EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year™ program shines a spotlight each year on Canadian business owners making a difference in the country.
The long-running national program, designed to recognize and connect leading business founders, continues to highlight entrepreneurial achievement across Canada more than three decades after its launch.
Ivana Cvitanusic, partner/principal and private market leader for assurance in Western Canada for EY, says the company’s Entrepreneur Of The Year program has operated in Canada for 31 years as part of a global initiative that now spans about 94 countries and territories. Cvitanusic says the program’s primary purpose is to amplify the stories of entrepreneurs while bringing them together in a peer network focused on mentorship, shared learning, and business growth, with awards ceremonies serving as a culminating celebration rather than a central objective.
Calgary’s Entrepreneur Of The Year program is part of a global tradition of honouring these entrepreneurs. “EY has been involved with this program in Canada for 31 years, and it’s a global program,” she says, adding that her own role is to lead the program for the Prairies, which cover Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta. “Our regional program is one of four programs across Canada. Each regional winner competes for the Canadian EY Entrepreneur Of The Year title, and the Canadian winner competes at the global stage, which includes approximately 94 participating countries, depending on the cycle.”
According to Cvitanusic, the purpose of the program is to recognize entrepreneurs. “It is all about amplifying people that we think are doing incredible things. The way that we define that is we look at vision and execution behind the entrepreneur. We look at growth and responsibility, their purpose and performance.”
The program then looks to bring together these individuals in a peer-to-peer learning and mentorship community, similar to the YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) or EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) community. Cvitanusic says the program helps bring those innovators together, “so we can help them solve problems in their communities, while also amplifying their stories.”
The awards are the program’s penultimate event, which will happen in October for the Prairie region. Nationally, the celebration will happen in November. Other countries have their own. “The award is the celebration, but it’s probably the least important part of the program,” Cvitanusic says. “The point is to create access to a trusted network and allow insights and support to be provided as these entrepreneurs need it.”
Judges for the awards are independent of EY, which is unique. While many firms run programs where they have internal judging panels, EY judges are not always from EY and the program has specific requirements around their backgrounds.
Judges are past participants, as well as business and community leaders. They are typically executives and CEOs, and usually individuals who have run their own businesses and have been in a similar situation before. When it comes to judges, EY typically looks for professional diversity, including educators and professionals with broader community involvement. Typically, judges will have a business background.
“Our program doesn’t necessarily focus on areas like revenue or other financial metrics. It’s more about the story,” Cvitanusic explains. “There are four specific areas judges look at. They look at the entrepreneur themselves and their journey — how they’ve scaled and built the company. They look at impact, which goes beyond financial to look at what the entrepreneur is doing in the community, how they influence lives, and how they engage with others. They also look at growth and purpose. What has the entrepreneur achieved? How have they done financially? Are they a sound business? Does their business aim to achieve something beyond Canadian borders?”
Cvitanusic says the combination of soft evaluation points, like who these individuals are and how they impact their communities, are used alongside more traditional metrics for building a business. “We often say the world needs more Canadian entrepreneurs, so we’re looking for entrepreneurs who can take their ideas beyond just our borders — something scalable and attractive beyond the Canadian market,” she adds.
The Prairies certainly don’t lack entrepreneurship and don’t lack ideas. Where there are sometimes challenges is access to capital, and the ability to scale businesses in Canada.
“We have adjacent organizations that do excellent work in entrepreneurship,” Cvitanusic explains. “From universities to angel networks helping to raise funds. The challenge becomes, when you reach a certain size — what’s next?”
“Often, the next step is entering a larger market, which tends to be our neighbour to the south. Wonderful for entrepreneurs, but then we have an outflow of fantastic ideas leaving our province and country. Yet we have tremendous ingenuity here in tech, pediatric research, oncology research. We have incredible minds doing great things. The ecosystem needs more support in access to capital and funding. We have the ideas, we simply need to ensure we have the market as well.”
Cvitanusic says the most common conversations she hears, especially among finalists and winners, is that they fail fast.
“They have lots of ideas and try lots of different things. Once they find the right one, they know,” she explains. “Entrepreneurs rarely talk about what makes them successful. They talk about what made them fail and what made them reinvent. This willingness to fail is probably related to their success.”
Entrepreneurs are also passionate about sharing critical moments where they weren’t successful, how they pivoted, and how they didn’t give up.
“Being an entrepreneur is exhausting,” Cvitanusic explains. “I could never do it, but I enjoy speaking with them. I understand grit. I came as a refugee to this country as a child, having lost everything. While we weren’t entrepreneurial, we understood there is no “no” sometimes. It’s putting one foot in front of the other and continuing. That’s what these individuals do. They all face obstacles and failures, but they deal with them quickly, they don’t dwell on them, they learn, and they move on. That’s where we see the common thread of success.”
For more than 30 years, the EY Entrepreneur of the Year program has received more than 5,200 nominations from across the country, celebrated more than 3,400 finalists and honoured more than 1,540 award recipients.
The Prairies region will announce the finalists in June, followed by regional awards in October, and the national awards event in November.
The EY World Entrepreneur of the Year awards gala will be held next in 2027.
