Ariella spent over a decade loving her role as a middle school science and math teacher. But she spent most of those years feeling like an island. The tools didn't exist to stay connected with colleagues, trade resources without jumping through hoops, or find collaborators working on the same problems. She'd talk to teacher friends after hours and hear the same thing back — I wish there was an easier way. She'd never taken a business class. But she'd built a side-hustle on Shopify to support dog rescue — and realized she knew enough to build what was missing. So she left the classroom and built CoLab.

Pitching in front of thousands, alongside the President of Shopify and executives from Cohere, OpenAI, Aurora, and more. Then Harley said something that stopped everything.

The pitch: pair Shopify's network of entrepreneurs with CoLab's network of teachers to co-create resources and support any teacher — Grade 1 to 12 — can actually use in their classroom.

Through surveys, on-the-ground events like University of Toronto Entrepreneurship Week, and real conversations — we're finding out what students are actually experiencing. This goes directly into what we build next.