Michele Romanow

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• Leadership Redefined

  A CBC Dragon and the founder of six companies, Michele Romanow does more than talk about leadership, she lives it.

  Romanow is the co-founder of Clearco, the world’s largest e-commerce investor. As its CEO, she led the investment of $5 billion in support of 10,000 founders in 13 countries. Then she did the unthinkable. She stepped down as CEO to better support her company’s long-term success.

  With her leadership battle scars on display, Romanow redefines what it means to lead with integrity, vision, and unwavering commitment to success. She shares real-world, firsthand stories from the trenches to equip leaders with the tactics needed to build business resilience, drive real innovation, invest in their team’s development, and, most importantly, stop planning and start executing.

• Getting to Success: How to Build a Business

  Today, Michele Romanow is known as one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs — she founded six companies before her 35^th birthday. She is a CBC dragon! But her entrepreneurial journey, like many who came before her and many who followed, is littered with countless nos. An entrepreneur’s first job is to be resilient, then the real work can begin.

  In this insightful and practical talk, Romanow recounts her journey from a Queen’s University undergrad — where she started her first business from her dorm room — to becoming ranked in WXN’s “100 Most Powerful in Canada”. She digs into the mechanics of building a business, while also sharing lessons learned on her journey to the top, including the necessity of embracing change, encouraging disruption, and incentivizing innovation at every stage of the game.

• AI: The New Business Superpower

  Artificial Intelligence is a superpower every business can benefit from. Tech titan Michele Romanow will show you how.

  As the co-founder of Clearco, the world’s largest ecommerce investor, Romanow revolutionized the venture capitalist game by leveraging AI and data to measure business success. Well-versed in the transformative impact AI and new technologies, she dives into the latest tech innovations, including Alphabet, Metaverse, ChatGPT, and more, to explore the many opportunities ahead for business. Romanow will also walk audiences through the mindset required to drive innovation within an organization to help them jumpstart their AI transformation.

• Leveling the Playing Field: Equity in Business

  Michele Romanow is all too familiar with being the only woman in a room — from her engineering undergrad to building a commercial fishery in New Brunswick to becoming one of 23 female unicorn fintech founders.

  Female founders receive just 2% of venture funding. As the co-founder of Clearco, the world’s largest e-commerce investor, Romanow leveled the playing field by leveraging AI and data to take the subjectivity out of venture capital. Clearco has funded 25x more women than traditional VCs with 50% of their portfolio being female-founded businesses.

  In this insightful presentation, Romanow breaks down how she shattered the glass ceiling of venture capital, and how others can join her by leveraging data — not biases — to measure future success and potential. She’ll also share her own experiences as a female founder to empower audiences to keep pushing forward and to never let “no” stop them from pursuing their goals.

• Driving Organizational Performance in a Hybrid World

  During the pandemic, Michele Romanow transitioned her 100% in-office culture into a thriving remote organization that grew from 100 to 500 people. She learned firsthand how to drive performance in a hybrid world.

  In this presentation, Romanow will explore this new world of work and the somewhat unlikely ways she discovered to keep her team engaged, motivated, and united in their purpose despite being far apart. She will also share strategies she employed to build a healthy workplace culture that prioritized employee well-being and enabled them to deliver the best possible results.