BC Business
This year, the Technology Impact Awards have a new category: GameChanger Climate Leadership.
What exactly does it mean to innovate? With technology all around us, it’s no easy task to discern real ingenuity from short-term trends, but the BC Tech Association has been answering the call since 1993.
The Technology Impact Awards (TIAs), now open for nominations as they mark their 29th year, celebrate change makers in the province’s tech sector. Last year’s program, themed Resilience, saw 44 finalists compete in 11 categories from Startup Company of the Year to Excellence in Technology Innovation.
This time around, BC Tech reflected on all the ambition in our sector in 2021, says Erika Borgerson, the Vancouver-based nonprofit’s vice-president of marketing. “It was a record-setting year: of the 16 unicorns in Canada, 13 of them came out of B.C. So we have a lot to be proud of.”
BC Tech. The 2021 Technology Impact Awards
Encouraging innovators to help solve one of the biggest challenges facing the world, the 2022 TIAs, whose theme is Ambition, have a new category: GameChanger – Climate Leadership.
READ MORE: Will this B.C. tech innovation help drive the cities of tomorrow?
“We’ll also be expanding our startup category this year,” Borgerson notes. “Usually, we’d have three to four finalists, but this year we’ll be announcing 10 finalists for that category.” Besides recognition, the Startup Company of the Year will receive a $10,000 cash prize following a pitch night competition.
BC Tech expects to announce the TIA finalists in June. Tech companies with a local presence are encouraged to apply for this year’s 12 categories, which recognize companies at various stages of growth, areas of excellence within organizations and industry game changers.
The association has also been giving scholarships to university students and high-school graduates since 2005. The BC Tech Scholarship Program, which follows the same timeline as the TIAs, is open to students with a passion for technology in fields ranging from biotech to digital media to entrepreneurship. It offers three $3,500 grants for those pursuing higher education and three $2,500 grants for high-school grads. You can find all of the eligibility requirements here.
The deadline to apply for the 2022 edition of the TIAs is May 6.