Romanow has been recognized with several honors and awards including:
Romanow launched her first Business, The Tea Room, a zero consumer waste coffee shop, in 2006 while studying at Queen's University. Romanow then partnered with two colleagues from her engineering class, Anatoliy Melnichuk and Ryan Marien. Together, they founded Evandale Caviar, Buytopia.ca, and SnapSaves without raising any external capital. Romanow graduated and started Evandale Caviar, a vertically integrated fishery that distributed high end sturgeon caviar to luxury hotels and restaurants. She then became the Director of Strategy for Sears Canada. In 2011, Romanow started Buytopia.ca which, by 2013, had 2.5M subscribers and had provided over $100M in savings through deals for products, services, events, and travel, with merchants including brands like Cirque du Soleil, Porter Airlines, and Staples. Buytopia also grew by acquiring six competitors. Romanow started SnapSaves, a mobile couponing app that gives shoppers cash back when they buy certain items in the grocery store by partnering with consumer packaged goods companies. Groupon purchased SnapSaves in June 2014, relaunched in the U.S. as Snap by Groupon.
Romanow was born in Calgary, Alberta, but grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan. She attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and graduated with Civil Engineering and MBA degrees. She was the sole winner of the highest tribute at Queen's, the Agnes Benidickson Tricolour Award, in 2007. Michele is the daughter of Marvin Romanow, the former President & CEO of Nexen.
Romanow was announced as one of the new dragons on Season 10 of the Canadian reality television series Dragons' Den in 2015, alongside Joe Fresh founder Joe Mimran and Manjit Minhas of Minhas Breweries after the departure of Arlene Dickinson, David Chilton, and Vikram Vij, and continues to appear in 2017.
In June 2017, Ruma Bose, the former President of Chobani Ventures LLC, founded the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative with support from Michele Romanow. According to the Globe and Mail, the not-for-profit is meant to help small-business owners get inexpensive financing, and Romanow promised any female entrepreneurs applying through the initiative a 10 percent discount on loans obtained through her financial services platform, clearbanc.com.
Romanow previously starred in Season 1 of Dragon’s Den NextGenDen, a Dragons’ Den series aimed at tech companies for entrepreneurs below 40.
