Innovating Together: Power of Supportive Women Startup Ecosystem - International Women's Day SICIEEIL x UTSC Library
Celebrate International Women's Day with SICIEEIL and UTSC Library! Join Melisa Ellis, Founder & CEO of Nobellum, and Athiya Rastogi, Co-Founder& CEO of Snapwrite AI, Hessie Jones, Journalist, Forbes and Cofounder, PIISA as they share insights on mentorship, and building diverse, supportive startup environments. Be part of this empowering conversation!
This is an in-person event
Melisa Ellis
Melisa Ellis is a technology professional, community leader, and the Founder & CEO of Nobellum, a female-led social and technology enterprise with a mandate to support the startup of at least 100 Black-owned businesses in STEM by 2025. As a proud alumnus of the University of Toronto Scarborough, Melisa joined forces with her home campus to launch an endowment fund to provide access to capital to fund and train Black Innovators to develop sustainable businesses. Melisa is poised to empower the next wave of Black innovators by providing them with opportunities to hone their skills, raise capital and strategize for socioeconomic development.
Expertise
10+ years as a leader in the Technology & Project Management industry.
Supported early stage founders at Nobellum to generate over $6M in combined revenue.
Built a community of over 5,000 members.
Established a network of Venture Capital investors with combined funds. exceeding $500M.
Professional speaker and conference host.
Awards & Recognition
University of Toronto Alumni of the Year Award, 2022.
BMO Tech Community Builder of the Year Award, 2023.
CILAR Aspiring Innovator Award, 2023.
City of Brampton’s Community Leader Award, 2023.
BKR Capital VC Fellowship Award, 2024.
Athiya Rastogi
Athiya Rastogi is a co-founder and CEO of SnapWrite, that enables brands and retailers create product detail pages from images in seconds and enable item resale. She co-founded SnapWrite with her brother, after a costly shipping error in their family business highlighted the need for an in-house automated product cataloging solution to enhance control and efficiency.
With a background in Machine Learning and Statistics, Athiya is also passionate about fashion, and her startup has attracted major investments from top-tier venture funds like FounderFuel, Inovia Capital, and Panache Ventures. Athiya was recently featured in the Globe and Mail Canada on for her role in leveraging AI to disrupt old retail systems
Hessie Jones
Hessie Jones is an entrepreneur, a writer, investor, and strategist advocating for human-centred AI, education, and the ethical distribution of AI. She is a freelance journalist, writes for Forbes, and Grit Daily and is a former editor for Towards Data Science. In the last 8 years, Hessie has worked in the responsible tech space.
She has cofounded various tech startups and is currently the Cofounder of Personally identifiable Information Standards Architecture (PIISA), developing an open model to detect and remediate PII in AI models; She is also on the Board of Women in AI Ethics™ (WAIE) to elevate the voices of women working towards responsible development and design of AI models and systems. In her work, she aims to advance the quality of human-computer experiences through values-based innovation prioritizing human-centred design. She also manages programs at Altitude Accelerator to support early-stage founders.
Sam Ibrahim Centre (SICIEEIL)
We are the Sam Ibrahim Centre for Inclusive Excellence in Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Leadership (SICIEEIL). Our centre was created through the generous investment of $25 million from proud Scarborough entrepreneur and UTSC alum, Sam Ibrahim. SICIEEIL will expand on UTSC’s innovation services and provide them to an even wider audience.
Note: The Hub—UTSC's startup incubator, which has supported over 400 startups and helped generate more than $100 million in combined revenue and investment—has transitioned into SICIEEIL