Mentor Lunch and Learn with Shelley Kuipers, Co-Founder / Co-CEO of The51 and Kristina Rinker, Co-founder & CSO of Syantra
Tuesday, September 27th 202212:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Join WCM Alberta for a Virtual Lunch & Learn with Shelley Kuipers, Co-founder & Co-CEO, The51, and Kristina Rinker, Co-founder & CSO of Syantra.
Shelley will share key takeaways and insights from her extensive 20 - year career experience in entrepreneurship, venture capital and crowdsourcing, and share her advice to help you maximize your potential and achieve your professional objectives. Kristina will share her career journey and experiences founding her company, Syantra, and partnering with The51.
Join us for a dynamic conversation with Shelley and Kristina as they share insights from their careers and the work The51 is doing to help advance access to capital for women and gender-diverse founders.
Access to this event is complimentary. Register today!
This event is organized by the Alberta Steering Committee. To learn more about the Alberta Steering Committee click here.
Shelley Kuipers
Co-founder & Co-CEO | The51
Shelley Kuipers, Co-Founder/co-CEO of The51 is an activist in business, entrepreneurship and investment, driving business models that are more equitable, diverse, corporately and ecologically sustainable. Shelley is a co-founder of IOVIA and Adventure Capital, and previously founded crowdsourcing company, Chaordix and was a co-founder of Stormworks, which was acquired by Solium. She is also Co-founder and an active board member of a sustainable direct to consumer clothing brand House Kuipers.
Shelley is a serial private investor of companies, startups and entrepreneurs who embody the type of future she wants to see across the economic universe: namely, those that are sustainable, feminist, purpose-driven and unafraid to disrupt old systems. She has been early-stage investing for the better part of 20 years, with investment experience that started in energy, but quickly diversified into the tech sector with a focus on innovation-driven companies. Shelley is considered a global thought leader in crowdsourcing and community, and is highly sought after as a champion and mentor for entrepreneurs from around the globe.
As an avid brand leader and marketer, Shelley believes in the power of brand, community and participation as a differentiator in newly emerging business models. Shelley has led global brands such as LEGO, IKEA, Nike and Unilever to be participative brands, companies and business models to drive insights, ideas and innovation.
Kristina Rinker
Co-founder & CSO | Syantra Inc. & Professor, Biomedical Engineering | University of Calgary
Kristina (Tina) Rinker is a professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Calgary and Chief Scientific Officer for Syantra Inc., a company she co-founded. She is also jointly appointed in the Cumming School of Medicine’s Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and is a member of the Charbonneau Cancer Institute where she was lead of the Early Cancer Detection Initiative 2017-2020. She holds additional memberships in the Libin Cardiovascular Institute and Alberta Child Health Research Institute and is a Lab Scientist with Creative Destruction Labs-Rockies. She was director of the Centre for Bioengineering Research and Education from 2014-2017, which launched a new major in biomedical engineering in 2021 and became the new Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2022. She is also co-founder and on the board of directors for the not-for-profit Biohubx, a catalyst for the life science ecosystem in Alberta that supports companies with their space needs, and provides additional technical services.
In 2021, Syantra won the One to Watch award presented by the A100 as part of the Start Alberta Tech Awards. Tina was named a Parex Innovation Fellow at the University of Calgary 2018-2020 and a Peak Scholar Nominee in 2017. She leads research in the areas of diagnostic and therapeutic platform development involving cellular mechanobiology, transcriptional regulation, and cell signaling utilizing cellular models, nanotechnology and device design for applications in cancer and cardiovascular disease. She is an investigator on clinical studies for development and validation of diagnostics running in Canada, UK, Korea and USA. Her research has been supported through many organizations such as Alberta Cancer Foundation, NSERC, NIH, and Whitaker Foundation and has resulted in numerous publications and presentations. She received her PhD in chemical engineering with a biotechnology minor from North Carolina State University and was an Assistant Research Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University.
