One of the biggest hurdles women entrepreneurs face in cleantech is access to both capital and expertise.

But an initiative — now running in its third iteration — may make those battles easier for some entrepreneurs to undertake.

North America’s largest urban innovation hub, Toronto-based MaRS, has partnered with RBC to launch the 2024-2026 RBC Women in Cleantech Accelerator cohort.

Its aim is to provide 10 female founders of early-stage organizations with the opportunity to receive support, financially and with market intelligence and learning sessions, over the next two years.

For one of the participants, the program is sorely needed and sends a powerful message.

Important message being sent

“What it said is that we value the work and the perspective of women in this space and in developing these solutions,” Blaine Pearson, founder and CEO of Toronto-based Seedark, told Sustainable Biz Canada.

“We know that there is work still to be done in order to elevate their voices and ensure access to equal footing and equal supports.”

Seedark’s business is “focused on modernizing the seed-supply chain,” Pearson said. “So, looking at how seeds get into reforestation and ecological restoration and trying to apply digital and database solutions to ensure better visibility of information, increased supply and definitely better data to make informed decisions about ecological restoration.”

It provides access to seeds for ecologists and nurseries (including Indigenous-led ones) looking to increase biodiversity, she said.

Seedark also works with “large forestry organizations who are moving away from monocultures, and who are looking at how to replant their land in a more biodiverse and resilient fashion, and then, of course post forest-fire restoration plays largely into that space as well.”

It also provides a service to organizations looking to deploy “nature-based solutions in order to generate carbon credits,” Pearson added.

Seedark had initially applied to the general MaRS accelerator but after hearing about the RBC initiative, Pearson was encouraged to apply and was successful.

Meeting of the cohort

The cohort recently met to learn more about the details of the program.

“We had our initial orientation last week, in which we were introduced to what the program was going to look like, and the various opportunities that were going to be put in front of us, and also, the cadence and regularity in which we were going to meet and the subjects we were going to focus on throughout the two years,” Pearson said.

Other members include:

• Diana Virgovicova, founder and CEO of Xatoms
• Tatiana Estevez, founder and CEO of Permalution
• Zaffia Laplante, co-founder and COO of SkyAcres Agrotechnologies
• Aditi Sitolay, founder and CEO of Synoro Medical Technologies
• Vida Gabriel, founder and COO of TerraFixing
• Christine Gabardo, co-founder and CTO of CERT Systems
• Sofia Bonilla, founder and CEO of ALT-PRO Advantage
• Annie Dahan, founder of Seacork Studio
• Macarena Cataldo, co-founder and CEO of Viridis Research

Origin of the cohort

At MaRS, the first cohort was convened in 2018 after the organization saw that very few females were involved in the cleantech sector.

“We had a big gap in what we were seeing in our portfolio but also in the broader market opportunities for women-led founders in the climate space,” Morgan Lorimer, senior manager, innovation ecosystem, competitive acceleration programs at MaRS Discovery District, said.

Only one in 10 cleantech founders is a woman and 19 per cent of Canadian cleantech companies have at least one female founder, according to MaRS.

“We went with the hypothesis of, how could we take the research that was being done in labs and format it into supporting businesses?” Lorimer said.

According to Statistics Canada, cleantech is defined as any business focused on “environmental protection, resource optimization, and the use of energy-efficient goods.”

In 2021, cleantech represented 2.9 per cent of Canada’s GDP and employed 314,257 persons, which is 1.6 per cent of the country’s workforce.

A big goal of the program is “around capacity building,” Lorimer said.

“We work with each company to identify what their current challenges are, and then we build a plan with them of how to get there sooner and really help them avoid mistakes as well.”

Goals of the accelerator

The accelerator aims to provide female entrepreneurs with a welcoming environment to share ideas and learnings, Lorimer said.

“A big benefit of this program is really the community that comes along with it and building a safe space for female entrepreneurs to come together and share with them.”

The MaRS ecosystem will also provide the cohort with a co-working space, and “a digital community,” Lorimer added.

“We offer learning solutions, through advisory sessions on specific topics, led by a facilitator. We pair them up with advisory teams who work with them often to address the challenges.”

One of the biggest challenges is getting access to funding, which is another way the accelerator can help the entrepreneurs grow their businesses.

“We have our capital-intensive programs, so they get access to data, from crafting their pitch, helping them connect with actual investors, and all those sorts of things that allows them to secure investments. We have a market-intelligence team at MaRS that provides data to help inform their strategies,” Lorimer said.

The program will include regular meetings with the rest of the cohort, according to Pearson.

“We have ongoing access to tools and resources from within the MaRS ecosystem, but in those biweekly meetings, we will be focusing on specific subjects related to growing the technology and expanding into new markets and finance and investments and raising money.”

Added benefits of the cohort

Meeting with previous participants should prove invaluable.

“They’ve now got several years of cohorts, and we had the opportunity last week during orientation to meet some of those people," she said. "It was very incredible to hear their stories and see and appreciate how far they’ve come, and learn what they gained from going through the program.”

The overall benefits to participants are clear, according to Pearson.

“I absolutely see it helping because what it’s doing is focusing a positive light and providing a platform and a voice for women who are tackling these challenges and giving an example to young women and girls, and really anyone, that we do have a place, and we do have an opportunity to contribute to these solutions, and that we’re just as merited as our counterparts.”

The ultimate goal is growing the number of women owning and involved in cleantech organizations, Lorimer said.

“I’d like to see more world-disrupting female entrepreneurs on the main stage and getting the attention that they deserve and the capital and investment into their businesses.”