When four Calgary high school students came together to smash the statistic that more than half of small businesses fail in the first five years due to lack of customer outreach, the result was Rebel Catalyst.
A social media marketing program, Rebel Catalyst is designed specifically for those businesses that struggle to promote their products the most small locally-owned enterprises that are the lifeblood of the economy.
"Millions of small businesses, especially those led by women, minorities and local founders, struggle to stand out online. They lack the budget, tools or time to build a presence across (the) social media platforms that drive discovery today," said Hasbiyallah Shittu, a Grade 12 student at STEM Innovation Academy in northwest Calgary.
"We built Rebel Catalyst because we believe that small businesses deserve to be seen, and access to visibility shouldn't depend on privilege or having a marketing degree and a big budget," she explained.
Shittu and classmates Manogna Putta, Ananya Ratti and Tirath Purewal developed the Rebel Catalyst app as the latest Alberta entry to the Technovation Girls competition, a global tech education initiative that equips girls aged 10 to 18 with the skills to become tech entrepreneurs. The Faculty of Science has been home to Technovation for the Calgary region since 2014.
Supported by Dr. Jonathan Hudson and other mentors from the Department of Computer Science, the 2025 team developed their app over several months, learning to code, conducting user research, and pitching their idea to judges.
Their hard work paid off, as the team was named a global semi-finalist in the 2025 Technovation Girls' senior division, placing them as the top Canadian team and among the top young tech innovators globally.
The Rebel Catalyst platform provides automated content creation, posting and engagement on small businesses' social media accounts, providing an affordable solution for entrepreneurs to promote their offerings without taking their eyes off their day-to-day operations.
"By helping small businesses turn scrolls into sales, stories into strategy and visibility into victory, we're turning social media from a noisy battleground into a tool for empowerment. Small businesses deserve to be seen, and we're here to make that happen," said team member Tirath Purewal.
"The Rebel Catalyst team really hit it out of the park," said Dr. Leanne Wu, associate co-head (community) in the Department of Computer Science, who has supervised several Technovation teams.
"They came up with a very strong business plan that addresses a meaningful problem, and they placed above teams from across the country, including Vancouver, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Montreal.
"Technovation Girls is an amazing program because the tech projects led by girls are often focused on very different topics that don't normally (get) attention from the typical tech bros... It has really turned into a pipeline for some of the brightest students we have at the university now."
One of those students is Rumeza Fatima, who did two solo projects for Technovation Girls and is now a second-year computer science student and recipient of a Schulich Leader Scholarship.
Fatima developed apps to help young people deal with eating disorders, and to help improve sustainability in the fashion industry - projects borne out of her own experience and interests.
"Technovation is a great launch pad, it made me realize that I was not just a high school student, I was someone who could make an impact by working on things I was passionate about," she told the Rebel Catalyst team during a celebration lunch at the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking in late-September.
More recently, Fatima founded The Archive, a non-profit microgrant initiative that helps people pursue meaningful experiences by offering grants ranging from $100 to $1,000.
"I started programming in Grade 10 and it's had this huge snowball effect. I started making apps because the ones that were available weren't enough for what I needed, and these projects just kept growing and becoming bigger and better than I ever expected," she said.
Recruiting for the 2026 Technovation Girls team is now underway. For more information on how to get involved, visit the program's website.
