Rising Stars 2025

There are streaks and then there are streaks. Mboko started the year ranked number 350 in the world, then promptly dominated 22 matches in a row. She has spent 2025 upsetting giants, including her idol Naomi Osaka, whom she beat in Montreal in August to secure her first-ever WTA tour title. After winning the Hong Kong Open in early November, the Burlington teen, who grew up watching tennis at Sobeys Stadium on the York University campus, now sits at number 18—the only Canadian in the top 20.

As the senior fashion and style writer at Vogue, Allaire spots trends, tracks emerging designers and weighs in on celebrity looks. But he shines brightest when he writes about Indigenous artists and events—the kinds of pieces he began pitching immediately out of journalism school at TMU but initially had trouble selling editors on. A member of Nipissing First Nation, Allaire tracked his journey from northern Ontario to Toronto to the red carpets of New York in his memoir, From the Rez to the Runway, released earlier this year.

A decade ago, Moneka arrived in Toronto for TIFF and never left. After receiving death threats for his role in a film about gay men living in Baghdad, he sought asylum in Canada, a refugee in a new country. With little English and few connections, he turned to music for solace and community—a journey that resulted in Kanzafula, his album of Afro Sufi music that, earlier this year, became the first Iraqi album to be nominated for a Juno. He followed that up with a September remount of his Dora Award–winning theatre-music show, King Gilgamesh, at Soulpepper, and he’s now busy putting together It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, a jukebox musical based on the Tragically Hip’s catalogue, with Michael Rubinoff, the original producer of Come From Away.

If there was ever a time for Schaefer to falter, it would have been last year. He lost his billet mother in December of 2023, his mother two months later, and his hockey mentor (Jim Waters, owner of the Erie Otters) 10 months after that. He also contracted mono and broke his collarbone, all of which forced him off the ice for four months. And yet, his life away from the game didn’t diminish his shine: he led Canada’s under-18 team to gold at the 2024 Hlinka Gretzky Cup. When it came time for the 2025 NHL draft this past June, the New York Islanders didn’t hesitate to pick him first. In early November, less than a month into his first season and just weeks after he turned 18, Schaefer broke a 59-year-old record set by Bobby Orr to become the youngest defenceman ever to score multiple goals in one game.

Kilimnik, Murtagh and Richardson met on student shows at York and U of T, then joined forces to co-found a musical-theatre company with one goal in mind: building up the next generation of onstage and behind-the-scenes talent. Their Shifting Ground Collective started things off with a small-scale production of Ordinary Days in a studio space at the Pia Bouman School and has since put on three shows, including a production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee that beat out offerings by heavy hitters the Musical Stage Company and Yonge Street Theatricals at this year’s Dora Awards. Up next: a 160-seat, three-week run of Toronto mega-smash The Drowsy Chaperone at Theatre Passe Muraille in March.

After being dropped by her record label in 2023 for her support of Palestine, Nemahsis released her debut album, Verbathim, independently—and proved her detractors very wrong in the process. Raised in Milton by Palestinian parents, the singer has made fans of Stevie Wonder and Elton John, performed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert with a stripped-down version of her hit “Miss Construed,” and won this year’s Junos for breakthrough artist and alternative album. In late November, she’ll be capping off her landmark year with an appearance at Qatar’s inaugural Doha Film Festival.

Lee has a plan, unorthodox though it may be. After attending prep schools in Toronto and Pennsylvania, the point guard kicked off his college career at Princeton and was named First Team All-Ivy. He declared for the 2024 NBA draft in his third year to boost interest in his game, then returned to school, transferring to the top-ranked University of Florida this past spring. Already a strong NBA prospect, Lee tailored his senior year with the defending NCAA champs to up his chances and his value—he’s already signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with the aptly named Chinese sneaker company Serious Player Only.

Virgovicova has been working on her plan to purify polluted water supplies since she was 14, earning a full ride to U of T for related discoveries. But it wasn’t until she met fellow students Zhong and Oglou that everything clicked. In 2023, they founded Xatoms, a cleantech start-up that uses quantum chemistry, AI and light-powered materials to decompose pollutants and kill bacteria and viruses in water. This summer, the company raised $3 million in pre-seed funding, and Virgovicova (CEO), Zhong (COO) and Oglou (CTO) now lead a team of 11 staff working on three pilot projects in Texas, Kenya and South Africa.

Harbord’s restaurant alley is in the midst of a renaissance with the addition of Bar Eugenie in the old Harbord Room space, a casual culinary flex from a trio of former Alo staffers. The name is a hat tip to Eugénie Brazier, the first chef to earn six Michelin stars and a source of inspiration for Bruce, who is blazing her trail in a (yes, still) male-dominated field. Her menu is defiantly unpretentious, right down to the amuse bouche course that is actually just whatever pickled veg Bruce has on hand. The seasonal, nose-to-tail menu is mostly rotating, but signatures like the bone marrow and chorizo verde have already earned a devoted following.

