Daniela Roeper

Early life

As a young woman, Daniela Roeper developed a strong interest in technology and innovation in general, and a fascination with renewable energy in particular. She attended The University of British Columbia between 2011 and 2015, graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Science and a minor in Commerce. In her final year, she made that institution’s Dean’s Honour List.

Career

In 2012, while still in the early stages of her post-secondary studies, Daniela Roeper took a position as an Engineering Technologist at ORTECH Consulting Inc., where she audited small solar farms, researched renewable energy, conducted basic wind resource assessments, and performed computational fluid dynamics modeling for prospective wind farm locations. This role gave her a solid familiarity with the renewable energy industry, as well as giving her a foot in the door professionally.

In 2015, Roeper took advantage of an opportunity to work as a Research Assistant at Technische Universität Berlin in Germany. There, she conducted experiments, collected and analyzed data using MatLab (a high-performance programming language and computing environment developed by the Massachusetts-based software company MathWorks), and further refined her research and data analysis skills.

Driven by a desire to address challenges in the wind energy industry, Daniela Roeper founded BorealisWind in 2016 while still a student at The University of British Columbia. The company was formed as a vehicle to make an idea she had into a reality, and she soon did just that, developing an internal rotor blade heating retrofit, known as the Borealis De-icing System. Designed to de-ice wind turbine blades and improve their reliability and energy efficiency, the Borealis De-icing System can melt ice off turbine blades in under 90 minutes at -5°C and has since gained international recognition as a panacea for wind farms operating in cold climates.

That same year, Daniela Roeper joined the Velocity Garage, the engineering and tech lab belonging to the University of Waterloo’s business development association and a well-known Canadian startup incubator. There, she spent several months working out the final kinks in the Borealis De-icing System. She then enrolled in Communitech’s ‘Fierce Founders Bootcamp’ for new entrepreneurs, where she and BorealisWind won the $40,000 first prize at the program’s culmination, known as the ‘Fierce Founders Pitch Competition’. The support and mentorship she received from Velocity and Fierce Founders played a crucial role in the early success of BorealisWind.

Under Daniela Roeper’s leadership, BorealisWind’s de-icing technology has been installed and tested at wind farms across Canada, significantly reducing revenue losses caused by icy build-up on turbine blades during harsh winter conditions. The system’s ability to be installed without the need for cranes has made it a practical and cost-effective solution for grateful wind farm operators.

In 2023, BorealisWind was acquired by FabricAir, a Danish company. Following the acquisition, Roeper took on the role of Vice President of the BorealisWind product line at FabricAir, where she continues to scale the technology she developed with an eye to increasing its adoption globally.

Throughout the entirety of her career, Daniela Roeper has been a strong advocate for gender equality and inclusion in the startup world, often using her media appearances to encourage more women to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. Speaking with an interviewer from Velocity’s official blog, she remarked: “The experience of being an entrepreneur has been great, and I’d love to see more women doing it.” She then went on to relate her advice to aspiring female entrepreneurs, telling them to “take the risk, and go out there and own it, because I know you will.”

Net Worth

Unknown.