HALIFAX, NS / VANCOUVER, BC — October 5th, 2026 — The League of Innovators (LOI), Canada’s largest community for founders under 30, launched Edge, a high-performance and mental health program for young Canadian entrepreneurs. Through a partnership with GreenShield, Canada’s only national non-profit health care and insurance organization, LOI is delivering Canada’s most robust entrepreneurial mental health and high-performance support infrastructure to the nation’s top young entrepreneurs. GreenShield is helping remove cost barriers to care by providing all LOI founders 29 and under with access to therapy, care navigation and mental health support when they need it, alongside LOI’s group coaching, peer support, and performance training. Most Canadian accelerators offer little sustained wellness support beyond a program week. Edge builds it into the founder journey itself.
The launch answers what LOI heard from its own community. In a needs assessment conducted with workplace wellness firm WellIntel, 85% of LOI founders reported burnout, more than two-thirds said daily stress interferes with their work, and 58% said they have no coverage for mental health services. The numbers track nationally: GreenShield, in partnership with Mental Health Research Canada, found that more than 1 million Canadian youth need mental-health support every year and nearly 60% don’t get it, with cost and wait times the leading barriers. This partnership builds on GreenShield’s broader efforts to improve youth mental health access across Canada through investments in affordable care, community partnerships, and research initiatives like the Youth Mental Health Data Hub,
“Our founders were telling us two things at once: they were carrying real weight - burnout, stress and isolation and they couldn’t afford the help that would lift it,” said Kyle Moore, Edge Program Lead and Director of Thrive Programming at LOI. “We treat our founders like athletes. At this level, everyone is good. Edge is what supports the jump from good to great.”
The program will be available to all LOI founders, and the therapy supports will be available to LOI founders 29 and under. There is no cost or equity stake to join the LOI community; all Canadian founders under 30 are encouraged to join.
What Edge Delivers
Edge recognizes that well-being and sustainable performance go hand-in-hand, providing founders with proactive mental health support to help them navigate the unique challenges of entrepreneurship.
Rather than positioning care as remediation, the program encourages participation to prioritize their mental well-being as part of a sustainable approach to leadership and long-term success. Through the GreenShield partnership and LOI’s broader programming, Edge gives founders:
Access to 5 free therapy sessions and trusted resources through GreenShield’s Youth Mental Health Ecosystem, a centralized digital platform where youth can access timely, culturally relevant mental health supports.
Group coaching and peer support with founders who understand the pressure without explanation.
Performance literacy through practical, evidence-informed training in stress physiology, recovery, and performing under pressure.
Fast navigation to additional wellness services, cutting the time between reaching out and receiving care.
The program is built around clear goals: to improve founders’ daily functioning and ability to perform in their key roles, to dramatically shorten the time between reaching out and receiving care, and to demonstrate what LOI has believed from the start: that positive mental wellbeing is tied to positive venture outcomes and longer, more sustainable entrepreneurial careers.
As Canada’s only national non-profit health care and insurance company, GreenShield reinvests its excess earnings through GreenShield Cares to improve access to care and advance health equity for underserved communities. That shared belief that health care is a right, not a privilege, is what brought GreenShield to Edge.
“At GreenShield, we believe mental health care should be easy to access, affordable and designed around the realities young people face,” said Mandy Mail, Executive Vice President, Head of GreenShield Cares. “Through our partnership with League of Innovators, we’re helping remove barriers to care for young founders so they can focus on their wellbeing, their leadership and the ventures they’re building.”
Filling a National Gap
Most Canadian accelerators offer little to no sustained wellness support beyond a single program week. By embedding mental health and performance support directly into the founder journey, and making therapy free, LOI positions itself as a national leader in founder resilience and wellbeing.
“This is a massive win for Canada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Moore added. “It’s not enough to help someone just build a company; we want to be clear that helping young people, in uncertain times, become better and healthier entrepreneurs, leaders and people means sustained excellence for the businesses they build. They’re the engine that makes this whole thing go; this is just the fine-tuning.”
Join the Community
LOI membership is free, with no equity taken. The community connects 2,100+ young founders across Canada whose ventures have created more than $1.8 billion in enterprise value. To the founder who has been pushing through alone: there’s a community built for you, and now there’s care built into it.
Learn more and apply at www.loi.ac.
About the League of Innovators
The League of Innovators is a national Canadian charity and the country’s largest community for founders under 30. Founded in 2017 by Hootsuite.com co-founder Ryan Holmes, LOI invests in the people behind the ventures — their resilience, community, mindset, and performance. All programming is free and equity-free. LOI alumni have created over $1.8 billion in enterprise value.
About GreenShield
As Canada’s only national non-profit health care and insurance organization, GreenShield believes health care is a right, not a privilege. We’re dedicated to improving health outcomes, driving systemic change, and building a future where every Canadian can reach their full health and well-being potential.
We are revolutionizing the health care and insurance experience by bringing coverage and care together in one place. Through our unique integrated payer-provider (“payvider”) model, we offer insurance, administer benefits, and pay claims as a ‘payer’ while offering health care services such as mental health, pharmacy, telemedicine, and chronic disease management as a ‘provider’.
As a non-profit social enterprise without shareholders, we reinvest our excess earnings to directly support underserved communities. Through GreenShield Cares, we positively impacted the health and well-being of over one million Canadians between 2020 and 2025.
What’s driving us now is the commitment to measurably impact an additional three million Canadians by 2030 – across mental health, essential medicines, and chronic disease management – through scalable initiatives that deliver meaningful change in pursuit of our mission of Better Health for All.
GreenShield is proud to be recognized multiple times as one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures, certified annually as a leading Imagine Canada Caring Company, and honoured with repeat placement on Fortune’s prestigious Change the World list – a testament to our sustained commitment to purpose-driven innovation and impact.
Media Contact
This is the official joint press release from League of Innovators and GreenShield. For LOI’s own announcement about Edge, read our news story.