Dr. Greg Wanger, Founder & CEO, Oberland Agriscience Inc.

With a Ph.D. in Geology and Environmental Microbiology, Dr. Wanger is an experienced research scientist. In 2016, Greg and his family relocated to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Shortly after, Dr. Wanger founded Oberland Agriscience Inc. out of his desire to address the escalating global protein shortage. Combining a life-long passion for science and innovation with environmental activism, Dr. Wanger and his team are optimizing the Black Soldier Fly to produce a premium, nutrient-rich, reliable protein for inclusion in aquafeed, pet food, and livestock feed. By upcycling Nova Scotia’s pre-consumer organic waste – such as spent brewery grains and food production wastes – Oberland Agriscience is on track to produce a dependable protein source on an industrial scale using less land, less water, and producing lower carbon emissions than conventional protein sources, thereby enabling a resilient, food-secure future.

Sarah MacDonald, Executive Director, Farm Cafe

Sarah MacDonald attended Dalhousie University, Agricultural College, to study Environmental Horticulture where she received her undergraduate degree and a diploma in Landscape Horticulture. For the last ten years, Sarah has spent much of her career in community food development, motivated by dignified emergency food access and true food security rooted in education and food literacy. Sarah’s dedication to the community has built many gardens and planted thousands of seeds in community spaces, schools and backyards. No one can make a good decision on an empty belly, so she wanted to help empower people to learn about horticulture, grow their own food, and harvest overall wellness. In 2021 the Farm Cafe began, built from research around the Sharing Our Urban/Ugly Produce program taking waste food and turning it into free meals, this is a social enterprise with a ‘pay what you can’ model.

David Messer, Executive Director, City of Guelph Smart Cities Office

At the City of Guelph Smart Cities Office, David is leading two projects aimed at growing the circular economy across southern Ontario: Our Food Future – an Infrastructure Canada funded smart city project aimed at creating a circular food economy across Guelph and Wellington County, and; COIL (Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad) a FedDev funded circular accelerator supporting business innovation across southern Ontario. Since 2020, Our Food Future and COIL have launched over 80 projects across Guelph-Wellington involving 1000+ stakeholders aimed at increasing food access, accelerating circular business practices and redefining waste as a resource in our local economy. Since fall 2021, COIL has worked with over 150 companies from Ottawa to Windsor to develop and deploy innovative new circular economy solutions and technologies, several of whom are anticipating millions in new revenue these circular products.