Retirement was just the beginning for Tinker. After hanging up her skates in late 2023, the former Toronto Six player joined the PWHL as manager of culture and impact, running league initiatives tied to Black history, Pride, mental health, and Indigenous and AAPI heritage. Tinker’s DEI day job builds on her personal project: Black Girl Hockey Club Canada, an inclusivity-focused organization launched in 2022 that has provided 250 players across the country with mentorship, scholarships and free programs. Beyond her PWHL and community work, Tinker appears as an analyst on TSN and CBC and is the host and director of Breaking Down Barriers, a docuseries about diversity in sports.

Song’s eponymous label, Wanze, focuses on luxury minimalist workwear, sourcing high-quality materials from Japan and Italy and bringing everything together here at home. When she launched her company in 2022 with support from the Suzanne Rogers Fashion Institute, she wanted to work with local makers but couldn’t find the right fit. Then she met the team behind west-end clothing production studio Sew-Rite. With their help, she creates clothing that embodies a painstakingly precise and technical approach to design (she trained as a patternmaker) without sacrificing creativity or freshness. Her current muse? Amelia Earhart, whose high-flying stylings are at the centre of Wanze’s spring-summer 2026 collection.

Yesavage pitched his first-ever MLB game in September as a newly minted Blue Jay—then set a franchise record for most strikeouts in a debut (nine). And he just kept bringing it: five-and-a-half innings of no-hit ball to shut down the Yankees, a punishing performance in game six to kill Seattle’s lead and the smashing of multiple World Series records in a game five against the Dodgers that even Ohtani couldn’t compete with. He’s been likened to “contained fire” for the quiet but deadly intensity he displays on the mound, but for a guy who started the season deep in the minors only to end it a household name, “surprise supernova” seems like a more accurate descriptor.

Ten years ago, Chong ditched his career as a chemical engineer to audition for the first season of MasterChef Canada. Like the perfect soufflé, it was a dream built on skill and a lot of hope, and man, has it risen. He’s gone from MasterChef champ to this year’s Michelin pick: Chong won the French tire company’s 2025 Young Chef Award for the Toronto area, and his new restaurant, Akin—launched in partnership with MasterChef judge Alvin Leung and featuring an extravagant 10-course blind tasting menu inspired by Chong’s roots in Hong Kong and Malaysia—snagged its first star just a few months after opening.

Not many first novels end up on the Giller shortlist—and even fewer are ones that regular people actually read. Knight’s debut, which was loosely inspired by her student years at the University of Edinburgh, is a classic campus novel that combines intrigue and humour with poignant themes (motherhood, love) and gorgeous prose. In addition to getting props from the CanLit crowd, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus was tapped as Jenna Bush’s book-of-the-month pick in January, has gained a rabid following on BookTok and is currently being adapted for TV by Amazon’s MGM Television.

Hunter never wanted to be anything but a soccer player, and we’re all better for it. Signed to the new Northern Super League a week after her 17th birthday, the AFC Toronto striker is one of the league’s breakout stars and its second-highest scorer after Ottawa’s D. B. Pridham. Recently named rookie of the year, Hunter has the drive (calm, clinical, unrelenting) and swagger (her goal celebrations have included hitting a pretend home run after scoring against Montreal in the semi-finals) to back it up.

You don’t have to be a transport buff to know that supply chain hold-ups have been a massive headache in recent years. Enter GoBolt, an AI-powered, planet-friendly delivery-and-return provider that is riding the e-commerce boom (and Canada Post bust) in whatever direction it takes them. Currently, the company has fulfillment warehouses in 10 North American cities as well as a fleet of EVs and more than 400 clients (Holt Renfrew, IKEA, Best Buy) that trust them to, quite literally, deliver the goods. In 2025, the company won the Overall Logistics Solution Provider of the Year Award from SupplyTech Breakthrough—like the Oscars but for third-party logistics.

After working in traditional recruitment for years, Durham rebranded as TikTok’s go-to “recruiter who knows her shit.” In her videos, she handily demystifies the job application process, particularly for women and other marginalized groups who tend to benefit less from back-room connections. She also regularly drops wisdom on her popular podcast, Clock In (formerly known as The Straight Shooter Recruiter)—the new season recently launched in front of a sold-out crowd at the Well—and her first book, Clock In: No B.S. Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career (Without Losing Your Mind), is coming out with Penguin Random House Canada next spring.

