Tara Bosch: Founder of SmartSweets

Tara Bosch made Canadian history by scaling her company to be the fastest growing CPG brand founded by a solo female founder...ever. 

When a love affair with candy devolved into an unhealthy relationship with food, Tara became inspired by a conversation with her grandmother about the detrimental effects of sugar. She soon dropped out of college to fulfill her dream: to create the future of candy. 

SmartSweets can now be found in 160,000 stores across the USA & Canada, with partners including Target, Kroger, and Costco. Scaling SmartSweets to be the fastest growing CPG brand founded by a solo female founder in Canadian history, she landed a $360M majority acquisition by TPG capital 4 years after launching the company from her basement.

As a leader, Tara is wildly passionate about empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs and believes their big impact-driven visions are needed more than ever before in the world, leading her to create a first-of-its-kind initiative- Bold Beginnings. In addition to fostering connection and tailored support to entrepreneurs with big visions, Tara is working to normalize the feelings of self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and insecurities that all entrepreneurs face, while putting funds back into the ecosystem supporting women entrepreneurs to bring their visions and companies to scale.

Publicly, Tara has been recognized for how she beat the statistics of women in entrepreneurship not only by being a solo founder, but maintaining ownership of her brand, keeping gender parity on her board and scaling a team that has always been 80% female-identifying.

She is the recipient of several entrepreneurial awards, including being named Canada’s Most Powerful Women Top 100 Award, Forbes 30 under 30, Peter Thiel Fellow, and EY Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year.

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Tara Bosch: @tarabosch

Smart Sweets: @SmartSweets

Erica Wenger: @erica_wenger

Dear Twentysomething: @deartwentysomething