Two Fredericton Entrepreneurs Earn National Recognition
FREDERICTON– Two Fredericton entrepreneurs, Kevin LeBoeuf of Educated Beards and Natasha Dhayagude of Chinova Bioworks, were each recognized with a Canadian Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CANIE) Award on Thursday night.
The awards were put on by the Innovators & Entrepreneurs Foundation (IEF), an Ontario-based foundation whose goal is to support small-to-medium entrepreneurs and innovators from racialized groups.
The CANIE Awards are a national program that seeks to highlight entrepreneurship in all provinces and territories in Canada.
Educated Beards
LeBoeuf, the founder of Fredericton-based Educated Beards, was awarded Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year, which highlights an entrepreneur who is a veteran of the military. This award is the first of its kind and was presented by Prince’s Trust Canada, a fund established by King Charles III.
“It’s such an honour to be the first recipient of an award that never existed before,” said LeBoeuf. “A lot of transitioning troops that are leaving the military and really becoming civilians again lose that sense of purpose.”
He said this experience happened to him once he left the military. Since receiving this award, LeBoeuf wants to show troops they have skill sets related to entrepreneurship from their time in the military, which they can put towards other purposes in life.
Throughout his time spent in the army, LeBoeuf learned problem-solving, leadership, and resilience — all skills he can now use as an entrepreneur.
“What it means to me is really veterans and entrepreneurs have so much in common that people don’t really realize that those skills as an entrepreneur is similar to what you’d be facing in the military. Maybe not like a warzone, but the applied knowledge and resources that you have to make within the leadership in the military is very, very similar in many ways,” he said.
LeBoeuf said receiving Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year is “giving a voice to veterans” who have gained skills and experience through their time in the military because a lot of the skills he learned through the military have applied to his career as an entrepreneur.
“It’s really like allowing other veterans read about a success story and being like ‘hey, I can do this too,’” he said.
Before becoming an entrepreneur and creating Educated Beards, LeBoeuf was in the military for 14 years. He was released from the military and diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in 2016.
While he got used to being out of the military, he decided to grow out his beard for the first time. He recalls the process being itchy, dry and flaky. After bringing home some grooming products, his partner, a holistic nutritionist, said the ingredients were not good for facial skin.
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Now, five years later, his beard grooming products are exported to several countries.
Chinova Bioworks
The second Fredericton-based award winner was Natasha Dhayagude, chief executive officer and co-founder of Chinova Bioworks. Dhayagude is the winner of The 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, after being nominated by someone in the community familiar with her work.
“It’s been six years. We’ve hit a lot of major milestones within the company. We’ve grown from a team of two… to now a team of almost 35 people,” said Dhayagude.
Tracing back to their start in 2016, Chinova Bioworks extracts a fibre from the stems of white button mushrooms that can be transformed into a natural preservative for food. The goal is to replace artificial preservatives and create something more sustainable and natural, said Dhayagude.
Chinova Bioworks has six product lines for which they develop natural preservatives, which include beverages, dairy, plant-based dairy, plant-based meat, sauces and spreads, and baked goods.
The company works with both Canadian and American brands, but 95 per cent of its customers are based in the United States.
Dhayagude has a background in microbiology and biochemistry, but when she graduated, she did not know what she wanted to do. At the time, she did not know anything about the business world or being a start-up entrepreneur. She started working at Planet Hatch and helped provide companies with the resources they needed to get their business ideas off the ground.
At an event she organized through Planet Hatch, she met her now co-founder of Chinova Bioworks, leading her to now be an entrepreneur of her own.
“I take [the award] on behalf of my team to show my appreciation for all their hard work,” said Dhayagude.
Although, this is not the first CANIE Award Dhayagude has won, as she received the Product Innovation of the Year at the 2020 CANIE Awards.
Jessica Saulnier is an intern for Huddle in Fredericton. Send her feedback or tips: [email protected]