Once Wunmi Adekanmbi found her way into Alberta’s tech ecosystem, she felt welcome. But there was no invitation. She had to find her own way in.
Adekanmbi is the founder and executive director of Immigrant Techies Alberta, a nonprofit she describes as her way of offering that invitation to others.
“Creating Immigrant Techies, for me, was like my invitation to immigrants to Alberta tech,” she says.
Adekanmbi’s work sits at the intersection of immigration, talent development, and startup support. Her insight adds to a growing conversation about how Canada’s innovation strategy must better align with workforce realities and global trade opportunities.
For Alberta, she says, there’s still untapped potential in the communities already here.
In conversation with Digital Journal at Inventures 2025, Adekanmbi challenged the assumption that Alberta’s innovation economy is inclusive by default. While the province continues its transformation into a tech and innovation hub, she argues that without deliberate design, a significant talent pool will remain on the margins.
And that’s only a matter of fairness. It also also just makes economic sense.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Fixing design flaws, not funding gaps
Adekanmbi came to Canada 14 years ago. Like many newcomers, she saw promise in Alberta but quickly ran into the limits of how immigrant support was structured.
At the time, most programs were built on the assumption that newcomers were starting from scratch, regardless of their previous experience or skills.
“It was an attitude of ‘let’s throw them a bone,’” she says. “It looked more like it made the designers feel good about themselves that they were at least doing something.”
Her own experience led her to question why so few immigrants were present in Alberta’s growing tech ecosystem. She saw opportunity in the province’s economic diversification but also recognized that many of her peers were not even aware these paths existed.
Today, she sees more resources available, but the systemic barriers remain, particularly the unspoken requirement for Canadian experience.
“It’s not even an issue of funding — it’s not like there’s a lot of money going into immigrant support,” she explains.
The real issue, she says, lies in how programs are designed and who is involved in shaping them. Too often, the people creating these supports do so without input from those with lived experience, which leads to solutions that miss the mark.
“It’s a problem of design,” she says. “What kind of solutions and who’s designing them? How are they testing it?”
One persistent barrier is the expectation for Canadian work experience. Although this requirement rarely appears explicitly in job postings, Adekanmbi says it continues to influence hiring decisions in ways that disadvantage newcomers.
“You won’t see [Canadian experience] on job descriptions,” she says. “They don’t actually put it there, but it’s one of the things they look for.”
She hears this repeatedly from conversations with recruiters.
“When I talk to recruiters, one on one, they tell me that, ‘Oh, that’s the reason this employer told me not to consider this client.’”
To address this, Immigrant Techies Alberta builds practical programs that pair immigrant professionals with early-stage founders. Through initiatives like “Rent-a-Team,” software developers with international experience are matched with startup projects.
Founders get affordable help. Developers build Canadian experience in real-world settings.
“It’s like having a good stock,” she says. “Sometimes you just need to layer on an additional skill set: a short training, a capstone project. It’s low energy, and then you’re getting the kind of talent you need.”
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Innovation means connecting systems that don’t normally talk
Adekanmbi defines innovation less as invention and more as common-sense integration.
“We look for shiny things. When we hear innovation, everybody thinks it has to be shiny,” she says. “It has to be an invention.”
Startups at the idea stage often struggle to build a product, making it impossible to validate their idea or secure funding. At the same time, many immigrant professionals are working survival jobs, unable to practice their core skills.
Immigrant Techies works with these two groups, allowing both to benefit from collaboration. Founders get to test ideas. Developers gain relevant experience.
Adekanmbi is also thinking beyond Alberta’s borders.
In a session at Inventures on trade infrastructure, she argued that immigrant networks could be a key asset in rethinking Canada’s global economic relationships.
“The population of immigrants we have in Canada, the representation from all different parts of the world, it’s already a trade advantage, because now we have relationships we can leverage,” she says. “We have business networks, we have informal networks.”
In some cases, those connections are already driving trade in ways that formal programs have yet to catch up with.
“I was joking with people in the session that a lot more trade happens sometimes on WhatsApp chats than in some incubator program,” she adds.
These personal and community connections, she argues, are an underused advantage in Canada’s trade strategy, particularly when it comes to opening new international markets.
Adekanmbi pointed to African markets as a clear examples of this potential.
“Africa has an average population age of 19,” she says. “When you call it a developing economy, developing means there’s development potential. So, lots of infrastructure development, lots of growth of the middle class.”
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Preparing for a future that’s already here
Immigrant Techies Alberta is now building programming focused on artificial intelligence. Adekanmbi wants to ensure both immigrant professionals and employers are not left behind as AI tools transform workflows and hiring expectations.
“You’re a good designer already. But if you don’t learn how to use AI to work faster or more efficiently, you’ll be replaced by another good designer that does,” she says. “What does it really look like to equip our talent with AI and other tools? What does creating a future ready talent workforce really look like?”
The next program will train participants to build and use AI agents within their own field, then apply that training in real-world settings by helping small businesses automate internal workflows.
Once again, the model is practical. And it brings two under-supported groups together (new talent and SMEs) to unlock mutual value.
Adekanmbi sees her work as system design as much as community-building. For her, growing early-stage companies and building talent pipelines are deeply connected. Both require intentional structures that allow people and businesses to develop in parallel.
“If we don’t grow [early-stage companies], we won’t find the one that won’t fail,” she says.
The same applies to talent. As technologies advance, the demand for specialized skills shifts rapidly, and the workforce needs to keep pace.
“Because of the pace of change of technology, advancement, innovation, new technology, we have to be growing the talent alongside,” she says.
Her message to Alberta’s innovation leaders is that talent isn’t scarce — systems are. And the next phase of innovation may depend more on how we build those systems than on what technology we use to do it.
Watch the interview:
