My Immigrant Story

Disclaimer: This is a special episode of My Immigrant Story! Typically we bring Canadian newcomer professionals and entrepreneurs to learn more about their immigration journey. However this time, our guest is an immigrant HR tech professional who works for a known Canadian HR startup.

Parveen is an experienced HR tech professional who has worked in leading

Disclaimer: This is a special episode of My Immigrant Story! Typically we bring Canadian newcomer professionals and entrepreneurs to learn more about their immigration journey. However this time, our guest is a first generation Canadian immigrant serial entrepreneur who moved to the country when he was quite young and has since founded multiple companies in a wide variety of industries.

Roy is a Canadian serial entrepreneur, startup mentor, and angel investor. He has extensive experience building companies and leading multi-disciplinary teams. His tech background enables him to gain unique insights regarding today’s technology market and determine business strategies. Roy has over a decade of experience building and scaling businesses in various industries including Advertising, Security, Networking, and Software.

Disclaimer: This is a special episode of My Immigrant Story! Typically we bring Canadian newcomer professionals and entrepreneurs to learn more about their immigration journey. However this time, our guest is a licensed Canadian immigration consultant and serial entrepreneur with multiple years of experience working with immigrants, partners and companies.

Blayne is the founder of Bright Immigration, Toronto's leading immigration consultancy. Blayne is also the co-founder and CSO (Chief Strategy Officer) of Immitracker, an immigration application tracker and service marketplace for immigrants relocating to Canada and Australia. As a licensed immigration consultant, Blayne has applied his expertise and creativity to the world of immigration. Additionally, Blayne has extensive knowledge in business as a serial entrepreneur.

Nino and Blayne currently run Immitracker together – their goal is to simplify the immigration process by helping immigrants learn about and take advantage of life-changing opportunities. To learn more about Immitracker and discover the helpful, free immigration tools and marketplace of services offered, check out immitracker.app (https://www.immitracker.app/)

Helpful resources mentioned during the episode: 

Prateek Bawa is a partnerships manager with over 10 years of experience in various industries including FinTech, SaaS, and E-commerce. Currently, he’s a is a Partner Consultant at Freshbooks – a company that builds accounting software for self-employed individuals and their teams.

Additionally, Prateek is an ambassador at Arrive – a platform for enabling newcomers to settle in Canada and Immigrant Networks. He is also a member of several professional organizations focused on partnerships and sales career development.

During the episode, Prateek highlights the importance of starting your LinkedIn networking process early on to help yourself setup quickly upon arriving to Canada. Additionally, he mentions how staying focused on your journey and goals and not comparing yourself to others can help you succeed. 

P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/

Janey Buzugbe (Janey Buz) is a startup founder, career coach, and program mentor and consultant. She has been running her own YouTube channel for over five years. In this channel she provides relevant resources for newcomer students and professionals to navigate their careers and education in Canada.

Janey is now the founder of Immiducation, a career and education network of immigrants by immigrants. This global network support immigrants by accelerating their success through learning programs & resources, community and job matching. Additionally, Janey is a Program Mentor & Consultant for the DMZ, a tech startup growth incubator based out of Ryerson University in Toronto.

Nino and Janey originally connected through the Toronto tech startup community over their shared passion for the immigration space and helping immigrant professionals succeed in Canada. During the episode, Janey discusses some of the strategic decisions she made (e.g. attending a prestigious university) that brought her to this point in her career - pursuing her entrepreneurial passion.

She also cover the importance of planning your Canadian journey in advance - thinking about your future career and settlement even before landing in the country. Where you could possibly work, what careers could be a good fit, and long term professional growth vision in general. Janey highlighted the risk of getting stuck in a low income, survival job longer term if a person doesn’t plan their career growth in advance.

Helpful resources mentioned during the episode:

P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/

Aashni Shah is the Founder and CEO of Mido – a product that allows users and companies to securely store and share their personal documents. She’s also the Founder of HypeDocs, an app that helps users track their achievements and gain confidence.

Aashni graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Computer Science. Prior to pursuing her passion for entrepreneurship, she worked as a Software Engineer at Microsoft and Square. Nino and Aashni actually connected over their shared passion for entrepreneurship and being actively involved with Toronto’s tech ecosystem and various startup communities.

During the episode we discuss some of the differences between pursuing a higher education in Canada compared to the US along with the importance and benefits of joining clubs and extracurricular activities in university.

