When it comes to women in technology, there are two names that typically dominate the headlines: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her ideas on how women can "lean in" to the boardroom table; and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and her attempt to turn the tech giant around. 

 

While Mayer and Sandberg represent Silicon Valley and the tech giants that have emerged from the area in the past 15 years, Toronto also has a booming technology and startup industry, with women at the helm of both established businesses and SMBs.

 

Here are three women who are leading the technology charge in Toronto.   

 

 

While some technology entrepreneurs and leaders have a long background in the industry, others are plucked from complementary industries to put a new spin on an established brand. Such is the case with Kirstine Stewart, the new managing director of Twitter Canada, and the company’s first hire in the country. 

 

Stewart was formerly the head of English language services for CBC, and is responsible for buzzed-about shows like Little Mosque on the Prairie and Republic of Doyle. She announced her departure in April, and is now tasked with building advertising and media partnerships for the popular social network. Twitter already has a strong user base in Canada, and though it doesn’t release its country-specific user numbers there are reportedly more than 10 million Canadian users. 

 

At a Twitter Canada event on June 13th, Stewart outlined the vision for the company's growth in Canada and said she didn’t realize her departure from CBC would make front-page news. She also said she doesn't view herself as either a media or tech executive now, but a hybrid of both.

 

"I think the worlds have combined, I don’t think there is such a thing as one or the other anymore," Stewart said in a follow-up interview.

 

She added that while technology is central to Twitter, it has become more of a content company. 
 

"It's less about the science of it and more about the art, and about figuring out what people want and how to serve them in a way that makes them happy with content, then I think technology, the formulas behind it, that just helps you as a means to an end," she said. 

 

With its new focus on taking advantage of second screen--or people who use laptops or mobile devices while watching TV--Stewart will likely focus on bringing Twitter to the living rooms of Canadians.

 

Whether that will be through CBC programming is another question.

 

 

When most media companies were just starting to craft their online strategies, Joanna Track was running Sweetspot.ca, a successful lifestyle publication in Canada that she launched in 2004 and was subsequently acquired by Rogers. 

 

To build on her experience in online publishing, and to fill the hole she saw in the ecommerce space in Canada, Track founded fashion site eLUXE in 2011 to give Canadian women a homegrown way to find and order high-end clothing and accessories. The company now has more than 5,000 active customers, with revenue growing 253 per cent from 2011 to 2012. 

 

"As recently as three years ago, most Canadian retailers had still not developed an online presence," Track says. "As an entrepreneur, I saw this as a great opportunity to fill the void and bring Canadian women fashion online."

 

But Track says eLUXE is more than an ecommerce company, it's a lifestyle brand. The site features a heavy editorial component with daily trend newsletters and curated style collections. The company also launched an online publication, The Luxe Life, and Track said the ultimate goal is to be a destination for both content and commerce.

 

"We believe strongly in the philosophy of converging content with commerce, which I believe has been one of the key factors to our success,” she added.

 

She said eLUXE’s biggest competitors are traditional offline retailers, their online counterparts (like Zara, which recently started shipping to Canada), and other ecommerce sites that ship north of the border.

 

While eLUXE is an ecommerce brand, Track says her focus isn't on being a technology company, rather on reaching customers wherever they want to buy.

"I am focused on bringing an experience to Canadians through product and content. The channels and platforms are just the means of distribution and we try to deliver it however our customers want it."

 

 

Catherine Graham has spent the past 10 years building RIGHTSLEEVE, a successful promotional products agency that now employs a team of over 15 and works with brands such as Red Bull. 

 

Rather than sit back and watch the company grow, Graham saw an opportunity to use technology to change the traditionally offline promotional products industry, and launched a new company, commonsku, in 2012. The commonsku platform helps brands, suppliers, and agencies connect, manage and track their orders, and communicate with account teams, and is a result of in-house software Graham's team built to manage clients and orders at RIGHTSLEEVE.

 

"We made the leap back in 2010 to expand the development team and re-write the code from scratch," Graham said. "After beta testing with a small group of companies last year, we were satisfied that there was demand in the market and we had the right product."

 

While the industry they're in isn't known for being early adopters, Graham said they have focused on bringing tech-savvy clients on board first and are winning over more traditional clients because of the streamlined system.

 

"As we've expanded the discussions, we have found that people who aren't as comfortable with technology are still excited about using a cloud-based platform," she added. "When people see the streamlined workflow and realize they can access everything, from anywhere, on any device, they are immediately intrigued."

 

She said ultimately the vision for commonsku is to change the way people work in the promotional products industry, similar to how Salesforce transformed sales teams. First she revamped the way companies approach swag, so changing the way they work can't be too far off. ?
 

Erin is a technology journalist and startup enthusiast, and one of Marketing Magazine's 30 Under 30 in 2012. She currently writes for Yonge Street, the Financial Post, and appears regularly on CTV to discuss technology news. You can find her on Twitter at @erinbury and on her blog at erinbury.com.