Many of us became devoted home cooks during the pandemic, but few have a buzzy barbecue joint to show for it. Golden owes much of his success to his mom turned sous-chef, Doris, who brought home a pellet grill during Covid lockdowns. He started experimenting with smoking techniques and was soon serving up Texas-style fare at local breweries, the success of which led to the brick-and-mortar Golden Horseshoe Barbecue in September. Being devoted to the craft means waking up at 5 a.m. to start smoking, a passion that is paying off: the multi-block lineups every weekend are now almost as famous as his brisket.

She may not be old enough to remember the first wave of The Baby-Sitters Club, but Nopra is bringing a whole new generation back to Stoneybrook, Connecticut. The era-defining series about a gang of entrepreneurial tweenage childcare workers was relaunched by Scholastic in 2023, riding a surge of ’90s nostalgia and addressing an underserved market (comic-book girls). Nopra, one of the artists behind the hugely successful graphic novel adaptations, had to get the go-ahead from BSC grand-dame Ann M. Martin herself to land the gig. Since then, both of her contributions to the new canon—Claudia and the Bad Joke and Mallory and the Trouble With Twins—have made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. Nopra’s latest instalment, Dawn on the Coast, comes out next April.

A former investment banker, Stern (and her co-founder, Kyle Zien) launched Felix Health in 2019 to offer convenient, discreet online health services for common yet stigmatized conditions like erectile dysfunction, hair loss and acne. Since then, the telehealth start-up has expanded its offerings to include mental health support, treatment for menopause symptoms, weight loss management and more. While it can’t replace family physicians, the platform does provide assessments by licensed health care practitioners and covers lab tests, prescriptions and drug delivery across the country. Its next mission? Scaling production—this fall, it secured $53 million from the Canadian Business Growth Fund and other investors.

Last fall, Oakville’s Hexagon became the first GTA restaurant outside Toronto to earn a Michelin star, an honour made all the more sparkly when its star sous-chef won San Pellegrino’s regional young chef award. This fall, the restaurant secured a star for the second year and Rinsma was off to the finals, competing against 15 other culinary up-and-comers at the global championship in Milan. She may not have earned the top spot, but her “Across the Sea and Home Again”—a Japanese egg custard paired with striped bass and riffing on her grandmother’s split pea soup recipe—is a definite winner.

In 2016, Browne became the first openly trans player in the history of professional team sports in the US, coming out to ESPN while playing for the Buffalo Beauts in the National Women’s Hockey League. Because testosterone was banned under the league’s anti-doping regulations, Browne’s career was cut short when he began his medical transition. But his commitment to education and advocacy has endured—and in light of the Trump administration’s obsession with politicizing trans athletes, it’s more urgent than ever. Browne’s book, Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes, released in May, tells his story while deftly dismantling the argument that trans people are a threat to sports. Browne is also now working in film—he premiered his directorial debut, the short Pink Light, at this year’s TIFF.

Shifting practices within historically colonial institutions requires, among other things, patience and diligence—two qualities Chartrand deploys as ROM’s first Hatch Curator of Indigenous Art and Culture. On her to-do list: getting the museum in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and implementing calls of action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Since her appointment in 2024, Chartrand has initiated new repatriation policies that make it easier for Indigenous communities to regain their sacred belongings, consent to image reproduction and handle loan requests, while ensuring that the language and procedures involved are culturally appropriate. Her next challenge: overseeing the transformation of ROM’s First People’s Gallery, in which she plans to create a sovereign space for Indigenous people to share their stories and cultures.

One of three Liberal MPs born in the 21st century, Sodhi was elected in April in the newly drawn Brampton Centre riding, finishing 611 votes ahead of her Conservative opponent. One of Canada’s fastest growing cities, Brampton is also a microcosm of some of the country’s thorniest issues, including immigration, bail reform, transit and, crucially, the impact of Trump’s trade war on the auto sector. Stellantis’s recent decision to move production of the Jeep Compass from Brampton to the US could cost the area 3,000 jobs, and the Liberals have initiated a formal dispute process in partnership with the Ontario autoworkers union to hold the company accountable.

Milk Bag—the Substack newsletter launched by Bartnicka last May—covers the kind of news most other business outlets don’t: the rise of Gen Z cigfluencers, VC investment in pickleball, the sandwich shop in the Path that is trying to lure protein-obsessed Bay Street bros back to carbs. After driving more than 300 per cent subscriber growth as founding editor at The Peak, Bartnicka jumped ship to launch something a little looser—and her irreverent tone and topics are now dissected over after-work cocktails by entry-level staffers, partners and VPs. Uniquely Canadian (peep the title) and impressively insiderish, Milk Bag is self-funded: while Bartnicka has fielded offers from influential readers, she’s intent on maintaining control.