The businesses on Canada’s Top Growing Companies list have a track record of adapting to keep up with today’s challenging business landscape. At Growth Camp 2024, the leaders of these companies will gather to share their experiences, the hurdles they are anticipating (and planning for) all while making valuable connections. Join The Globe and Mail for the sixth annual celebration of Canada’s fastest-growing companies.
Deloitte provides audit & assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and related services to public and private clients spanning multiple industries. Deloitte serves four out of five Fortune Global 500® companies through a globally connected network of member firms in more than 150 countries and territories bringing world-class capabilities, insights and service to address clients' most complex business challenges.
At Deloitte, we are driven to inspire and help our people, organization, communities, and country to thrive. Our Purpose is to build a better future by accelerating and expanding access to knowledge. Purpose defines who we are and gives us reason to exist as an organization.
By living our Purpose, we will make an impact that matters.
Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, helping every company become an AI Enterprise with one trusted platform, Einstein 1. Our best-in-class CRM for sales, service, marketing, and commerce is deeply integrated with trusted AI and unified data, so companies can unlock the promise of AI to create stronger customer relationships, increase employee productivity, and deliver higher margins.
Salesforce is proud to be the market leader, but we’re even more proud to lead in philanthropy, innovation, and culture. Guided by core values of trust, customer success, innovation, equality, and sustainability, Salesforce is more than a business — we’re a platform for change.
Desjardins Group is the largest cooperative financial group in North America and the sixth largest cooperative financial group in the world, with assets of $444.3 billion as at June 30, 2024. It was named one of Canada's Best Employers by Forbes magazine and by Mediacorp. To meet the diverse needs of its members and clients, Desjardins offers a full range of products and services to individuals and businesses through its extensive distribution network, online platforms and subsidiaries across Canada. Ranked among the world's strongest banks according to The Banker magazine, Desjardins has some of the highest capital ratios and credit ratings in the industry.
Andrew is the founder of Lane Four, who's helped 100’s of billion dollar venture backed companies scale revenue operations through Salesforce and HubSpot. Lane Four is consistently on the Globe and Mail's list of Canada’s fastest growing companies and was recently named the 33rd best workplace by Great Place To Work Canada. While leading the Lane Four consulting team, Andrew launched Lane Four Highroad, which grew to a multi-million dollar business before a successful exit. Andrew was born and raised in downtown Toronto, and plans to raise his 1-year old daughter inside the city.
Sari Abdo is the Co-founder and CEO of Hungerhub, a leading B2B corporate catering platform that connects offices and employees with local restaurants for daily meal deliveries. An alumnus of the University of Toronto, Sari’s career journey has taken him from management consulting to the dynamic world of startups. Before founding Hungerhub in 2018, Sari spent 6 years at one of the world’s largest management consulting firms, where he led complex projects for enterprise technology companies across the globe.
His passion for innovation and entrepreneurship drove him to work with various startups across industries ranging from Adtech and Edtech. At Hungerhub, Sari bootstrapped the company from the ground up, growing to date where it has achieved eight-figure annual revenues. Under his leadership, Hungerhub has been recognized as a Deloitte Fast 50 company and has ranked in the Globe & Mail’s Report on Business Canada's Top Growing Companies for four consecutive years
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Sari is a strong advocate of the bootstrapping methodology, believing in the power of self-reliance, steady growth, and resilience. The COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges for hungerhub, which relies on businesses bringing employees together for meals. However, having had to navigate through this crisis; a renewed focus on the evolving workplace culture has emerged and he is now actively involved in discussions about the future of work, workplace experience, the “return to work” and what the workplace of the future will look like.
Fatima Zaidi is the Founder and CEO at Quill Inc., an award-winning production agency specializing in corporate audio, and CoHost, a podcast growth and analytics tool. As a member of the National Speakers Bureau, Fatima has spoken at various events around the world on media and tech trends leading her to keynote on world stages alongside speakers like Gary Vaynerchuk. In addition to being a commentator for BNN Bloomberg on the challenges that female and BIPOC founders face in entrepreneurship, she is a frequent contributor to publications including Forbes, and Huffington Post, and has also been featured in publications like The Globe & Mail, Inc., and Entrepreneur.
In the earlier days of her career Fatima won two Top 30 under 30 awards, and most recently she received DMZ’s Woman of the Year, the Young Professional of the Year by Notable Life, Veuve Clicquot’s Bold Future Award, The Women in Content Marketing Award, and one of Flare Magazine’s Top 100 Women. Quill was also listed in 2023 as one of the fastest growing companies by the Globe & Mail, and won the Canadian Business Innovation awards in 2024.
