How Immigrant Techies Network Is Powering Canada’s Tech Future

Immigrating to Canada in 2011 marked an unexpected detour in my career. Years of work in academia, research, teaching, and leadership suddenly felt erased. My credentials didn’t translate, my experience seemed invisible, and the professional identity I had built in Nigeria no longer opened doors. That loss could have broken me, but it became the seed for something redemptive.

I built my career on several iterations of reinventing myself. In 2019, I founded the Immigrant Techies Network (ITN) as a grassroots community movement for three reasons: redemption, invitation, and economic development. It began with an intentional act of redeeming my own career upheaval story, making sure I created a better path for immigrant professionals coming after me, but soon morphed to an active invitation of underserved communities to the tech ecosystem and ultimately economic prosperity for the country I now call home.. 

It has grown into an economic mission. Alberta’s tech economy depends on a strong pipeline of talent, and immigrant professionals are not just part of that pipeline; they are the infrastructure that sustains it.

Community as Economic Infrastructure

Immigrant Techies Network was never meant to be just another half-thought-out newcomer support group. The goal was to build infrastructure for participation and make inclusion part of how the ecosystem operates, not just something mentioned in diversity statements. The guiding question was simple: What if inclusion could drive innovation and economic growth at the same time?

It began with coffee chats, peer mentoring, and late-night Zoom sessions where immigrant professionals shared frustrations and small wins while learning to navigate Canada’s tech landscape. Those informal gatherings soon grew into structured programs, partnerships, and, three years ago, a nationally incorporated nonprofit. 

The model integrates workforce development, founder enablement, and ecosystem growth. At its core, building an inclusive tech sector strengthens economic development as much as it advances social progress.

Designing for Opportunity and Growth

Every Immigrant Techies Network initiative is built on one principle: economic empowerment through participation. Structured mentorships, co-designed with partners like RBC Calgary Innovation Lab, connect immigrant professionals with industry leaders who guide them through real-world challenges in Canada’s tech sector.

PathwayPro, one of my favourite programs, uses a “Rent-a-Team” model that pairs immigrant tech professionals with early-stage founders. These teams help startups build real products while gaining Canadian experience. Founders get affordable, high-quality support, and the talent builds credibility in a competitive market.

Through TechMosaic YYC and Immigrant Founder Stories, we bring together employers, investors, and professionals to spark collaborations that lead to tangible business results. The Elevate leadership accelerator prepares senior immigrant professionals to lead Canadian tech companies, closing a critical gap in Alberta’s talent pipeline.

Each program follows the same blueprint: move people from connection to collaboration to credibility. Representation matters, but the larger goal is resilience, creating a steady flow of skilled talent and leadership that powers Canada’s innovation economy.

The Early Hurdles

Two major challenges defined the early stages: perception and capacity.

Immigrant professionals were often seen through a deficit lens, as people who needed help rather than as valuable contributors to economic growth. Shifting that perception required consistent storytelling, data, and visible success stories. Inclusion is a strategy, not charity. Proving that required time and resources.

As a nonprofit, most of our grants were tied to program delivery, leaving us with little operational funding to sustain our infrastructure and staff. Like many grassroots founders, I juggled this mission alongside my full-time job, driven by passion but aware of the imbalance in how innovation ecosystems are funded.

Strategic partnerships helped bridge some of those gaps. Collaborations with RBC, Platform Calgary, Innovate Calgary, LongView Systems, and Alberta Innovates provided validation, funding, and access to networks. These alliances provided us with the credibility and operational runway necessary to scale our impact, despite our limited capacity.

Scaling What Works, Sustaining What Matters

Growth required smarter systems, not necessarily larger ones. Replicable frameworks became the foundation of our scaling strategy: mentorship models, event templates, virtual program delivery, and founder-matching playbooks that could be adapted in other provinces.

Financial sustainability, still a work in progress, now leans on a hybrid approach combining grants, sponsorships, and co-investment from employers who benefit directly from our work. This alignment ensures that progress for immigrant professionals also delivers measurable value to businesses and the broader economy.

Today, Immigrant Techies Network has reached over 3,000 immigrant professionals and directly supported more than 500 through structured programming. Each success story reinforces the belief that inclusion, when done right, strengthens the economy.

A New Frontier: Trade Without Borders

As the organisation matured, a new realisation emerged. Immigrant networks hold immense, underused potential in global market development. The same professionals filling Canada’s talent gaps also possess international connections, relationships, cultural fluency, and trust that can open trade and investment pathways across continents. These are the kinds of assets that move markets.

That insight led to Trade Without Borders, an initiative that leverages immigrant diaspora networks to create trade links between Canada and regions such as Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It marks an expansion and evolution from workforce development to international trade, showing that empowering immigrants strengthens both local economies and global partnerships.

From Inclusion to Prosperity

The future of Immigrant Techies Network lies in replication. Alberta has been the proving ground, but the next step is embedding our frameworks across Canada to create a unified system that connects talent, entrepreneurship, and trade.

The vision is a Canada where inclusion and prosperity work hand in hand, with immigrant founders shaping the tech economy, not standing on its sidelines. What began in coffee shops has become a bridge across communities and sectors. It is no longer about belonging, but about building.

Immigrant Techies Network will keep pushing forward until the system sustains equitable opportunity on its own. Until that day comes, we build.