Multi-year engagement with YSpace, York University's innovation hub, spanning growth mentorship, workshop facilitation, marketing curriculum design, and now an 11-month Program Advisor role for ELLA (women founders program) and ELLA EXPRESS (intensive marketing course for women entrepreneurs).
Client: YSpace, York University Industry: Higher Education / Startup Ecosystem Service: Program Advisory, Workshop Facilitation, Curriculum Design, Brand Strategy Year: 2023 to present (Program Advisor role: May 2026 to March 2027)
YSpace needed marketing expertise embedded in their programming, not as a one-off guest lecture but as an ongoing resource. Their founder cohorts consistently identified marketing as the area where they had the least confidence and the most need. The ELLA program for women founders required a dedicated marketing curriculum, and the new ELLA EXPRESS course needed to be designed, branded, and launched from scratch.
Design and deliver marketing programming that gives founders practical, executable skills (not theory). Build the ELLA EXPRESS course into a standalone offering that generates enrollment and revenue. Strengthen the ELLA brand architecture across sub-programs. Develop thought leadership positioning for the YSpace leadership team.
I started as a Growth Mentor across YSpace's technology portfolio, providing one-on-one mentorship to founders on customer segmentation, opportunity identification, and go-to-market strategy. That work expanded into leading a four-part Marketing Foundations workshop series (now published on YouTube as a permanent resource), and developing growth playbooks that became standard resources across YSpace programs.
The engagement has now expanded into a formal 11-month Program Advisor role covering three streams: ELLA brand and sub-brand strategy (50% of scope), ELLA EXPRESS course launch and growth (35%), and a one-time thought leadership intensive for the YSpace leadership team (10%).
My workshops cover modern tools (Lovable, Cursor, Figma, custom GPTs) alongside foundational strategy, and specifically address AI pitfalls and trust failures in marketing. The curriculum is designed for service providers as well as product builders, because that's who actually shows up in women-founder cohorts.