2021 Influential Businesswoman Awards

42 Acquisition International - Influential Businesswoman Awards 2021 Nutrition Business Leader of the Year (North America): Sonia Couto e’re all aware that proper nutrition is one of the key contributors to good health, but eating out has always been more problematic no matter how much care you take when buying food to prepare at home. There was a time when some restaurants and takeaways would have preferred to hide the nutritional facts about their products. But as consumers become savvier, the appetite for knowing precisely what we are eating is growing exponentially. Born out of the need to address the alarming rise in obesity and related diseases such as diabetes, Toronto-based food analysis tech company MenuSano created a means to provide affordable nutritional analysis software to the food industry. The software enables companies to develop recipes with compliant nutrition labelling for their food products and menus. The development of MenuSano’s online product started in 2010. Despite being a great idea, it became clear to its creators that the product was ahead of its time. After the company had been knocking on doors for two years without success, it shelved the product in 2012. W But in 2014, when the Canadian government reported their health bill as being over budget, MenuSano was selected to work on a pilot project with Toronto and Ottawa Public Health. This allowed the team at MenuSano to gather user feedback from many sources in the food and health industry, which they used to refine the previously shelved product. Today, food manufacturers, restaurants, bakeries, schools, hospitals and health centres around the globe use MenuSano. Sonia Couto is MenuSano’s founder. Sonia’s background is in custom software development, and she’s also Managing Director at Konverge Digital Solutions, a role she’s held for over 15 years. MenuSano was developed under the Konverge Venture, a program to help tech start-ups get their product to market quickly. Sonia’s previous experience in operations and accounting helped her run a lean business emphasizing profitability. Currently, she’s focused on identifying ways to further expand and grow the business. Working in the tech arena is not without challenges. In the early days, as Sonia tells us, MenuSano was a mainly male-dominated company. Sonia felt that developing a diverse team would bring different ideas and points of view to the table. Once she decided to bring more diversity into the leadership team, the perspective shifted, and things started to happen. The team began to see success. Sonia is a great believer in diversity in the company, and she wants MenuSano to be at the forefront of change. Sonia herself has been overlooked for many roles in the past. But she found a way of making sure that it didn’t continue to happen. First, she made a point of learning the role she was interested in and doing the work. Then, when a vacancy arose, she became the natural choice as she’d already proven her ability. Today, Sonia tells us she has learned every role in the company, except for coding. In 2017, Sonia was diagnosed with breast cancer. Unlike many, Sonia was able to continue working during her treatment. Her experience gave her more motivation than ever before to educate the food industry about providing its customers with proper nutritional information and its benefits. She’s also an ambassador for After Breast Cancer, an organization that provides support for breast cancer survivors. Looking to the future, Sonia’s goals are to work on the global expansion of MenuSano and to continue building tech start-ups. With a raft of awards already under her belt, who could be better to help new entrepreneurs navigate the path to success? Many of us order take-out when we’ve had a busy day or working late. For Sonia Couto and her colleagues in the tech industry, this prompted the question of how could it be easier for consumers to make healthier choices when dining out? The idea of affordable online nutrition analysis software surfaced, and MenuSano was born. Jul21164 Contact: Sonia Couto Company: MenuSano Web Address: www.menusano.com