BCBusiness
Sarah Goodman, president and CEO of NorthX Climate tech (formerly the B.C. Centre for Innovation & Clean Energy, CICE), is a winner in the Community Builders category of the 2025 Women of the Year Awards
Sarah Goodman calls climate change “the existential crisis of our generation”—sustainability has become a fundamental part of the conversation in every business and in every industry. The CEO of NorthX Climate Tech (formerly the B.C. Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy, CICE) stresses that finding solutions in our province isn’t an issue of supply and demand: we have companies that require new technology, and we have smart people with the answers. What’s lacking is community.
“You have innovators out there creating solutions, but they often don’t have a customer base,” says Goodman, who grew up in North Vancouver. She adds that the opposite is also true: large organizations seek answers but aren’t connected to the right problem-solvers. NorthX works to provide that missing link. “It’s about creating economic opportunity… it’s about keeping our smartest folks at home,” she says. By hosting events, sharing resources and investing in B.C. cleantech, her company exists in a valuable hybrid space between the public and private sector.
For example, there’s Converge, an event that brought together 300 people (including big industry players like Shell and Canfor, government agencies, investors, scientists, startups and more) to connect and collaborate. “Communities build companies,” says Goodman, noting that networking opportunities like this often result in innovators partnering together. The CEO is also behind the company’s $3-million Call for Women in Climate Tech. “Right now, only 2 percent of all venture capital goes to women-led companies globally,” says Goodman. “If half the population is sitting on the sidelines, we’re not going to seize that economic opportunity.”
Prior to her work at NorthX, Goodman was a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, where she advised on advancing climate solutions and green industrial policy. She also served as senior advisor to prime minister Justin Trudeau on climate action and sustainable economy. She says what she loves most about her job now is how tangible it is: NorthX’s financial support has directly contributed to innovators like Salish Environmental, a company that’s using carbon dioxide from construction and forestry waste to create year-round food production solutions for the Sunshine Coast. Or, there’s Edison Motors, a Merrit-based company that’s designing the world’s first electric tri-blade highway snow plow. Goodman was instrumental in the country’s first funding opportunity for wildfire tech (“For good and bad reasons, Canada should be a leader in wildfire tech… we should be building and providing those solutions to the whole world,” she says) and her company has had an impact on too many local businesses to list: as of fall 2024, CICE (now NorthX) reported $39.1 million in investment value. The work is important, and to Goodman, it’s important that it’s in B.C.: “I want to support the place where I grew up, the place that I live—and create jobs that have a global impact.”
Discover our full list of 21 BCBusiness 2025 Women of the Year award winners here.