Outside of entrepreneurship Fatima teaches at the University of Toronto, is on the board of directors for Save the Children Canada, and is also Co-Chair of the #Tech4SickKids council for SickKids Hospital which is the second-largest pediatric research hospital in the world. She is on track to raise 25 million dollars to build a new emergency wing of the hospital, as well as fund some of the world's biggest data and AI projects.
Sean’s career in retail management consulting spans 15 years in leadership positions at global firms like AlixPartners and Deloitte Consulting. He’s specialized in product category strategy, merchandising, supply chain, and operational efficiency and led extensive engagements with retailers such as Walmart, Target, Sobeys, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Lululemon.
Marnie Rabinovitch Consky founded Thigh Society (www.thighsociety.ca) in 2009 to solve a big problem for women – thigh chafing. After trying everything from bike shorts, shapewear, men’s boxers, to messy creams and gels, she created a size inclusive lineup of lightweight, breathable and wicking long leg underwear that are loved worldwide as a solution to chafing, sweating, modesty and more. Thigh Society is the slip short category pioneer and leader, with over 1.7 million pairs of shorts sold, and the brand has been highly praised on The Today Show, in SELF Mag, Oprah Daily, WSJ and others. Marnie has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Nasdaq, Business Insider and other notable publications and podcasts and is passionate about helping women feel comfortable and confident in their body.
From not having enough to provide food for her family to becoming a multimillionaire with 11 streams of income and multiple real estate properties within 4 years, Toyin Crandell’s story is nothing short of inspirational. After transforming her own life from homelessness to financial abundance, her coaching platforms, the Self Mastery Academy and Money Mindset SHIFT, have trained over 50,000+ leaders and teams, helping them change the way they think, create financial freedom and a lasting legacy, through neuroscience-based, financial, business and executive leadership coaching.
Toyin is a dynamic keynote speaker and a 2x bestselling author. Her powerful speeches resonate so deeply that she is sought-after for corporations and conferences worldwide, delivering unforgettable experiences with results that last.
Toyin's expertise has been featured in books like "High Road Leadership" by John Maxwell, multiple articles in SUCCESS Magazine, Black Enterprise and the Marilyn Dennis Show. Recognized as a 2023 SUCCESS® Magazine Top Woman of Influence and as the Globe and Mail 2023 74th fastest-growing company in Canada. Whether through her award-winning Millionaire Money Podcast or her captivating workshops, Toyin Crandell is a go-to expert, breaking barriers and helping business owners all over the world break their limiting beliefs about money so they can achieve the success they work hard for.
At the Globe and Mail Growth Camp, she will show you exactly how to handle wealth management as an entrepreneur, especially with a changing landscape and economy. And 3 simple changes you can make today to hold on to your hard-earned wealth so that it creates a lasting legacy.
Because you aren’t meant to work for money, money is meant to work for you.
Mandy Gilbert is an Entrepreneur, Best-Selling Author, and Investor who has spoken on topics including entrepreneurship; attracting, hiring and retaining the best talent; and the importance of developing as a leader.
In addition to being a columnist with Inc.com with hundreds of published articles, she is the bestselling author of "Just Go With It: Navigating Entrepreneurship's Highs and Lows" which was recommended by Forbes and Entrepreneur, and endorsed by Verne Harnish, Founder of world-renowned Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) and Author of Scaling Up; and Stephen M. R. Covey, Bestselling Author of The Speed Of Trust.
Mandy started her business, Creative Niche on a modest $8,000. Today, Creative Niche is a Forbes-recognized top recruitment firm, specializing in marketing, advertising, digital, and design. With eight-figure annual sales and over 14,000 successful placements, the firm excels in matching award-winning creative agencies, high-growth tech startups, and Fortune 500 companies with top talent across North America. Mandy is also an active YPO member and former Chapter Chair of the Toronto Chapter.
Mandy has spoken at conferences and with brands across the globe including Women of Silicon Valley, Nike EMEA, BMO, Web Summit, L'Oréal, Collision, Elevate, and DWEN.
Robert is the founder and CEO at Gauvreau | Accounting, Tax, Law & Advisory, one of North America’s leading CPA firms working with entrepreneurs to help them achieve clarity in their business and personal finances, while eliminating unnecessary tax pain.
As a CEO, Robert has built a team of more than 100 professionals and an 8 figure business, and Gauvreau has been recognized as one of the fastest growing businesses in Canada for the last 5 years according to the Globe & Mail.
Robert is also a regular contributing expert in major business magazines such as Forbes, Entrepreneur and Business Advantage.
