Vaughan Rising Podcast

Chris Carder is the Executive Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Schulich School of Business at York University. He helps students and grads build their businesses and advises on entrepreneurship and innovation.

He’s an advisor now, but his expertise was hard-earned in the trenches. Before joining the university, he was a serial entrepreneur with his share of successes—like building Canada’s largest email marketing platform, ThinData—and some failures too. After surviving and thriving through both the dotcom crash and the 2008 recession, Chris sees a world of possibilities in crisis situations and shows us how to see it too.

Fruit of the Land is a Vaughan-based retailer and wholesaler that specializes in farm-fresh foods, kosher gift baskets and holiday gifting. They also produce award-winning foods under a family of brands.

Since the first lockdown in March, co-founders Michael and Stacey Kurtz have fought to survive in their mall-based locations at Promenade, Vaughan Mills and Bayview Village. As a food retailer, they were an essential service but couldn’t operate as such because the malls were closed. Immediately, they started developing an arsenal of strategies to survive and reach their customers.

The College of Carpenters and Allied Trades delivers construction skills courses in its two state-of-the-art facilities in Vaughan. It is home to half of all registered carpenter apprentices in Ontario and provides critical health and safety and continuing education courses for the industry. 

With COVID-19 measures in place, the College can't train as many people at once as they used to. This has far-reaching effects down the entire pipeline for skilled workers, which was already tight before the pandemic. The College needed to rethink its approach–and fast. 

Kontrol Energy is a smart building technology company. When the pandemic began, CEO Paul Ghezzi noticed that a lot of their customers started to worry about having service companies like Kontrol on site. More people in a space meant feeling less safe in that space.

This problem, combined with their expertise in air quality monitoring, was the seed of a big idea: could they develop a technology that detects the COVID-19 virus in the air, in real time?

For this episode of Vaughan Rising, we’re getting the startup perspective.

Hop In Technologies is a logistics software platform that helps employees get to work, particularly in areas outside the metropolitan core where transit service is limited. Hop In fills the last mile gap by arranging shuttles on optimized routes.

When Ontario shut down most workplaces in mid-March, commuting plummeted. According to Statistics Canada, public transit trips fell 42% in March and 85% in April. Hop In’s model was shaken to the core. Time for a pivot!

In the last four years, the Millennial’s Choice brand has grown into a group of companies offering real estate, mortgages, life insurance, and financial literacy education.

The team was on an upward track and started 2020 with a clear game plan for developing the business. In mid-March, that plan went out the window but Founder and Owner Matthew Ablakan refused to slow down. Instead, he hatched a new plan that doubled down on content creation.

Pizza Hut Canada (headquartered in Vaughan) has been working for years to create a people-first organization with values like staff empowerment, transparency, trust, communication and inclusivity. 

When COVID-19 lockdown orders came in March 2020, the company was deeply motivated to maintain their values and team spirit in an era of physical distancing. Pizza Hut Canada's General Manager and Human Resources Director reveal how they held on to their culture, while staying apart.

Stuck on Planet Earth is an alternative rock band made up of Al Capo (bass/vocals), Adam Bianchi (guitars/vocals) and Andrew Testa (drums). If you’re a rock fan, this proudly Vaughan-based trio is infiltrating your radio waves, Spotify playlists, and Instagram feed with a string of catchy singles from their debut album, Beautiful Nowhere.

And they’re doing it...in COVID lockdown. Beautiful Nowhere was released in June with tight restrictions on social gatherings, and no concerts allowed. In a world where recording artists make most of their money on touring, what made them go for it, and how they paying the bills?

On March 17, 2020, the Government of Ontario declared a State of Emergency to combat COVID-19. Measures included closing bars and restaurants and while they have been offered lifelines like takeout and patio service, physical distancing restrictions are still in place.

Some restaurants opted to temporarily or permanently close. Many made adjustments to keep business going under the new rules. Others, like Vaughan’s Giro D’Italia, took every opportunity and ran with it.

For season two of the podcast, we’re talking to Vaughan business leaders and entrepreneurs who are getting creative through the ever-evolving COVID-19 restrictions. We kick off with the City of Vaughan’s own adaptation story. Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua explains how the City took a cautious approach yet still managed to thrive thanks to a culture of resourcefulness that resulted in 125 innovations and process improvements.