Erin Bury

Early life

Erin Bury grew up in the Greater Toronto Area in the Canadian province of Ontario. At the age of 15, she landed her first job as a cashier at Loblaws, a well-known grocery store chain in Canada. As a young woman, she attended Carleton University in Ottawa between 2003 and 2007, earning an Honours BA in journalism with a minor in history. 

After completing her post-secondary studies, Erin Bury accepted a position with a public relations company in 2008, during the height of the Great Recession. While employed there, she was approached by an acquaintance about quitting and working for a startup company instead. While considering the offer, she consulted some friends and family, nearly all of whom recommended against her taking it in the name of stable employment—all except for her mother, who counseled her to take the risk. Erin credits this advice with starting her down the path to entrepreneurship.

Career

In the late 2000s and early-to-mid 2010s, Erin Bury put her degree in journalism to use, reporting and editing for news outlets such as BlogTO and BetaKit. She also served as Managing Director at the creative communications agency Eighty-Eight for five years.

In 2017, Erin Bury and Kevin Oulds co-founded Willful, an online estate planning firm whose mandate is to help Canadians prepare for and deal with death in the digital age. She has served as the chief executive officer of Willful since its inception. To date, Willful has helped Canadians across eight provinces create more than 100,000 estate planning documents. It has also recently become the first company to offer fully digital and officially notarized online wills in the province of Quebec, with plans to offer the same service in British Columbia very soon.

Regarding the nature of Willful’s target demographic, Bury has said, “We’re a direct-to-consumer platform, so we sell to the average Canadian. Our average customer is between 25 and 45 years old. They’re people that are going through major life changes. I’m our perfect average customer. I’m 37. I have a home. I have a husband. I just had a baby in the last year. We’re targeting people like me, who have pretty simple situations and don’t necessarily want to pay to visit a professional.”

Willful became something of a household name in Canada after Erin Bury and Kevin Oulds made an appearance on the CBC television show Dragon’s Den on December 2nd, 2021. The co-founders pitched the Dragons a 5% stake in the company in exchange for an investment of $500,000, and were delightfully surprised when they were offered $750,000 by Canadian tech magnate and Dragon Michele Romanow.

Concurrent with the launch of Willful, Bury also co-founded The County Wine Tours with Sheba Zaidi and Genevive Savundranayagam, two of her best friends, in 2017. As its name partially indicates, the company offers guided bicycle tours of the many wineries within Prince Edward County, Ontario, catering to small groups of two to twelve people. Erin Bury and her co-founders sold the business in 2023.

Widely considered an expert on launching new businesses, Bury occasionally acts as an advisor to companies in early stages of development, most notably Quill Inc., a podcasting marketplace that connects content creators with potential sponsors, and Doormat, a company that provides online legal services pertaining to real estate transactions in Canada. She is also a noted public speaker, often giving keynote addresses at fundraisers, corporate events, and meetings of professional associations.

Erin Bury serves as a board member for the nonprofit organization Save the Children Canada. She also serves as co-chair of the #TechForSickKids initiative for Toronto, Ontario’s Hospital for Sick Children.

Net Worth

Unknown