As one of North America’s leading business finance experts and well sought after financial speakers on business finances, Robert has shared the stage with some of the world's most recognized speakers such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, Kevin O’Leary, Keith Cunningham, Robert Herjavec, and many more.
Robert is the bestselling author of ‘The Wealthy Entrepreneur: The Formula for Making Money and Gaining Financial Clarity in Your Business’ and is on a mission to empower the world’s leading entrepreneurs with the financial confidence necessary to make informed strategic decisions in their business and their life, so that they can achieve financial freedom and change the world together.
Liran was born in Israel and was an army commander in the Israeli Defense Force. After achieving his commerce and law degrees and selling his first startup, he immigrated to Canada to do his MBA at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. While at Rotman, he worked in the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), where he met three Ph.D. students—all immigrants like him—who were working to discover how AI could solve the declining productivity of drug discovery.
Together, they founded BenchSci in 2015 and launched the ASCEND™ platform in 2023. Since their time at CDL, BenchSci has gone from four co-founders to a more than 350-employee operation that has raised more than $200 million from top investors, including Generation Investment Management, TCV, iNovia Capital, F-Prime, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), and Golden Ventures, and works with 16 of the world's top 20 pharma companies, over 4,500 academic institutions, and more than 50,000 scientists.
As CEO, Liran strives to inspire team members to be the best version of themselves and positively impact the world. Liran is a 2021 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist and is passionate about using AI to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving research.
Susan covers the retail industry for Report on Business. Before joining The Globe and Mail in 2009, Susan worked as a freelance reporter contributing to the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette and other publications, as well as CBC Radio's Dispatches and Search Engine. She has a Masters degree in journalism from Carleton University. In 2008 she worked at a radio station in Kigali, Rwanda as part of a media development project through Carleton. She has also lived in Osaka, Japan.
Jameson Berkow is the capital markets reporter for The Globe and Mail. He joined The Globe in November, 2018, to cover the economic implications of cannabis legalization. He left in early 2020 to start an entrepreneurship magazine and rejoined The Globe in early 2022 to cover financial regulation and governance for Globe Advisor.
With more than a decade of experience in financial journalism, Jameson was most recently the senior reporter for BNN Bloomberg (formerly the Business News Network), where he led live daily coverage of major business news from the television station’s Toronto headquarters. He previously worked as the station’s Western Canada bureau chief based in Calgary, where his reporting on pipeline politics and the 2014 oil price crash was nominated for numerous awards. His series of reports from Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2015 was a finalist for the RTDNA Dave Rogers Award. Prior to his work in television, Jameson was the technology reporter for the Financial Post in Toronto, where he created and hosted the FP Tech Desk podcast and authored the weekly Startup Spotlight profile series.
Jameson got his start in journalism in 2007 as a fact-checker for Toronto Life magazine, where his first byline was for a story about two dogs getting married.
Chris Hannay is a business reporter at The Globe and Mail. His beat is independent business: the small- and medium-sized enterprises that employ more than half of Canadians. He has written features about industries from restaurants to veterinary clinics, and investigated government programs and how big businesses can push smaller rivals around.
He also writes some of The Globe's editorials as a contributing member of the editorial board. He was a finalist for a National Newspaper Award in editorial writing in 2023, and judges said they were "impressed by the depth of Hannay’s research, his choice of words that were both simple and precise, and his clear, get-straight-to-the-point writing style."
Before that, he was assignment editor in The Globe's Ottawa bureau, where he helped direct coverage of federal politics. He created the daily politics newsletter and wrote it every morning for more than five years. He also wrote some national arts stories while in Ottawa and won a National Newspaper Award for arts reporting in 2018.
He started at The Globe as a copy editor on a summer contract and has worked in just about every department over the years.
As program manager, Fiona is responsible for the research and project management of Report on Business magazine’s ranking programs, including Canada’s Top Growing Companies, Women Lead Here and CEO of the Year. Fiona has more than a decade of experience in journalism and reporting on the wealth management industry.
Vala Afshar is Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce, bestselling author, U.S. patent holding inventor, podcaster, columnist and keynote speaker. With over 1 million social media followers, Vala is recognized as a top business and innovation influencer.
Afshar is co-author of bestselling book "Boundless: A New Mindset for Unlimited Business Success." He has written over 700 major media articles and has interviewed over 1,400 senior business executives, startup founders, venture capitalists and bestselling authors on his weekly podcast.
Prior to Salesforce, Afshar served as Vice President of Engineering, Chief Customer Officer and Chief Marketing Officer in the technology industry.
