Thank you for listening to the Leaders, Innovators and Big Ideas podcast, supported by Rainforest Alberta.  The podcast that highlights those people who are contributing to and/or supporting the innovation ecosystem in Alberta.

This episode is hosted by Lori Farley.  Lori’s business and voluntary commitments curate and facilitate: connections, relationships, and opportunities for social change through entrepreneurship, partnerships, and alliances between various sectors around the globe including Community development, Arts, Disability, Education, and Technology. Lori is involved in numerous ventures related to social innovation and socio-economic development including Intonovus Canada and Impact Calgary.

Lori is involved in supporting cross-sector social and economic development with a mission of sharing and mobilizing time, money, resources, energy, talents, and best practices that align to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), B Corp standards (B Corp) and IRIS metrics (IRIS), all designed to measure the social, environmental and financial performance of companies and investments.

INTONOVUS Canada is a not for profit designed to partner with those advancing social impact, social enterprise, and impact investing:

IMPACT CALGARY is a social business venture launching coworking, ‘impact first’ business development, and access to funding for social entrepreneurs and benefit businesses. These ventures include foci on social impact technologies (such as Virtual & Augmented Reality (VR/AR), Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)), parentpreneurship (child and family-friendly professional work spaces), and crowdfunding.

As part of her passion for rural-urban economic corridor development, she is working to replicate economic diversity in Alberta through rural tech hubs.

She is also a partner in business that supports producers, processors, and manufacturers of Alberta agri-food s to access markets in China and Southeast Asia.

Victoria Bennett ran her first successful crowdfund campaign over six years ago, a long time in crowdfunding years. A strategic marketer by training, she has worked on many major brands including Tide, Pampers, ENMAX and TD. She has used her skills as a marketer, to identify the solution the product or service provides, the target market, the so-what, and to communicate clearly, effectively and consistently to the crowd; all skills vital to crowdfunding. She has run successful campaigns in Canada and in Europe and her team is currently consulting for a number of Canadian equity and rewards crowdfund campaigns, and has spoken at the Global Crowdfunding Conference on women in crowdfunding.

Victoria loves the democratization of capital that comes with crowdfunding, allowing businesses access to capital, and allowing the population access to invest in private companies. As an Ambassador for the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association, she has sought to raise awareness of crowdfunding. Working with the Impact Hub in Calgary she is launching The Crowdfunding Hub to provide education and self-service tools for all types of crowdfunding, from donations and rewards to equity.

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Credits...

This Episode Sponsored By: Zinc Ventures

Graphic Design: Mackenzie Bedford

Episode Music: Tony Del Degan

Creator & Producer: Al Del Degan