Brandy Old
Brandy is a dedicated community builder and certified IDEO Design Thinker, empowering entrepreneurs to solve complex problems with innovative, human-centred solutions.
With a decade of business coaching experience, she helps founders gain traction by refining their client targeting, value proposition, and growth strategies.
Holding a Master’s in Social Impact, Brandy expertly guides entrepreneurs across for-profit, non-profit, and social enterprise models and has a unique knack for preparing her mentees to succeed in global pitch competitions.
Passionate about hands-on learning, Brandy encourages resilience and celebrates growth through failure, as shared in her TEDx Talk on redefining success.
She and Craig Elias also engage early-stage founders through the board game Playing Lean, teaching entrepreneurship fundamentals across Canada.
Craig Elias
Craig is a LinkedIn pioneer (user 3,956 of over a Billion users) and a globally recognized sales expert with over 10,000 unsolicited endorsements for entrepreneurship, innovation, and lead generation.
He is an award-winning entrepreneur and gifted pitch coach who helps early-stage and scale-up founders generate revenue, attract investors and win global pitch competitions.
After completing an Executive MBA in technology commercialization and new venture creation at the University of Calgary, Craig founded a startup that won a $1 million prize in a global billion-dollar-idea pitch competition and secured Tier 1 venture funding and national recognition within two years of launch.
He is the creator of “Trigger Event Selling™” and was twice chosen as LinkedIn’s #1 B2B Sales Expert in Canada (#15 globally). Craig mentors startups through programs like Alchemist Accelerator and SXSW. He and Brandy Old champion accessible entrepreneurship through innovative tools like Playing Lean, a board game for aspiring founders.