Our accomplished coaches and trainers inspire entrepreneurs, facilitate the rapid development of entrepreneurial skills, and guide them toward holistic business growth. Whether working with sports champions, seasoned entrepreneurs, or experienced managers, they provide personalized guidance that enables startups and entrepreneurs to enhance their leadership abilities and expand their businesses.
Mont X is seeking mentors for Élévation 2026, a startup support program designed to help promising local ventures grow.
Mentors—entrepreneurs, executives, and industry experts—commit 2 hours per month throughout 2026 to guide an emerging business. Their role is to provide advice, share experience, and offer strategic support to motivated founders.
In return, mentors benefit from:
The program is built around meaningful, flexible, and supportive relationships that foster local innovation.
An inspiring and visionary leader, Louis is a certified business coach and natural team leader with extensive management and transformation experience. He has successfully met major challenges, such as the creation and management of a new company and the establishment of a new international organization in Quebec.
Louis puts people at the heart of decision-making by quickly identifying the issues affecting them, while also taking into account financial and commercial aspects, and proposes realistic, results-driven solutions and action plans. He is able to initiate positive change in complex, multi-stakeholder organizational contexts.
A mentor and developer of others, he preaches by example. Possessing an innovative spirit, he instinctively grasps the human dynamics in organizations and can positively influence the culture of the organization.
Alexandre is a passionate technology entrepreneur with over ten years of experience. His company, V3 Stent, combines his expertise in technology (ex-Apple), sales (ex-KPMG), recruitment (ex-Randstad), and marketing (BBA in marketing, media startups).
He co-created Stent, an AI software that meets the needs of sales, HR, and marketing teams while being simple and efficient for daily use. The Canadian government’s Canadian Tech Accelerator program recognized his company twice as a “top SaaS innovation in Canada.”
In addition, Alexandre has spent the last ten years delivering talks and training on increasing brand awareness in the digital space. His support for MontX and its cohort is a natural fit as he has mentored at Evol, Startup Montréal, and other organizations such as HEC Montréal, the University of Copenhagen, and Enfant Soleil.
Ève Desmarais is a seasoned entrepreneur and manager who has worked mainly in the HRI and franchising sectors for a dozen years. She firmly believes that the performance of companies and organizations depends first and foremost on people: Business is people.
For nearly 35 years, in addition to leading as an entrepreneur, Ève has passionately built exceptional, high-performance teams in large organizations such as large public corporations as a senior executive, in small and medium-sized businesses and in the Quebec government.
Today, Ève enthusiastically shares her entrepreneurial and management expertise with entrepreneurs and executives as a coach, advisor and mentor in their business strategy and leadership development.
Ève is a graduate of Université Laval in communications and public relations.
Here are its main fields of action:
Choosing to become a coach at the Mont X incubator was an obvious choice for me. This is where my two passions come together: the dynamism of entrepreneurship and my life long dedicated to sports and well-being. For me, this commitment is a form of gratitude, an opportunity to pass on my expertise and support entrepreneurs in a field that is the very essence of my life.
Jean-Philippe graduated in entrepreneurship from HEC in the fall of 2011, and joined the Innovitech team in early 2012. Since 1989, Innovitech has been driving its customers’ growth through technological and collaborative innovation. The company operates in cutting-edge sectors such as healthcare, aeronautics, space, the environment, territorial development and new materials. In addition to his business development role at innovitech, Jean-Philippe is also a senior consultant in the company’s three practices: startup coaching, strategic consulting and innovation project management.
In 2017, with the conviction that sport is a laboratory for health, Jean-Philippe launched a new division within the firm: Athletc. The vision of this intraprise was to make Quebec a hub for new technologies for athletes from podium to patient, for both elite athletes and seniors. Athletc. with 3 founding members (the Montreal Alouettes, Concordia University’s PERFORM Centre and the Institut National du Sport du Québec) has supported over 30 startups and tracked more than 100 human performance technologies in Canada.
With the Athletc. project now closed, Jean-Philippe remains irrationally passionate about the industry and acts as an advisor to startups. His expertise lies in the development of a technical-commercial strategy, business development and corporate governance.
Finally, Jean-Philippe is proud to sit on the Board of Directors of Altergo, an organization campaigning for universal accessibility through leisure, culture and sport. The Défi Sportif Altergo, Canada’s largest multi-sport event, has been held annually in Montreal since 1984.
I’m irrationally passionate about the idea that sport is a driver of economic development, a lever for public health and a human connector.
