Sabrina Geremia

VP & Country Manager, Google Canada

was largely spent EVEN PRIOR TO THE PANDEMIC, OUR WORK ROUTINE in a hybrid state — a mix of face-to-face and video meetings with Googlers and customers around the world. With the onset of the pandemic, every business out there needed to shift to digital, and fast. To help with this, we launched free access to our video conferencing service, Google Meet, and expanded access to the already-free suite of Google for Education tools. We found ourselves living in a once-in-a-generation digitization moment and understood the importance of helping our communities and the 1.2 million businesses in Canada who were forced to shift to digital overnight. In the early weeks of work-from-home, we gathered leaders from across our organization to brainstorm the answers to one question: How can we support Canadians and Canadian businesses as we navigate a global pandemic?

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBS) account for a staggering 98 per cent of Canadian companies. And according to the OECD, closures hit SMBS the hardest. At the start of the pandemic, very few were digitally enabled. Our small business stream worked fast and furiously to bring them online. In May of 2021 we announced a million-dollar commitment to scale our Digital Main Street’s SHOPHERE program, and SHOPHERE powered by Google was born. In the weeks to follow, Feddev Ontario and the provincial government announced a $57 million investment to expand the program across Ontario.

Seeing our world turned upside down has only reinforced my commitment to empowering people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with technology. Not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. I’ve worked in this sector for two decades, and what my colleagues and I are really in the business of is helping people succeed, stay informed and most importantly — stay connected.