It is our honour to recognize amazing businesses and leaders within our community through the Mayor’s Innovation Awards. As we approach the ceremony, we would like to introduce the nominees, as nominated by our business community.
The Pivot Point award recognizes companies or organizations that have navigated unexpected challenges by discovering and pursuing opportunities for growth. This recognition focuses on those who purposefully took action, addressing risks and implementing key changes to their business model or processes. The category applauds initiatives that showcase remarkable adaptability and flexibility in response to unforeseen circumstances, emphasizing innovative solutions that effectively shift direction or strategy within a community. Whether through new revenue sources, repurposing products, or evolving to meet new needs, the Pivot Point award celebrates and honours those who demonstrate resilience, creativity, and effective adaptation in the face of unexpected operational or market challenges.
The Pivot Point Award is proudly sponsored by Innovative Automation, a global leader in providing automation solutions in the manufacturing sector. With an unwavering commitment to an innovation-first mindset, they credit their success to embracing innovation and actively contribute to community growth, promoting it as a catalyst for advancement. Sponsoring the award holds significant importance to Innovative Automation, serving as a platform to recognize and celebrate innovation while inspiring individuals and organizations to embrace creative thinking and drive positive change in Barrie.
This year’s Pivot Point nominees include:
Barriston Law’s Resolv’d
Resolv'd was born from Barriston Law's commitment to evolving the legal services landscape by making alternative dispute resolution (ADR) more accessible. Recognizing a growing need for alternatives to the court process, they established a mediation, arbitration and workplace investigation-focused arm that empowers clients to resolve disputes in a supportive and collaborative setting. Inspired by clients who value time, efficiency, and lower costs, Barriston launched Resolv'd as a solution-oriented approach to legal conflicts. Their development process included training and up-skilling mediators, arbitrators and workplace investigators from within their existing team, as well as collaborating with and onboarding experts to their roster to shape a responsive, client-focused service model.
Botree's unique innovation in corporate training began with a vision to move beyond the conventional, often uninspiring, methods of corporate learning. Their inspiration stemmed from observing the limitations of traditional training models, where organizations often see training as a single event with limited impact. They aimed to transform this perception and reimagine training as a fun, continuous, and integral part of employee development. To achieve this, they developed their proprietary Level-Up™ Learning methodology, blending the latest in proven learning strategies with interactive, cutting-edge technology. Weekly meetups in a metaverse environment, combined with micro-learning modules and interactive challenges, actively engage learners, ensuring skills are not only acquired but applied and retained. Leveraging their own AI-powered course development software, Botree personalize training content for every type of learner, creating customized learning journeys that reflect individual needs and organizational goals.
Throughout founder Yuliya Levina’s professional journey, she has witnessed many success stories, but also observed systemic failures in addressing the psychosocial needs of children, youth, and their parents from diverse communities. During the pandemic, Yuliya founded the Barrie Anxiety Clinic to contribute to the prevention of the post-pandemic mental health crisis. In her one-on-one sessions, she observed how the psychosocial impact of the pandemic exacerbated the already existing mental health problems and lack of resources available to children and adults. This led her to conceptualize the idea of using proactive vs. reactive approach to mental health, focused on teaching Emotional Intelligence through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)-based skill-building programs. This approach aims to equip individuals with the necessary skills to enhance their biopsychosocial health and build resilience against life’s adversities and challenges, thereby preventing mental health problems that our healthcare system may not always have the capacity to address. To bring this idea to life, Yuliya designed CBT-based programs tailored for specific age groups and launched the School of Emotional Intelligence Girls Confidence Club. To date, they have conducted three successful 6-week sessions.
Kyndryl, the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, announced it has established a Security Operations Center (SOC) in Barrie, Ontario, to provide support and protection for the entire lifecycle of cyber threats, using artificial intelligence, machine learning and integrated automation systems. The SOC is designed to be a cyber defense hub that operates around the clock to offer cyber threat intelligence and incident response from cybersecurity experts. Kyndryl provides a hybrid model that allows organizations to selectively outsource certain cyber security functions, or fully outsource the end-to-end management of their cybersecurity operations to Kyndryl. This flexibility is critical as cyber incidents become commonplace across every industry and government function, and as organizations prepare for new cybersecurity regulations to be implemented by the Government of Canada. Kyndryl understands the importance of these regulations that are designed to ensure the protection of the economy, national security and public safety. Kyndryl’s global network of SOCs will be another line of defense as many countries around the world take similar steps to mitigate potential breaches and disruptions from increasingly sophisticated attacks.
Pawty Animals was born from a deep love for animals and a strong commitment to environmental responsibility by founder, Kara Wardinger. As a pet owner, she noticed how quickly her dog would go through toys, and thus started looking into the environmental impact. She was shocked to learn that over 40,500 tons of dog toys end up in landfills every year. Kara wanted to make better choices for herself and her dog, but found that sustainable alternatives didn’t exist in the pet market, especially those with a Canadian focus. With a passion for sustainability and Canadian culture, Kara created Pawty Animals, the first pet company in Canada to offer eco-friendly, Canadian-themed dog toys made from recycled water bottles that gets turned into new plush material. From researching eco-friendly materials to partnering with manufacturers that share their values and all have their Global Recycled Standard (GRS) Certification, Kara has worked hard to bring this vision to life. The business quickly gained traction, leading to partnerships with over 160 independent retailers across Canada, as well as major chains like PetSmart.
In 2016, Marcia Woods launched FreshSpoke with a vision to revolutionize the way local food is sourced and distributed. This unique platform quickly gained traction, and by 2022, they had successfully raised over $2 million in funding. However, in 2022, an enticing partnership opportunity arose that promised to catapult the business to new heights. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too good to be true. During this challenging period, Marcia examined every aspect of the operations, re-evaluated strategies, and sought innovative solutions to rebuild and strengthen her business model and value proposition. Ultimately, they re-branded from FreshSpoke to Purchs, and invested in market research, then leveraged remaining resources to build new technology. This process not only helped regain her stability but to come back even stronger with a much more profitable and scalable business model that solves a series of retail supply chain challenges. While FreshSpoke was built as a single tenancy platform that supported its own distribution business, Purchs is a multi-tenancy, software as a service (SaaS) platform that helps retail merchants easily source goods and manage billings from all their vendors. Purchs is the first to use conversational commerce and AI in B2B sales.
The inspiration for Riley’s Kitchen came when Jennifer Giorgianni became a new mom and started introducing solid foods to her daughter. She realized that the baby aisle in grocery stores only offered highly processed "convenience" foods, like pouches and puffs, nothing that would support making a real meal. When Jennifer checked the ingredients in regular grocery aisles, almost everything had added sugars, high sodium, or other additives that aren't ideal or recommended for babies and young children. It felt overwhelming to think she’d have to make everything from scratch to ensure her daughter had nutritious, clean meals. Jennifer started small, making products in her kitchen and selling them at local markets. In under a year, grocery chains like Sobeys showed interest, and she took steps to prepare and design the packaging for retail. Last year, Jennifer decided to scale her business, so she found a co-packer and partnered with a food broker and distributor. Now, Riley’s Kitchen products are available in over 50 grocery stores across Ontario, including Healthy Planet, and in HomeSense and Winners.
Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre’s Emergency Department
Sparked by unprecedented overcrowding and an urgent need to manage growing patient volumes post-pandemic, RVH launched a one-of-a-kind pilot program called the ED MAPP (Emergency Department Minor Ailment Patient Pathway) in June 2023. Faced with increasingly worse health conditions, long wait times, and safety concerns for vulnerable resident populations, RVH recognized the need for immediate, innovative, and bold change. Historically, emergency departments have struggled to predict or manage the flow of patient arrivals, leading to peaks of overcrowding and extended wait times. The solution: empower patients with the ability to assess their conditions and schedule visits for non-urgent issues, allowing them to wait safely at home until their arrival time chosen by them. Essentially this is creating a waiting room in the patients’ own homes rather than the overcrowded ED. With these considerations in mind, the emergency department leadership team designed an online booking system incorporating a unique screening algorithm for minor ailments to rule out more urgent conditions. This allowed patients to wait safely at home and schedule same-day or next-day visits for sprains, fractures, rashes, cuts, colds, minor infections, and more. The new booking system process was an overnight success. Since its inception, the ED MAPP has drastically reduced wait times for minor ailments, allowing the emergency team to prioritize critical cases. Boasting an incredible 90% satisfaction rate, it is especially praised by parents with sick children, marginalized communities, and residents without family doctors.
