Gathering

In this episode of StartWell's Gathering Podcast, you'll get an insider's look at Sachi Kittur 's remarkable journey from HR professional to successful entrepreneur. Starting with her early career in tech recruitment during the Y2K boom, Sachi shares honest insights about her time at companies like Sigma Systems, where she experienced everything from scaling teams to managing mergers and acquisiti...

Get ready for a fascinating deep dive into the future of talent acquisition with Marianne Bulger , an executive recruiter who brings a refreshingly human perspective to the tech world. In this episode of The Gathering Podcast, you'll meet someone who started with a master's in human rights and found her way into tech because she "needed to find the people who are changing the world, but faster." A...

Jeff Riseley's journey from high-pressure sales to mental health advocate is a compelling story of personal transformation and industry innovation. After graduating from McGill University, he entered the sales world in a classic boiler room environment, where he faced intense quotas of 200 daily calls. Despite outward success, he struggled privately with anxiety, insomnia, and panic attacks. Rathe...

Shawna Stewart 's remarkable journey from psychology graduate to tech executive is related in this episode of the StartWell Podcast.   She shared how she transformed from an entry-level position to co-running a successful MarTech company through acquisition.  Watch/listen to learn invaluable insights about career advancement, startup leadership, and the power of identifying organizational gaps.  T...

Projectory , founded by Oren Berkovich, Jeff Rogers, and Patty Harrington, is revolutionizing corporate events through experiential design and meaningful interaction. Their approach transforms traditional corporate gatherings into engaging, participatory experiences and their methodology focuses on three key areas: in-room facilitated activities, interactive physical installations, and post-event...

Body language and human behaviour expert Mark Bowden joins us for StartWell's Gathering Podcast to discuss how workplace cultures can be evolved. In this conversation, we explore the concept of purpose and meaning in work, the need to transform traditional workplace cultures, and the importance of nonverbal cues, authenticity, and personal growth in effective leadership. Among many other things, M...

Larissa Holmes comes to entrepreneurship from a diverse range of career experiences. She’s got multiple degrees (one of which in Art), worked in hospitality, pharma and technology, and has spent years developing capacity at companies like Borrowell – where she grew their team to 200+ people and assisted acquisitions. In this episode, we cover a […]

After having left Toronto to move Eastwards and settle in Prince Edward Island, Dave Cairns presents an unusual case as a commercial real estate broker. His practice has for years paired customers with office space in downtown Toronto, and most recently this has been managed online and with the occasional 2.5hr flight to meet with […]

Eric Hutchinson is a senior HR advisor, consultant & coach educated in psychology with a specific interest in cognition. For this episode of the Gathering Podcast we talk about systems design for HR, remote work and new complexities which HR staff need to consider to manage working teams. *Video version here.

Leslie Oquendo is an author and now works at Salesforce in business development – after spending 4+ years in talent acquisition and people/culture roles. He joins us on the Gathering podcast to discuss how grief can be part of both the candidate job hunting process and the role which hiring teams play. Leslie’s own journey through grief was […]

Shawn Draisey is a recruitment consultant with a wealth of experience growing teams for all types of interesting industries. He’s worked with chicken processing automation companies, tire sellers, cannabis cultivators, point-of-sales systems and many other companies through his career – mainly focused on talent acquisition. For this session of StartWell’s Gathering podcast, host Qasim Virjee is […...

Roy Wainer’s career history began with roles in financial operations – he always loved enabling growth for early stage companies and along the way that meant helping teams get larger. In this episode of the Gathering Podcast from StartWell, we explore how Roy helped a company called Platterz, which used to be in catering, scale to […]

Adam Gellert is the Founder and CEO of Hired Hippo, the leading Canadian marketplace for high potential go-to-market job candidates. Taking a unique approach to hiring, Hired Hippo matches candidates with companies through understanding the intent and competencies of candidates whilst also developing a deep understanding of the job opportunities. This process results in hiring […]

For this, the 20th episode of StartWell’s Gathering series we sit down with Becca Lo, the Toronto based People & Culture Manager at Ace Beverage Group. Becca went to university for education – but a career in teaching seemed daunting to her as she approached graduation. A temporary role testing products for a startup called […]

In this, the 19th episode of StartWell’s Gathering series, Nicola Watson joins us to share the story of how her career in HR has evolved. Previous experience in recruitment led her to larger roles in HR at Ryanair in her native Ireland before becoming the HR manager at a Toronto based remote-first software development consultancy […]

For the 17th episode of StartWell’s Gathering Podcast we sit down with Toronto-based public speaking and communications expert, Jordyn Benattar. Jordyn’s working history began at age 3 when she was cast in television commercials and then feature films as a child actor. Her ease with cast and crew working on camera prepared her for a career in public […]

Martin Hauck joins us in studio for StartWell’s Gathering Podcast to discuss the current state of hiring – and how his community of ‘people people‘ shares knowledge to survive this tumultuous time for HR professionals. Currently the Head of Talent at Caseware, Martin has had a decade-plus career in HR, which started when he was […]

For this episode of StartWell’s Gathering Podcast we sit down with Lorena Perry – the Director for IT Staffing in Canada at Judge Group who place candidates in both contract and permanent roles. Sharing both personal experience and insights into her work; Lorena has recommendations for how recent immigrants to Canada looking for work may […]

Stephen Shedletzky, aka ‘Shed’ is a speaker, writer, coach, facilitator and advisor who has worked with Simon Sinek for a decade and now helps leaders listen to and nurture the voices of others with the aim of developing cultures where people feel safe, encouraged, and rewarded to speak up. In this episode of the StartWell […]

Sam Cross is a Senior Recruiter with Unity Technologies – the world’s leading platform for developing interactive real-time 3d content. Previously, she worked at Ubisoft, Drake International, Guru Studio and Rockstar Games – her passion for video games has evolved into a career within the industry that has included everything from UI/UX testing to recruiting. […]

Emma Hunt is a senior talent advisor with Bloom – a workplace design consultancy based in Toronto but with a globally dispersed team. Bloom runs training for internal and external recruiters and hr professionals on topics like Diversity and Equity Inclusion and in this episode of StartWell’s Gathering series Emma shares her perspectives on all […]

For this, the 11th episode of StartWell’s Gathering podast, we sat down with Jay Goldman – the founder and CEO of Sensei Labs. Sensei Labs was spun out of Toronto’s life sciences brand development company Klick Health – initially they commercialized an internal intranet and then evolved it into its own enterprise SaaS offering called […]

Swish is an accomplished young entrepreneur who has won awards, struck product development deals and published a book. Most recently, he’s been focusing on growing a company he co-founded called Surf, which lets people passively earn from the data they share whilst browsing the web. This conversation for our Gathering podcast, introduces Swish’s company and […]

For this the 9th episode of StartWell’s Gathering Podcast, Dave Cairns joins us in our Toronto studio to discuss the state of the office leasing market and shares his perspective about how companies need to rethink why they provide space for their staff. Formerly a Toronto based broker, Dave moved to Prince Edward Island for […]

Wave is one-stop money management for small business owners. In this episode we sit down with Reza who oversees Payroll and Payment products at this Toronto based company. Reza has been at Wave for 6+ years, and the company has always had a great social atmosphere in their office (which is located in Leslieville – […]