Barb Stegemann

Barb Stegemann

Barb Stegemann – Naked Entrepreneur

Barb Stegemann was born in Montreal, Quebec. Her familymoved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia when she was eight years old.

She returned to her birth province of Quebec every summer during university to study French Immersion and loves finding every opportunity to speak in French. As a teen, her family fell on hard times and she and her sister lived with their single mother on welfare. This shaped Barb as a passionate advocate of empowering all people and ignited her interest in developing new models of economic development.

Barb put herself through university and holds degrees in Sociology and Journalism from the University of King’s College. After her journalism degree she moved out west to British Columbia and built her own boutique PR firm with clients from MITACS, the largest NCE in Canada to fundraisers for Lululemon and she led the tourism and economic development project for The City of Coquitlam. She created innovative, award winning campaigns that garnered private sector and government funding and won numerous marketing awards from EDAC, the Economic Developers’ Association of Canada for her work in economic development.

After Barb’s best friend was wounded in Afghanistan in 2006, she spent a year of visits in the hospital with him and his family and set out to support his mission of economic empowerment for others. She created a brand new business model that does trade with nations experiencing war or strife. She launched The 7 Virtues Beauty Inc., a company that began by sourcing essential oils distilled from legal crops of orange blossom and rose to provide an alternative to the illegal poppy crop for farmers. The delicate fragrance line is the thesis in her best selling book brought to reality; that women can flex their buying power to effect change and reverse issues of war and poverty. She dedicated her self-published book to her best friend, Captain Greene and it is now a best seller in its 3rd edition. Barb is the first woman from Atlantic Canada to have successfully pitched and landed a venture capital deal on CBC’s Dragons’ Den and went on to become what is considered one of the top pitches in the history of the popular reality show.

Barb was nominated Chatelaine Women of the Year, Entrepreneur category 2011, Nominated Manning Innovation Award 2011 and received the Women Innovator’s award 2011 from the US State Department for the Economy of Canada. She was ranked Top 30 Cool & Fabulous Canadian entrepreneurs by Profit Magazine 2012 and was nominated Ernst & Young Entrepreneur 2012.