People
Avery Schrader
Whoop Whoop! You found me.
I have been starting businesses since I was 12, When I hijacked my moms old laptop to entertain myself while we lived in a barn. A few months later I accidentally started a business connecting people online playing a game that I loved. As a kid I sold Christmas trees, made maple syrup, started volunteer groups, and played in the woods.
Now I have an amazing team and a real vision.
Richelle Brown Redden
The Valley Regional Enterprise Network is the only publicly funded organization dedicated to supporting the local economic development of five municipalities and one First Nation in the Annapolis Valley region. Through the Valley Regional Enterprise Network’s BusinessNOW program Richelle helps businesses assess their needs, plan for success and fight the right resources. As a publicly funded resource, the BusinessNOW services are offered at not cost to local businesses. A combination of experience and passion to see the region grow, bring insight and dedication to her work with the BusinessNOW program.
Teric Greenan
Teric grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He ran a small vegetable farm in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia for three years. He observed there were a lot of repetitive tasks on farms that were consuming farmers’ resources. These repetitive tasks seemed like good candidates to be automated. After talking with other vegetable farmers, it became clear that weeding was a massive problem that could be solved by a robot. In May of 2017, Teric founded Nexus Robotics with his close friend who is a computer engineer, Jad Tawil. Teric’s experience on the farm has been valuable for guiding product development at Nexus.
Alexander Petkov
Alexander Petkov is a high school student who attends Horton High School and is one of the co-founders of Spark West Network, a non-profit organization that aims to pull together the diverse organizations, events, and opportunities present in the Annapolis Valley. He is also the Chief Marketing Officer for Refresh Annapolis Valley.
Anne Stieger
Anne is a process geek, facilitator and trainer with a knack for creative, collaborative processes and deep play. She is trained and experienced in a diverse range of facilitation practices including the Art of Hosting, Design Thinking, Dynamic Governance and Appreciative Inquiry. Anne was first introduced to Design Thinking when she was a teacher at Duisburg-Essen University in Germany through a project that connects High School & University students to solve local sustainability challenges through Design Thinking, and she has been hooked ever since by the power of the approach. Anne has facilitated for organizations in Canada and abroad, including Slow Food in Canada, Farmer’s Markets of Nova Scotia, and Heartwood Center for Community Youth Development. Anne teaches Facilitation and Community Development through the Arts & Theatre at Acadia. Most recently she has launched facilitation trainings for organizations and an ideation lab, which has regular meetups and will be hosting a training at Digital Nova Scotia in May. Anne grew up in Germany but calls Wolfville, Nova Scotia home.
Ashley Greene
Ashley Greene, J.D., is the Founder & CEO of Instratify, a growth-focused customer research firm for software and e-commerce businesses. Ashley is known for using her legal training to help companies get inside their customers’ heads, so they can achieve and maintain sustainable hypergrowth.
Ashley’s advised dozens of tech companies and has worked on projects with businesses from Fortune 500 companies to tech startups. Ashley writes and speaks on growth / customer insight, and has served as an advisor/trainer for leading startup organizations including Ryerson, Volta, and Communitech. She also contributes to publications such as the Huffington Post, Foundr, and Entrevestor.
Duncan Ebata
I’ve worked primarily with food social enterprises and tech startups, so adaption and collaboration are in my bag. Whether it be branding for food social enterprises, promoting local investment funds, implementing community economic development strategies, hosting food community events, building entrepreneurial culture: building food communities and promoting social enterprises is what I do.
I’ve been on the ground growing food and beverage start-ups reach their first $100k in sales, promoting local investment funds to reach their first $1 million, and growing multi-million dollar retail food businesses with 30%+ yearly growth rates.
Evan Hill
Evan works with small to medium businesses in solving marketing hurdles, content creation, product launches, and digital growth. After working as an analyst in the hedge fund industry, he co-found an apparel design & distribution company that focused on student travel. Then spent 3 years in Toronto and the US with a content marketing company that generated digital athletic training content for young athletes. He’s worked with clients & brands such as Recode, Cut, @Dunk, Hyperice, APL Athletics, Sports1Marketing, Susar Lee Restaurants, and Nova Scotia Fisherman Bodycare. Evan was born in Nova Scotia and is an Acadia Business Alumn.
Katelyn Bourgoin
Katelyn Bourgoin is a 3X founder/business owner turned growth strategist. She helps frustrated marketers and business owners to figure out why customers aren’t buying and how they can fix it.
When companies know who their best customers are and what they really want, it becomes much easier to create awesome products and sell more of them. The result? Happier customers and more money in the bank.
Katelyn’s past clients include startups, small businesses, and Fortune 500s like Target and Holiday Inn. Suffice to say, she’s seen it all.
Adam Conner
Adam is a teacher at Northeast Kings Education Centre in Canning, NS. He teaches math, technology, and computer programming. Adam been experimenting with the world of Making and 3D Printing for the past 18 months. Working with students at NKEC, he has been helping them create, print, and selling products designed and 3D printed.