Simcoe Contemporary Dancers (SCD)
SCD proudly launched the Get Out and Dance! Festival in 2024 to celebrate the exceptional talent within the community and to foster engagement across diverse artistic mediums, including dance, music, and visual art. This innovative festival takes place outside, in a neighborhood park. This format redefines traditional performance spaces, inviting audiences to experience dance in a natural, accessible setting. Unlike conventional theaters, the park setting allows for open, often unexpected interactions between performers and audience members, creating an informal atmosphere that often attracts a more diverse audience, including passersby who might not typically attend a dance event. This outdoor context makes dance feel more integrated with the community and environment. It also challenges performers to adapt to the unpredictability of nature - weather, uneven ground, and ambient sounds - stimulating creativity and adaptability. SCD’s approach also lowers barriers to entry for the public, offering free access to art and making dance more inclusive and community-centered. With generous support from partners, SCD engaged 18 talented artists to bring over 10 hours of programming to the Lampman Lane neighborhood - an area that has historically lacked access to arts and culture initiatives. This park, known for its active sporting events, now proudly hosts Get Out and Dance!, marking a groundbreaking integration of arts programming into its annual schedule.
Artist BIG is the first Basic Income Guarantee program for independent artists in Canada. The program offers participants an annual minimum financial guarantee from Talk is Free Theatre for three years, which they earn through separate individual contracts. But at its core, Artist BIG is more than just a financial guarantee. It is a program designed to provide artists with more authority over the projects with which they engage, opportunities for creative diversification, a space for safe dialogue with creative leadership, and a greater sense of community with other artists. It isn’t work just for work’s sake – Artist BIG is a long-term commitment to a person’s value as an artist that seeks to horizontalize the power structure and experiment with a new paradigm of governance of a theatre company and how it produces its art. Artists are more effectively positioned to assert their point of view, affect change and illuminate the world, without having to demonstrate their validity to secure a contract. In other words, artists don’t execute someone else’s vision, they are the vision. This is the second intake of the program after a successful pilot that launched in October, 2020, which saw designers becoming directors, actors taking risks with life-altering roles, experimentation and innovation in new technologies for the stage, skill-sharing, new web applications for the industry and its enthusiasts, development and deployment of new outreach and support programs, lots of new work development – all instigated by program participants. The possibilities are endless; an idea can only be too small.
Tyger Shark / Ghost Retail Inc.
Ghost Retail was born from a bold vision to create North America’s first 1:1 live video shopping platform, setting out to redefine e-commerce by bringing consumers and brands closer together through real-time video interaction. Backed by early investments from global leaders in retail and finance, including American Eagle, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Authentic Brands, and RBC executives, Tyler Murray and Jimmy Furlano, founders of already successful marketing firm Tyger Shark, launched Ghost Retail as a 1:1 live shopping platform powered by a dedicated engineering team based in downtown Barrie. As they grew, Tyler and Jimmy saw an emerging need in the market for a more scalable, passive video experience that could reach even broader audiences without requiring real-time interaction. Recognizing this shift, they completely pivoted to develop a disruptive video player technology that integrated interactive video features while allowing for a more flexible, on-demand experience than a traditional web-video player. This pivot was driven not by necessity, but by their proactive approach to adapting to evolving market needs, setting the stage for partnerships with major brands and institutions. Today, Ghost Retail serves over 5,000 customers globally, including the largest financial institutions on the planet. This shift has enabled them to scale effectively and engage new markets in fintech and financial literacy, making their technology an essential tool for the Canadian economy and the wealth of future generations. As of November 2024, Tyler and Jimmy are happy to announce MICROSOFT has chosen their technology to power their online video experiences for 2025.
All his life, founder Brad Ferguson, knew he wanted to entertain people for a living. Fast forward from those early days to a now diverse 20+ year career creating animated television shows and films, entertaining audiences around the globe. Motivated by a passion for art and teaching, Brad reached out to a private art & animation college to ask about what it would take to possibly begin veering his career toward education. Their response was “Can you start in two weeks?” Brad left the animation industry behind to fully focus on teaching and curriculum development.
Inspired by his love for teaching, in 2023, Brad returned to Barrie after leaving his full-time job to take a leap to build a new division of his company: Upchuckle Education. His mission was to create truly unique - and often fun - creative education experiences for people of all ages and skill levels, from custom-tailored 1-on-1 lessons to group workshops and fun Cartoon Camps for children and teens. The long-term goal of Upchuckle Education is to turn it into an accredited private college specializing in art, animation and entertainment education. This next step would open doors for countless creatives locally and internationally, establishing Barrie as a destination for high-caliber arts education. While still in the early stages, every lesson and each student bring Upchuckle Education closer to making this goal a reality.
Stay tuned for the announcement of the winners following the Mayor’s Innovation Awards ceremony on November 28!
Thank you to the sponsors of the 6th Mayor’s Innovation Awards, Adams Hamilton, Ain Whitehead LLP, Meridian Business Banking and Innovative Automation, for recognizing the importance of these local businesses.