Winnipeg startup charts path to connections

Nancy Cooke has lost a few elections in the past, but on Tuesday, she was declared the winner.

The entrepreneur and former MLA candidate won a competition organized by North Forge and the United States Consulate in Winnipeg after pitching her startup, Campaign Compass, to three judges.

Cooke beat six other startups for the prize: round-trip airfare and free admission to the SelectUSA Investment Summit in National Harbor, Md., next month, where she’ll have the opportunity to connect with investors and U.S. market-entry resources.

“It’s amazing. The opportunity is huge for our company and we’re just super excited,” Cooke said.

Cooke has managed Elm Park Dental, where her husband practises dentistry, for the last 25 years. She’s also served as director of political operations and interim executive director with the Progressive Conservative Party of Winnipeg, and she’s run for elected office in municipal and provincial elections.

Her interests in business and politics came together in 2022, when she launched Campaign Compass, an all-in-one digital platform designed to streamline and enhance every aspect of political campaign management.

“(Political) campaigns are chaos,” Cooke said during her pitch at the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada in Winnipeg. “We wanted to bring clarity to that chaos with one platform.”

The platform offers tools for communication, donation management, volunteer co-ordination and more. Campaign Compass offers flexible, customizable plans that start at $150 per month. The platform has more than 2,000 users, a number the company projects will reach 5,000 by Q3 this year, Cooke said.

Users input data they collect from a campaign’s audience, which translates into real-time analytics they can use to inform how the campaign is going and what their next move should be.

“My personal belief, having run a political organization, is there is a heavy reliance on polling and social media, but you don’t always know that you’re talking to your voters — and that’s the disconnect. My system was built so you know you’re talking to your voters,” Cooke said.

Among Cooke’s competitors were U-Pro Soccer, a sportstech company that blends player development, gaming and AI; PregEase, a non-hormonal, at-home fertility aid; and QDoc, a free virtual health-care service.

The panel of judges included Aisha Bowe, an entrepreneur who has started two companies: STEMBoard, which provides advisory services to organizations in the U.S. government; and LINGO, an education technology company that develops STEM learning kits and curriculum

Formerly a NASA rocket scientist, Bowe is a citizen astronaut who participated in the all-woman, 10-minute spaceflight operated by Blue Origin in April 2025.

Debra Jonasson-Young, executive director for the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Manitoba, and Whitney Morgan, director of operations at North Forge, joined Bowe on the panel.

All seven pitches were “fantastic,” Bowe said. “They were innovative. You had technologies, many of which were either patent pending or awarded. It was incredible.”

Campaign Compass stood out because Cooke made a compelling case and is prepared to enter the U.S. market in the near term, Bowe added.

“Politics is everywhere, and wanting to have data that is accurate and timely is also an issue. So to be able to solve that with a software tool that already has traction and was developed by somebody who’s run for office just seems to be a perfect fit,” she said.

SelectUSA Investment Summit is a U.S. federal government program that promotes foreign direct investment into the United States. It brings together investors, companies and economic developers from all over the world to explore opportunities.

Joelle Foster, North Forge president, said her organization wanted to support a competition to send a Winnipeg startup to the summit because it’s important to promote Canadian talent to U.S. investors.

At a time when Canada and the U.S. are involved in a trade war, Foster hopes cultivating relationships between tech companies and investors from both countries can be part of the solution.

“We have to keep the conversations going because this too shall pass and they are our neighbours,” she said. “Leadership changes, and when leadership changes, the people are still there. The business is still there. So you never want to cut anything off completely.”

The U.S. Consulate in Winnipeg was “thrilled” to partner with North Forge on the pitch competition, U.S. consul Rebecca Molinoff said in an email.

“The calibre of the pitches was incredible and we wish all the participants the best of luck as they grow their businesses,” she said.

The U.S. Consulate in Winnipeg brought Bowe to Winnipeg for two days as part of its celebration of the 250th anniversary of its country’s Declaration of Independence.

Bowe made a number of appearances during her time in the city, including speaking to school groups and visiting Magellan Aerospace.

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca