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Manjit Minhas

Speaker Featured

Calgary, AB, Canada

Award-Winning Entrepreneur, Business Mogul & "Dragon" on CBC's Dragons’ Den

Manjit Minhas is an award-winning entrepreneur and co-founder of Minhas Breweries & Distilleries, one of the top 10 largest breweries globally, with over $220 million in annual revenue. As a star investor on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, she has backed dozens of businesses across various industries. Manjit’s expertise in scaling businesses, creating sustainable products, and breaking into competitive markets has made her a highly sought-after speaker and board member. She brings a unique blend of hands-on business experience and visionary leadership to every project she undertakes.

Keynote Speeches

Virtual Keynotes & Webinars
Contact us for more information about this speaker & their virtual presentations. Click here for some of the most popular formats for virtual events.
Business Transformation through Innovation, Inspiration & Inclusion

Manjit’s talk provides invaluable insights for organizations looking to inspire leadership, innovation, and growth, all while encouraging a positive, inclusive culture. This session is designed to resonate with teams and individuals striving for excellence in today’s competitive business environment.

Audiences will learn:

  • How to lead inclusively and ensure that your diverse teams have what they need to thrive;
  • How to set goals that actually help you reach your full potential (plus, how to spark urgency to reach these goals);
  • How to bring the best out of your mentees, and how to find a mentor who will bring the best out of you;
  • Why “everything can be negotiated,” and how to turn those conversations to your advantage
The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Lessons from the Den and 25 Years of Business Success

Manjit Minhas started her business as a 19-year-old with $10,000 and a dream. Today, her brewery is the 10th largest in the world.

An engaging and inspiring speaker, Minhas is as down-to-earth as she is business-savvy. In this highly customizable talk for entrepreneurs and leaders in any industry, she reveals the lessons that she’s learned in her two decades of groundbreaking business leadership, as well as the strategies used by some of the best entrepreneurs, innovators, and visionaries of our time.

Rising to the Top: Get the Best Through Inclusive Leadership

How can we truly rise up to the occasions that challenge us? How can we harness exciting possibilities in a way that inspires others? How can we ensure everyone under our leadership has what they need to thrive?

Award-winning entrepreneur Manjit Minhas is a brilliant speaker who will show you how to make a difference in the lives of everyone around you. She shares how you can welcome diverse voices in your team and your company, why it’s crucial to provide both encouragement and critical feedback, and how to inspire your people to persevere through challenges and look towards the future.

With wisdom and wit, Manjit shows audiences how to develop vision, grit, and true teamwork throughout your organization. “True leaders don’t create followers,” she says. “They create more leaders.”

Empowering Women: Achieving in Male-Dominated Industries

It’s so easy to conflate our positions, roles, and responsibilities with who we really are. It’s even easier to be scared when we start to see that these titles no longer represent us fully.

Manjit Minhas—CEO, entrepreneur, mother, wife, mentor, and investor—understands how hard it can be, especially for women. Creating a full, well-rounded life and career that’s truly your own means being brave enough to push the boundaries of your comfort zone, and move beyond the limiting definitions of yourself you may hold.

As the co-founder of a now-$155 million brewery, Manjit is living proof that women can—and should—achieve success in even the most male-dominated industries. In her 25 years running Minhas Breweries, Distillery and Wineries, she’s combined savvy financial sense with passion, patience, and thick skin.

In this inspiring and accessible keynote, Minhas shares her stories of challenges in her personal and professional life—and how she overcame them to re-define success and thrive. With candor, clarity, and unique insight, Minhas is the speaker sure to motivate and empower an entire generation of female innovators.

Audience reviews:

  • We were very impressed with Manjit's speech. She was inspiring, engaging, and authentic. She connected with our audience and was very open to interacting after the keynote with attendees. - Accenture
  • Thank you so much for sharing your talents, time and positive energy. With your presence, you helped make this conference an amazing and game changing experience! You brought to the forefront issues of mental health and climate change as well as diversity and inclusion within the workplace and in our communities. The world is a better place because of people like you! - Centre for Intellectual Excellence
  • The fireside chat with Manjit just now was incredible and so popular! Thank you so much for making it happen, even when we needed to change dates! - 6Sense
  • The Manjit Minhas keynote was, to sum it up in one word, phenomenal. When we announced Manjit as our speaker, we received such positive feedback from not only our students, but alumni, faculty, and staff. The excitement carried through Manjit's keynote and afterwards, as many reached out to thank the Alumni Association for putting on this event. Our audience learned so much from Manjit. They felt she was not only inspiring and resourceful, but genuine and humorous too. - Lambton College
  • Thank you for contributing to this year's event, and making it an overwhelming success! Our delegates were extremely delighted with Manjit's knowledge, breadth of experience, candidness and kindness. She created a collaborative and nurturing atmosphere that enabled participants to share, connect, and be inspired. - Aga Khan Council For Canada
 

Speaker Biography

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, how can leaders cultivate sustainable success while fostering an inclusive culture that empowers diverse teams?