Aashni also goes into how gaining unique experiences is helpful both for your professional development and candidate profile. That coupled with going out of your way to meet new people can help international students and immigrant professionals set themselves up for career success in Canada!

P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/

Amir Feizpour is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aggregate Intellect – a platform that curates the world’s technical knowledge with the help of artificial and crowd intelligence.  With the help of NLP (natural language processing) and an AI community of 10K+ members, they make finding technical information in as easy as a few clicks.

Prior to starting his own company, Amir worked as a Data Scientist at RBC and did his post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford in the UK. Additionally, Amir runs a weekly hiking and monthly dinner group for Toronto founders (through which Nino and Amir initially connected!).

During the episode, Amir goes into how one of his strengths is building relationships with people. This skill helped him choose his PhD program at the University of Toronto in Canada and secure his first job post-graduation at the University of Oxford in the UK.

We highlight the importance of doing your research on the companies you’re interested in working at and learning from the people that have achieved the things that you aspire to achieve. For example, one of the ways Amir went about meeting relevant people which later helped him secure a job was through Meetups and events in Toronto.

Helpful resources mentioned during the episode:

P.S. Aggregate Intellect is currently fundraising to launch their commercial offering! To learn more about this AI investment opportunity, check out the following link.

P.P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/

David Mendoza is the Director of Orbit5, an Ed-Tech startup supporting international students in launching amazing careers. They support students struggling with life, school, and career through free weekly webinars, events, and on-one-on coaching.

David specializes in career development, e-learning, educational tourism, and language coaching. Additionally, he is a professor at George Brown College based in Toronto, Ontario. He is a faculty team member at the Transitions to Post-Secondary Education program from the School of Preparatory & Liberal Studies.

Nino and David originally connected through the work they do in the immigration space. David’s focus is on supporting international students and helping them build fulfilling lives and careers in Canada.

During the episode we cover David’s unique immigration story and the challenges he faced moving to Canada as a refugee: starting from a survival job and building the career he was passionate about. We also highlight the importance of having a large network and getting help from connections when initially landing in Canada.

Some of the resources mentioned during the episode include the following:

P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/

Mia Nguyen is an Operations & Partnerships Associate at TKS (The Knowledge Society) – an organization focused on exposing students to emerging STEM fields that are shaping the future of our world. Additionally, at the time this episode was recorded she was also working as the co-founder of GOmana. GOmana is a virtual travel agency built for students, by students – helping students find, apply and plan for their abroad experience.

Mia and Nino originally connected through a community for one of the largest youth-focused startup incubator programs in Canada called The League of Innovators. Mia went through the LOI program with her startup GOmana and afterwards remained active in the alumni community.

During the episode we cover a few aspects of her student and working experiences in Canada. We discuss the differences between the US and Canada when considering pursuing higher education and how Canada can offer more opportunities for international students after graduation in terms of employment and immigration.

Additionally, Mia highlights the importance of consistently showing up for work and events and being intentional about your presence along with establishing relationships with colleagues. She believes that persistence and consistency are highly important when building your own foundation in a new country.

P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/

Disclaimer: This is a special episode of My Immigrant Story! Typically we bring Canadian newcomer professionals and entrepreneurs to learn more about their immigration journey. However this time, our guest is a Canadian immigration lawyer with multiple years of experience working with both tech companies and immigrants under his belt

Josh Schachnow is the Co-Founder and CEO of Visto AI – a platform that makes it easy for Canadian companies to find amazing tech talent from around the world and bring them to Canada. He’s also an immigration lawyer and Partner at a boutique business immigration firm called Mirbaha Schachnow LLP. Josh loves talking about his entrepreneurial journey and shares many of his insights and lessons learned through his own podcast and daily business email!

Nino and Josh originally connected through his video podcast called the Visto Show (link to the full episode can be found here). It’s a podcast dedicated to presenting insights and tips from top recruitment and HR professionals in Canada - Josh interviews new professionals every week!

During the episode we discuss the Canadian immigration space in general, what state it is in currently and the kind of innovation happening in it. We also discuss the benefits of hiring immigrants and supporting somebody to move to Canada. Companies have the unique opportunity to positively impact and potentially help their immigrant candidates start a completely new life.

We also discuss some of the ways a candidate from abroad can figure out if a company is open to hiring foreign workers along with some actionable networking tips that can help the candidate distinguish themselves earlier on and build relevant relationships in Canada!

P.S. Interested in networking with fellow immigrant professionals? Check out the VisaWire Community: https://community.visawireapp.com/