Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers (2026) Magazine - Magazine - Page 58
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CANADA’S TOP SMALL & MEDIUM EMPLOYERS (2026)
Ecosystem thinking drives StarTech’s global growth
O
riol Madrenas first
joined London, Ont.based StarTech.com
Ltd. in 2007 for a
summer working
in the warehouse while he was
attending Western University
nearby. At that time, the IT
connectivity company had just 50
employees. Madrenas would go
on to work in customer service,
marketing, market research, sales
and client success, with postings
in Canada, the United States and
Spain. With StarTech’s support, he
would obtain a global executive
MBA degree.
“It’s definitely not been a
straight-line path,” says Madrenas,
chief revenue officer, of the now
400-employee organization. But
that’s not unusual at StarTech,
which just celebrated its 40th
anniversary last fall. “There’s a lot
of encouragement for that kind of
curiosity and movement and a lot
of opportunity to build a career
that evolves alongside
the business.”
In evaluating current and
prospective employees, StarTech
prizes values as much as proven
performance and skills.
“We try to look for the potential
and the ambition in our people
and really try to align that to
where they’ll be able to thrive,”
Madrenas says. “For 40 years, a
lot of doors have opened, and the
company encourages its employees to walk through them.”
One of the company’s values is
to think about customer, employee
and community relationships
alike as ecosystems. That’s why it
has a long-standing partnership
with the United Way at its London
headquarters. Every employee donation to the charity gets matched
by Paul Seed, StarTech’s founder
and CEO, resulting in more than
$5 million in donations over the
organization's history. In addition,
employees get one paid day per
year to volunteer for a charity of
their choice.
Ecosystem thinking is also why
StarTech has employee resource
groups (ERGs) to organize events
and advise management on matters of philanthropy, diversity and
employee social interaction.
And that’s why it has made firm
commitments to environmental,
social and governance (ESG)
principles, which over the past
two years has earned the company
gold status from EcoVadis. The
award recognizes StarTech as
ranking among the top five per
cent of companies globally
for sustainability.
Brooke Taylor, who was hired as
a graphic designer last September,
was impressed from the start by
how transparent management
was with employees at town hall
meetings. She also notes the many
opportunities she’s had to get to
know her colleagues on a personal
level, from a team challenge pulling a plane at London’s airport to a
Halloween costume contest where
For 40 years, a lot of doors have opened, and the
company encourages its employees to walk
through them.
StarTech.com employees volunteer to clean up the local community on Earth Day.
— Oriol Madrenas
Chief Revenue Officer
