With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1471305
JULY/AUGUST 2022 BCBUSINESS 39 BCBUSINESS.CA E M M A D E V I N AGE: 29 Co-founder + chief people and product officer, Brood Care Inc. LIFE STORY: Emma Devin's house may be full of children, but not their own (yet). Caregiving has always come naturally to the entrepreneur, who regularly looks after children in their community and whose business is built on advocat- ing for alternative family structures. Devin became a certified doula and caregiver after graduating from Pacific Rim College in 2015. They briefly worked at Bunky Bambino, a local doula agency providing birth and postpartum care, before buying the business in 2019 and rebranding it to Brood Care Inc. with co-founders Gillian Damborg and Lizzy Karp. Born in Paris to an entrepreneur and a restaurateur, Devin spent their childhood and teenage years travel- ling all over the world, from living on boats and islands to spending time across the U.K., U.S. and Canada. They worked in the kitchen, scrubbed dishes and served and bussed to help their parents out, so when people asked what Devin wanted to be when they grew up, they knew for sure what they didn't want to be: a restaurateur. They were always drawn to family structures, what it means to expand and the transitions it encompasses for people. Study- ing doula care at Pacific Rim as a queer-trans person, it became even more compelling for Devin to explore what an ungendered approach to the profession could look like. "There was no education, no care, no awareness of the spec- trum of gender identities, of family structures," they say. "So, it's been a huge pillar for Brood to focus on the alternatives for family structures that we can nourish and nurture, because everyone from queer-trans folks to cishet families deserve to have the community they need." BOTTOM LINE : Inspired by LGBTQIA2S+ families in their com- munity, Brood Care's co-founders officially launched the brand in 2021. Brood is a tech-enabled learning platform and in-person care service for pregnancy, birth, postpartum care and new parenthood with a focus on millennial/Gen-Z families. Its educational component offers online courses (developed by Devin) on topics such as miscarriages and feeding your baby. During the pandemic, the Vancouver-based doula agency added virtual birth and postpartum care to their operations, as well as an open phone line for new parents. As of 2021, it had already served 400 families and babies. –R.R. H A M I D R E Z A E T E B A R I A N AGE: 28 Co-founder + CEO, Offerland Technologies LIFE STORY: Fresh out of grad school, Hamidreza Etebarian loved the two years he spent at Vancouver civil engineering firm Glotman Simpson. "My job was designing towers struc- turally to make sure they work under earthquake load, yield load and gravity load," he says. But something nagged at Etebarian, who had always wanted to build a product from scratch. Buying a downtown condo, he saw his chance. "I realized that in the real estate space, there's some room for automation, advanced tools that can help people to make things better." Etebarian was up to the task. In his native Iran, he ranked 300th out of 300,000 students who wrote the entrance exam for top-ranked Sharif University of Technology, where he earned a civil engineering degree. Accepted to several North American universities—including Texas A&M and UCLA—for graduate work, Etebar- ian chose UBC for a master of applied science in structural and earthquake engineering. With COO Roz Seyednejad and CTO Amir Abdi, he started what is now Offerland Technologies in 2019, leaving his day job early the next year to focus on the business. Offerland uses data analytics and artificial intelligence to modernize property valuation, traditionally a manual task. The company, which counts among its clients a Big Five bank, one of Canada's largest appraisal management companies and the country's biggest private appraisal firm, focuses on residential real estate. Its subscription-based service has two main products: a market evaluation tool and market rent evaluation tool. "Companies can come to our platform and, say, search for an address, and they get a full report," Etebarian explains. What is the actual value of this property? What are the recent comparables?" BOTTOM LINE : Offerland now has a team of 16, and the goal is to reach 25 by year's end. Having raised some initial capital and secured $400,000 in government grants, the company is seeking its second financing round. "We're going to use that extra source of funding to tap into other sides of the real estate space," explains Etebarian, who says Offerland also plans to serve the industrial, commercial and agricul- tural property markets. –N.R. Emma Devin Hamidreza Etebarian