by Zenith Wolf
A Chelsea entrepreneur has won several prestigious business awards for the renovation and electric car charger companies she’s founded over the last decade.
On Oct. 24 the Women’s Business Network (WBN), based in the National Capital Region, announced that Chelsea resident and entrpreneur Tonya Bruin was 2024’s Emerging Entrepreneurial Leader. She was chosen from among five local women nominated for the Businesswoman of the Year Award, which was narrowed down to three finalists in August.
“It was actually very surprising to me because there are so many amazing businesswomen in Ottawa,” she says. “I have a bit of impostor syndrome creeping in. But it’s been really great because, since they announced the finalists, we’ve gotten together as a group several times for cheese and brunch.”
On Nov. 2 the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association (GOHBA) also awarded her Best Basement Renovation and Best Overall Renovation in the $150K to $250K category.
Neither of the awards come with monetary compensation.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Bruin worked for the federal government for 16 years, spending the first five as Vancouver’s manager of the Air Quality Health Index program for Environment and Climate Change Canada.
She then moved to Gatineau to work for Health Canada until 2014, when she decided federal work gave her too little room for creativity.
“It’s a fantastic career, but I have an entrepreneurial spirit and that doesn’t serve well in the public service. You’re constrained by politics while working on behalf of a minister,” she says.
At the time, Bruin was also reckoning with the loss of her father, who succumbed to Parkinson’s and cancer after years of treatment.
The 40-year-old says she realized she wanted to make the most of her life and that’s when she started To Do–Done Renovations.
Though the company now focuses on renovations, she founded it in April 2015 as a handyman service.
She says there were few reputable renovators in the area willing to fix smaller problems, including patching up leaks and removing mice from a property. She modeled the business off 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, which, she says, turned the unpredictable quality of junk removal into a “professionalized service” and used innovative marketing strategies like a parade.
Bruin founded her second company, Evolta Electric, when her renovation work became consistent enough that she needed to contract electricians almost every day. She says she also noticed, after purchasing an electric vehicle in 2021, that it was difficult to find charging ports.
“We’ve installed a mix of residential and commercial EV chargers, and we’re doing LED lighting retrofits at Perley and Rideau care home with (around) 8,000 light fixture changes. That will have huge energy savings for them,” she says. “Because of my environmental policy background, I was quite interested in…decarbonizing our economy.”
Between the two companies, Bruin now works with 20 employees. She says her children grew up watching her run a company by herself, and, now that they’re in CEGEP, they’ve expressed interest in being entrepreneurs themselves.