Manjit Minhas offers the perfect solution with her 25 years of entrepreneurial wisdom, inclusive leadership expertise, and real-world success stories.

Manjit Minhas is known across Canada as a star of Dragons’ Den, the hit CBC series she’s joined for 10 years after establishing herself as the formidable entrepreneur behind Minhas Breweries & Distilleries — a privately-owned global empire with annual revenues in excess of $220 million.

As a star investor on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, she has backed dozens of businesses across various industries. Manjit’s expertise in scaling businesses, creating sustainable products, and breaking into competitive markets has made her a highly sought-after speaker and board member. She brings a unique blend of hands-on business experience and visionary leadership to every project she undertakes.

A powerful leader and speaker, Manjit uses her success to clear a path for all entrepreneurs of every age and gender. In smart, engaging talks, she shares the secrets that every business leader needs to know: from the right way to set goals (and why you might be doing it wrong), to finding a mentor who can bring the best out of you (and why even CEOs need mentors). Audiences walk away from her talks inspired and equipped to find breakthrough success in any industry.

In 2024, the United Nations Association in Canada honored Manjit with the Global Citizen Laureate Award in recognition of her commitment to the UN goal of gender equality.
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Manjit started her companies as a 19-year-old petroleum engineering student by selling her Toyota RAV4 to enter the alcohol industry with the $10,000 return — and her brother, Ravinder. Despite competition from the multinational corporations controlling the beer industry, Minhas managed to establish itself in the marketplace by offering higher quality products at a better value than the competition and, within a decade, Manjit and Ravinder’s parttime job had become a $100 million operation.

The siblings became the youngest brewery owners in the world in 2006 when they purchased the second-oldest brewery in the United States: the Joseph Huber Brewery in Monroe, WI. The facility was renamed the Minhas Craft Brewery and modernized to meet the demands of an ever-evolving industry.

Today, Manjit has over 90 brands of beers, spirits, liqueurs and wines. Her products are sold in five provinces, 47 American states and 16 other countries. Minhas companies have sold over 12 billion pints of Boxer Lager, Mountain Crest and other beers. She’s also created unique and successful distilled spirit products in numerous categories form vodka to whisky to Irish cream.

In addition to creating custom brands for retail chains, Manjit also collaborates with celebrity partners such as Artingstall’s Brilliant London Dry Gin, with Hollywood luminary Paul Feig, and MONEYBAG™ Vodka – an ultra-premium, 10x distilled luxury vodka with legendary KISS co-founder Gene Simmons.

Manjit believes in social responsibility and has used her engineering background to innovate production processes using the least amount of chemicals, gas, electricity and water. Manjit also created a special 48-can pack for Costco with no plastic rings and the least amount of paper box material necessary to prevent excess materials from ending up in landfills.

Manjit was the first brewer in Canada to voluntarily print warnings about drinking and driving, and the risks of consuming alcohol during pregnancy on beers cans. Meanwhile, Canadian and American consumers who suffer from celiac disease and similar dietary sensitivities have benefited from her innovative method of making delicious gluten-free beer from sorghum.

Manjit is passionate about giving back to her community and provides her time, energy and money to numerous charities such serving on the boards of the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation, Hull Services and a YWCA board that raised $50 million for a crisis shelter. She also co-chaired a $60 million United Way of Calgary and Area fundraising campaign.

And, in 2023, Manjit was honoured to have been appointed by the Department of National Defense as the Honorary Lieutenant-Colonel of the Canadian Armed Forces’  Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada.

Manjit made history in 2024 becoming the first woman owner of a CEBL team when she and Ravinder invested in the Edmonton Stingers — two-time champions of the Canadian Elite Basketball League.

Manjit also sits on the boards of Enbridge, YYC Airport Authority, and ATB Financial.

As Manjit has experienced the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, she is keen on helping others who work hard to create successful businesses and was excited to be approached by the CBC to star on Dragons’ Den in 2015. Being a venture capitalist on the Den allows Manjit to share her experience and expertise about being an entrepreneur with millions of Canadians each week.

Manjit has invested in more than three dozen businesses over the past ten seasons.

When not on the set of Dragons’ Den, calling on international buyers and suppliers or scouting new trends and industry innovations, Manjit Minhas continues to live in Calgary with her amazing husband and two daughters.