I’m convinced that Mont X is an asset for realizing this passion, and that the startups here have the potential to make Quebec a world capital in sports entrepreneurship.
Julie is a marketing professional with more than 20 years of experience in the tourism, outdoor recreation, and cultural sectors. She has held executive leadership positions within major organizations, including Vice President of Business Development and Commercialization at Le Massif de Charlevoix, and has contributed to landmark projects such as Montréal’s 375th anniversary celebrations, Moment Factory, and Tourisme Montréal.
Today, as a consultant, Julie supports growing businesses and organizations—including the Alliance de l’industrie touristique du Québec, Ferreol Skis, and Kina8at—in developing growth strategies, market positioning, partnerships, and brand visibility.
As a coach and mentor, Julie shares her expertise with entrepreneurs in the tourism sector and early-stage startups participating in specialized incubators. She has also served on the CAA-Québec Board of Directors since 2019, where she actively contributes to discussions on sustainable mobility and the future of tourism.
An avid outdoor enthusiast who has explored more than 60 countries, Julie believes that outdoor experiences are a powerful driver of well-being, creativity, and innovation.
Dany is an expert in debt and equity financing, as well as mergers and acquisitions, recognized for his ability to develop growth and value-creation strategies in complex and strategic sectors such as defence, security, and industrial markets. With more than 25 years of experience in corporate finance and business advisory, he helps executives navigate critical stages of growth, consolidation, and strategic transactions.
A former officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and former Vice President at the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Dany combines operational discipline with strategic vision. As the co-founder of Qohash, a cybersecurity company specializing in data protection, he now serves as a growth and financing advisor, bringing together discipline, leadership, and sharp business acumen.
Cédrick holds a Master’s degree in Marketing from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and has built his career at the intersection of performance, discipline, and creativity. A former high-performance athlete and finalist at the 2002 World Junior Athletics Championships, he now applies the discipline of elite sport to the worlds of business and digital innovation.
Passionate about digital marketing since creating his first website in 1999, Cédrick founded Unikeo Sports Inc. in 2013, a digital marketing agency specializing in the sports industry. Over the next decade, he worked with leading organizations, brands, and sports federations—including Athletics Canada—before his agency was acquired by VOLTA Sports & Entertainment Group. Driven by a constant desire to innovate, he launched GalaxIA in 2023, an agency dedicated to helping small and medium-sized businesses accelerate their digital transformation through marketing and artificial intelligence.
His career reflects a consistent focus on the intersection of sport, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Joining Mont X as a mentor was a natural fit. Sport and wellness have always been central to his life, and he considers it a privilege to share his experience with fellow entrepreneurs while giving back to an industry that has profoundly shaped his journey.
Patrick is a business generalist with more than 30 years of international business development experience across every continent and a wide range of industries. He has a strong understanding of all key business functions, including operations and manufacturing.
He earned a Master’s degree in International Business in France in 1991, then spent six months in Togo working for a local bank before seizing an opportunity to relocate to Quebec. After gaining experience in the textile and electronics industries—where he leveraged his international business expertise and fluency in four languages—he completed an Executive MBA at Queen’s University in Ontario in 2001.
In 2006, Patrick joined Structures SBB to help the company expand into international markets with its emergency transmission line towers. After 12 years leading the company’s international business development efforts and overseeing a major restructuring of its global operations, he became an entrepreneur in 2018 by acquiring 100% ownership of SBB. Today, the company continues to expand internationally while strengthening its position as the global leader in emergency transmission towers. It has also diversified its offering by developing new products for both domestic and international markets.
For Patrick, giving back by supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs through the challenges of building a business is a deeply meaningful mission.
Benoit Girardin is a sports lawyer, strategist, and entrepreneur specializing in the sports, outdoor recreation, and active living sectors. He advises organizations and businesses of all sizes on business growth, strategic development, and organizational evolution.
He is the founder of LBB Stratégies, a consulting firm of 15 senior advisors that has supported municipalities, resort destinations, tourism organizations, national and international sports organizations, major sporting events—including the Olympic Games—as well as organizations such as Cirque du Soleil, evenko, and numerous businesses in the sports industry. His work focuses on strategic planning, feasibility and strategic studies, and organizational transformation.
His mission is clear: to help today’s and tomorrow’s leaders achieve their ambitions and build a strong, competitive position within their markets and industries.
“The coach is the one who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who makes you see what you don’t want to see, so you can become what you want to be.”
