2024 VIBE Awards to honour outstanding Indigenous entrepreneurs this November

Each year, the Visionary Indigenous Business Excellence (VIBE) Awards bring together students, professionals, faculty, and entrepreneurs to celebrate the best in Indigenous business leadership. The 18-year tradition invites Asper School of Business students, alumni, and community members to gather in inspiration and connection.

VIBE is hosted by Indigenous Business Education Partners (IBEP), a unit at the Asper School of Business dedicated to offering a welcoming community and academic services to Indigenous students as they explore their leadership potential in the world of business.

The 2024 VIBE Awards are on November 14, 2024, celebrating this year’s recipients: Emilie McKinney, founder of Anishinaabe Bimishimo, and Shaun Vincent, founder of Vincent Design Inc.

This prestigious annual event combines celebration, networking, and philanthropy and will highlight the incredible contributions of VIBE Award recipients McKinney and Vincent, who have each led with ingenuity, passion and a vision that goes far beyond their respective industries. Says IBEP director Riley Proulx [BComm(Hons)/19],

“everyone can find inspiration from the stories of resilience, courage and dedication of our award recipients.”

2024 VIBE Award Winner – Anishinaabe Bimishimo

2024 VIBE Award recipient Emilie McKinney

Emilie McKinney’s entrepreneurial journey began when she learned that her go-to jingle cone supplier in Swan Lake First Nation no longer offered jingles, the ornamental metal cones sewn into traditional jingle dresses.

Alongside her mother, Natalie Foidart, McKinney founded Anishinaabe Bimishimo in 2017, which has since grown into North America’s largest jingle cone manufacturing company.

With over one hundred retailers across the continent, Anishinaabe Bimishimo has thrived thanks to the care that McKinney brings to her work—hand-rolling jingles in the brand’s early days, securing custom machinery to meet demand and working with steel and paint manufacturers to produce unique, high-quality jingles in Manitoba.

McKinney has written about how the jingle dress represents healing. “The jingle cones are meant to hit each other to awaken the creator so that prayers and healing can be heard,” she wrote in 2019. She has developed special coloured cones that promote awareness and community healing, creating red cones in honour of MMIWG2S and turquoise cones to recognize the impacts of intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities.

McKinney is also a member of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization Youth Council, working to promote awareness about water treatment and water-related issues in Manitoba. In addition to the 2024 VIBE Award, McKinney is the recipient of the 2018 Youth Entrepreneur of the Year by Start Up Canada, 2022 Top 6 Bear’s Lair Business Pitch Competition on APTN and the 2024 NACCA Youth Entrepreneur Award of Excellence.

2024 VIBE Award Winner – Vincent Design Inc.

2024 VIBE Award recipient Shaun Vincent

Founder of Vincent Design Inc., Shaun Vincent is an artist, graphic designer and entrepreneur who grew up in the Métis community of St. Laurent.

Working in the design industry, Vincent saw the need for representational design and struck out on his own to build a branding and marketing firm focused on promoting Indigenous communities, organizations, and companies. Today, Vincent Design Inc. has grown to a team of close to 40, serving clients from Manitoba to California.

Vincent has designed hundreds of logos, specializing in those that require a deep understanding and sensitivity to the people and stories they represent, including the Survivors’ Flag, a design created for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in honour of residential school Survivors. The Flag was introduced during the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation federal holiday in 2021 and raised at Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

He has worked with organizations across Canada, including the Southern Chiefs’ Organization on branding and marketing around their acquisition of the historical, flagship Hudson Bay Building, branding and web presence and for Indspire, and branding and layout for Canadian Geography on the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada.

As an entrepreneur and business leader, Vincent also invests in a future where more Indigenous artists and designers can pursue their dreams. The Vincent Design Scholarship Program awards up to two scholarships each semester to Indigenous youth pursuing college or university studies in graphic design and fine arts in Canada.

Investing in future Indigenous business leaders

IBEP Director Riley Proulx emphasizes the unmatched student experience of the VIBE Awards.

IBEP Director Riley Proulx

“Every year, we hear from our students how much they look forward to attending the next VIBE Awards. Our students notice the organizations and leaders who back up their commitments to Reconciliation by supporting Indigenous programs like IBEP, and these are often the first places our students look when considering career opportunities,” he says.

More than an opportunity to inspire future business leaders and connect Asper School of Business students with the business community, the VIBE Awards also directly benefit Indigenous students pursuing business at Asper. Each year, 100% of event proceeds go toward scholarships, bursaries, academic support, and more for IBEP members.

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IBEP offers tutoring, mentoring, financial aid, and more to Indigenous students pursuing a business degree at the Asper School of Business. The annual VIBE Awards Gala is IBEP’s largest fundraising event for these services Learn more about 2024 VIBE Awards sponsorship opportunities and IBEP’s services for Indigenous business students here.

Emily Wilson