When Kelise Williams moved to Edmonton as a permanent resident from Trinidad and Tobago five years ago, she arrived with her two kids, her husband, plenty of ambition and the warmest clothes she owned. But she didn’t have a credit card, so her family had nowhere to stay.
“We spent the first night in Canada in the lobby of a hotel because I didn’t have a credit card to put on file so that they could give me the room,” Williams says. “I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t have anybody to talk to, didn’t have anybody to call. So that was actually the motivation behind starting [the] UpRow [app], to prepare newcomers to know where to go, to reach out to a trusted source. It’s like a digital hub for settlement services.”
While Williams and her family took their trip solo, they weren’t the only ones making journeys to a new, colder land. Stats Canada shows that from 2016 until the 2021 census, 193,130 people immigrated to Alberta (74,685 of whom landed in Edmonton), the fourth most in Canada, just a few thousand behind British Columbia’s 197,355.
Although fourth, Alberta actually attracted permanent residents at a higher rate (relative to population) than the rest of Canada. With only 11.5 per cent of the country’s total population over that span, it became home to 14.5 per cent of Canada’s new permanent residents — about 21 per cent more than its population share suggests. Quebec, conversely, attracted just 0.8 per cent more permanent residents than Alberta did, despite almost one-quarter of all Canadians residing there. (Important note: Alberta’s share of permanent residents, like its total population growth, fluctuates with its economic boom-and-bust-cycles).
Williams was one of over 3,500 people from the Caribbean and Bermuda who made the same trip to Alberta during that time. Of those, 1,695 ended up in Edmonton — some of whom Williams personally picked up at the airport after volunteering at a settlement agency.
“I started loving talking about my experience. And with five years’ experience working in settlement services, combined with my 20 years-plus experience in sales and marketing, I felt like I was in a very unique position to tackle this issue.”
Williams came here, like so many people, “for a better life” — and to work in the oil and gas industry. But not everyone who immigrates to Canada has a master’s degree in environmental science and management, and she’s proof that even those with one can struggle. “I felt alone, I felt afraid and, for the first time in my life, I felt stupid. It took a toll on my confidence, and it took me a while to recover from that as a new-comer. UpRow is going to prevent this from happening to people in the future.”
Here in the future, newcomers can create free accounts on the app before they leave their homelands, and access vetted businesses in sectors like housing, legal advice, career coaching, language tutoring and banking. And there’s a community tab that connects them with fellow travelers who’ve already arrived to ensure no one ends up stranded like the Williamses did.
For users, the app is free. Businesses pay to take part, and many are happy to do so because, Williams says, “Businesses want a targeted audience of newcomers, and they want to save money on marketing. The shopping tab allows [users] to see newcomer discounts in their local area, which helps the local economy to rise up together. So let’s let the businesses pay for it, and let’s let the newcomers enjoy the benefits of not having to worry about immigration fraud, loneliness, or just being stranded in a new country.”
The businesses include Edmonton City Centre, where app users can get discounts, a growing number of locally owned storefronts, and Calgary’s Osuji & Smith Lawyers. “We have utilized services from Africa Centre [and] Canadian Imperial Advantage. And, most recently, we have been awarded through the Edmonton Hedge Fund a grant to help us scale upward, getting us into more hands to [help] the economy, and we have partnered with Aplin — one of the largest recruitment agencies in Canada.”
With over 5,000 users since version 1.0 launched two years ago, you might say the business is already a success, or at least well on its way (Williams’ admittedly “aggressive” goal is to reach 50,000 users by the end of this year).
Colin Macdonald agrees. He’s a program manager with Edmonton Unlimited’s Alberta Catalyzer pre-accelerator program, and first met Williams when she pitched the app last fall.
“A theme of her startup journey is that it was quick,” Macdonald says. “She started UpRow, and quickly got $100,000 in investments, got into two accelerator programs, and increased her annual recurring revenue by $80,000 within a couple months. Again, we’re talking a real early startup. When I saw her pitch, she had these trajectory milestones, and usually, these things are very aspirational. But she’s actually hitting them.”
Canada received record levels of immigration in 2022 [95.9 percent of which came from international migration], the same year the federal government increased its immigration target to 500,000 new residents in 2025 (which is 65 per cent higher than recent levels). According to Business Council of Alberta, by 2036, almost 30 per cent of the province’s population and 37 per cent of its workforce will be immigrants, making apps like UpRow — and people like Williams, who has 10 people on staff — crucial to continuing Alberta’s economic prosperity.
At Edmonton Unlimited’s launch event for UpRow 2.0, Williams was happy to share the growing dollar figures and user counts, and the business awards her company’s already collected. But the outgoing entrepreneur lit up even more when talking about the people in the crowd whom the app’s already helped. One bought a car through the app. Another bought a house. And even at semi-formal app-launch event, few emotions are more palpable than the joy shared in a room full of immigrants all happy to be in their new home — together.
“We have established some really good connections with newcomers and businesses on our platform,” Williams says. “So now people don’t have to worry about being stranded. They have the resources. They have the legal advice. Now, they can avoid that loneliness, that depression, because they have a community to dive right into.”
This article appears in the Jul/Aug 2024 issue of Edify
