Tracy Folorunsho-Barry: Raising the Bar for Female Immigrants

Tracy Folorunsho-Barry is a multi-award-winning career strategist and recruiter. She is also the Founder and CEO of GROW Women Leaders and GROW Foundation. 

During her migration to Canada from Nigeria, Barry faced struggles with integrating into the country. She acknowledged that she lacked the proper guidance and support she needed as an immigrant. 

Barry also found that her struggles were common for other immigrant women in Canada and decided to take action after freeing herself from a limited lifestyle. 

She took the initiative to start helping other women, especially immigrants, reach their full potential and access new opportunities in their careers. Since then, she has dedicated her career to helping thousands of women, especially immigrants, get hired and advance their careers. 

In 2017, under GROW Foundation, Barry launched Project150: Accomplished Immigrant Women in Canada and the Speak Out Women series where she began gathering stories from more than 200 immigrant women across Canada who have overcome adversity to achieve success in their careers and lives. 

They shared their stories and expressed that they wished they had known about the knowledge, resources and guidance available for them to succeed in Canada. While collecting their stories of resilience, Barry realised the wealth of knowledge these women possessed and the valuable insights that they could share with other immigrant women and their communities. 

Thus, the book, Untold Stories of Immigrant Women in Canada was published.

Barry’s work did not stop there; she knew there were still gaps in empowerment, leadership and career development services for immigrant women and she knew she had to do something to bridge these gaps.

Later in 2018, Barry founded GROW Women Leaders (GROW), a career leadership development and advancement platform designed to help women get hired and advance their careers. Her goal is to help women connect to companies locally, nationally, and internationally. 

GROW has a department that works in partnership with our immigration consultants to help candidates process their visas to Canada from around the globe. GROW will then work with candidates on how to secure a job upon their arrival in Canada with our employer partners and provide candidates with ongoing support to integrate into the country. 

In 2021, she opened The GROW Space, a socially conscious 7000sq ft facility that houses Nurture café, lounge, co-working space and more. Proceeds from the facility go directly towards supporting women, especially immigrants, to get hired and advance their careers – the public is encouraged to use the facility to work and study in.

To her contributions and community involvement, Barry was honoured with various awards and recognitions: 2016 Obsidian Awards, 2017 Top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada, 2018 Top 6 Immigrant Women of Inspiration Award (Canadian Immigrant), 2018 Abedorc Community Involvement and Leadership Award, 2018 Phenomenal African Woman.

Others are Legislative Assembly of Alberta Recognition for Community Service by MLA Rod Loyola, Recognition by Mayor Don Iveson and the City of Edmonton in 2020 for her contributions and community involvement, 2021 Daughters Day Award (Alberta), and 2022 Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Recipients