All-female venture capital fund Sandpiper Ventures has won Best Investment Innovator from this year's Canadian Business Innovation Awards, run by Canadian Business magazine.

Founded in 2020 by former Newfoundland and Labrador Finance Minister Cathy Bennett, innovation economy veteran Rhiannon Davies and NATIONAL Public Relations partner Sarah Young, Sandpiper is the only venture capital group among the 25 companies honoured last week.

The fund invests exclusively in female founders and earlier this year helped launch the Atlantic Women’s Angel Fund under a partnership with the Women’s Equity Lab, which operates across North America and shares resources and expertise with other female entrepreneurs looking to move into angel investing.

On LinkedIn, Bennett wrote that she is “Proud of our Sandpiper Ventures team,” and “Determined to level the playing field,” referring to Sandpiper’s mission of advancing women’s equality in business.

Sandpiper's $20 million fund has made investments this year including in Toronto’s Gotcare, which is developing an artificial intelligence system for home healthcare services, St. John’s-based SiftMed, which sells technology for cleaning up disorganized medical records, and QuickFacts, a customizable software platform for insurance brokers.