Advisory Board
Rachel Bartholomew
Biography
Rachel Bartholomew
Rachel Bartholomew is a 2 time entrepreneur who is now working on her second company, Hyivy Health, created after her recent fight with cervical cancer. Hyivy Health is creating a medical device for the 1 in 3 women worldwide who will experience a gynecological complication in their lifetime. Rachel is a graduate of the University of Waterloo and has been working in various roles in the entrepreneurship ecosystem for over 15 years, including the Founder of Femtech Canada and Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University in Biotech Innovation.
Melanie Derwin
Biography
Melanie Derwin
Melanie is the founder of Serenity Productions/Yes Roam. She is a fierce supporter and advocate of positive growth in women’s health. Her company (Serenity Productions/Yes Roam) is on a mission to add more pleasure to the world by celebrating and normalizing female sexual health, wellness and pleasure through developing innovative, quality, modern Femtech products and services. Product number one is a patent-protected pleasure accessory!
Dallas Barnes
Biography
Dallas Barnes
Dallas is the founder and CEO of Reya Health. With a background in business, Dallas coaches Canadian Indigenous entrepreneurs and social enterprise companies on their business plans and go-to-market strategies. With Reya, she is focused on revolutionizing the birth control experience for all contraceptive users.
Julia Slanina
Biography
Julia Slanina
Julia Slanina is an entrepreneur, community builder, digital health innovator, and is the founder and CEO of Treehouse. Medical student turned tech entrepreneur with a passion for improving community healthcare for aspiring, expectant, and new families across Canada. She has dedicated her time to developing a care management and community platform designed to simplify the connection between family care providers and parents.
Julia sits on numerous boards and advisory councils and has been featured in Forbes and The Logic.
Lanna Last
Biography
Lanna Last
Lanna Last, CEO (BA, MA) is a queer ecofeminist and advocate for gynecological health. She started AIMA (eh-ma) in 2019 as a response to a lack of safe solutions for her period pain, and Aruna Revolution in 2021 to address menstrual waste. Previously, she led AIMA through the incubator lab-2-launch at e@ubc, and in November, she won the Sneek-a-Peek section of the 2021 Venture Showcase at the University of British Columbia. Recently, she pitched at Herstory for the top 30 female founders hosted by The51. She continues to disrupt the system of inequities through her unruly work and writing.
Contributors
Swati Matta
Biography
Swati Matta
Swati is the founder and CEO of Koble where she and her team are on a mission to help people grow healthy families. She has deep expertise in building digital health platforms and has previously held leadership positions at League and TELUS. Swati lives in Toronto, Canada, and loves exploring the world with her family.
Linda Biggs
Biography
Linda Biggs
Linda is the co-founder of joni – Canada’s 21st century period care brand working to make organic and sustainable period care available to everyone who menstruates. Linda is passionate about period equity in Canada and believes strongly that 5 years from now it will be wild to think that period care products were not made available just like toilet paper. She’s a budding social entrepreneur and is working to build joni from the ground up using a new model that benefits our communities in order to showcase how economic prosperity and social impact don’t need to be mutually exclusive.
Lauren Casey
Biography
Lauren Casey
Lauren (llaanaay) is a registered member of the Skidegate Band of the Haida Nation, and Cree Métis. The land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ, colonially known as Vancouver, is Lauren’s second home, where they currently work as the Indigenous Support Specialist and Educator for the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office at the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining SVPRO in 2020, Lauren attended UBC, and worked in the areas of health governance and education, mainly in a public relations capacity. Lauren specialized in Issues Management for several organizations, most significantly for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Innovation Factory
Femtech Canada is operated by Innovation Factory. Innovation Factory is a business accelerator, dedicated to helping businesses launch, scale, and succeed. We provide start-ups and scaling companies with advisory services, training, mentorship, and strategic connections to help bring disruptive technologies to market, leverage intellectual property, increase revenues, attract investment and create jobs.