About Kibbi | The Vetted-Channel Hiring Story

2020 — HP arrived in Calgary from Hong Kong with $30,000 in savings and an MBA nobody could see past her accent. Calgary was in a labour shortage. Qualified newcomers were invisible.

2021 — She built Kibbi: a multilingual job platform for newcomers and the small businesses hiring them. $1.1M raised. 50+ settlement partners. Thousands of job seekers.

2023 Han joined — Han arrived in Canada as a child refugee with her family. Growing up, she saw firsthand the agencies that helped them rebuild and went on to spend her career helping newcomers settle and succeed. When she met HP, she brought a settlement and employment lens to emerging workforce technology. Over time, the missing piece became clear: the institutions preparing and credentialing talent were already the infrastructure. Kibbi simply needed to connect them.

The listening years — After two years of conversations with associations, employers, government, schools, career-centres, settlement, and employment agencies, it was clear. Vetting was happening everywhere, just not connected as an ecosystem.

Today — Kibbi turns Canada's credentialing networks into one hiring infrastructure. Vetted channels instead of volume. Trust instead of noise. Same community-first roots, scaled.

We almost called it Jobs Mama. We're glad we didn't. 😅

Kibbi was inspired by the word "kibbutz" — a concept of communal living, shared work, and gender equity. We needed a name that meant community, because that's the whole bet: employers, schools, settlement agencies, and neighbours showing up for each other.

Our mascot Peeky is an Arctic Tern — the bird with the longest migration on Earth, flying the equivalent of six round trips to the moon in a single lifetime. Our logo shows Peeky flying toward the sun: a nod to our immigrant founders, our mission to empower job seekers, and a shared hope for a brighter future.

On a side note, Peeky loves being dressed in partners' uniforms!