invest Ottawa, which operate SheBoot.
With the application process for the third cohort of SheBoot now closed, co-founding partners in the program, Invest Ottawa and Capital Angel Network (CAN), have turned their attention to sifting through submissions from a crop of “extremely high-calibre” candidates.
“We have to stop thinking about equality as though it’s just the right thing to do or the nice thing to do,” said Sueling Ching. “This is what is necessary for our economy to thrive … It’s not a ‘nice to have’, it is a ‘need to have’.”