Ingrid Vanderveldt, American entrepreneur, investor, internationally renowned speaker and CEO of Empowering a Billion Women by 2020, returned to Montreal for a second collaboration with the Consulate on the theme of women and youth entrepreneurship. She first provided valuable insight into scaling your business internationally to a sold-out crowd of 120 young entrepreneurs at Montreal New Tech’s public event hosted at Light speed Montreal headquarters. The following day, she shared tips for leveraging mentorship models to retain and advance women in science, technology, engineering, math (STEM), and business at a lunch at YES Montreal. Later that afternoon, she met with entrepreneurs graduating from the Founder Institute startup accelerator to provide practical advice for raising seed capital in the early stages of launching a business. Ingrid finished her visit in Montreal with a mentorship session with girls under the age of 17 who recently completed Montreal’s first edition of the Technovation Challenge. She was inspired by the apps the girls developed in only 12 weeks, and helped them perfect their upcoming pitches for Montreal’s International Startup Festival.
In all her events, Ingrid emphasized the importance of women as a driving force in the global marketplace, and the importance of encouraging their success in business and in STEM, considering that on average women deliver 35% higher revenue & 12% higher return on investment than men. The Consulate would like to thank Ingrid for her time and generosity and our partners for their help organizing these events. Please visit our Flickr page for more photos.
