The Next 36 Alumni (2012)
| Ethan Baron |
University of Winnipeg, B.B.A International Business, B.A. Economics & Finance, 2013 Ethan Baron is in his 4th year of a double major at the University of Winnipeg studying international business, economics and finance. He founded his first venture, a tech repair company with clients from over 30 countries, in Minneapolis at the age of 13 and has been a driven entrepreneur ever since. He was awarded a national scholarship from Export Development Canada in 2011, a Buhler Economics Scholarship in 2012, and was 1 of 6 students chosen from his university to be featured in its Leaders of Tomorrow campaign. Ethan is also an accomplished musician and has been a finalist in several piano competitions. His aspiration is to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School. |
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| Maxwell Brodie |
University of Waterloo, Joint Honours Knowledge Integration and Honours Computer Science, 2015 Max Brodie loves to create. A decade ago this involved power tools and tree forts, today the tool is software and the product a better tomorrow. With a background in areas such as cellular telecommunications, concert lighting and sound design, high availability enterprise networks, musical theater, integrated media and web tech - Max holds horizontal knowledge dear to his heart, and has put it to work in several startups and an extensive consulting practice. He lives by the notion that innovation is creatively combining previously unrelated ideas to create something valuable, and that the most interesting opportunities lie between defined lines. Working best right at the intersection of solving meaningful problems and creating amazing experiences, he is a student of his customers and teacher to anyone who will listen. He tends to exhibit whiteboard imperialism if left unchecked. |
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| Zerzar Bukhari |
University of Toronto, Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2013 Zerzar has been the founder of three business ventures, an executive member in a community organization, and the founder of a nonprofit organization since his first year of University. In high school, he was the president of three clubs and the founder of the largest club in the school, all while balancing contract based jobs and an academic workload. Zerzar has been the recipient of many awards, such as the I.T. Award, Math Elite Award, Markham Youth Award, and the Rogers Scholarship for which he delivered a speech on behalf of all recipients. Apart from engineering, Zerzar has an nterest in business, history, politics and nonprofit initiatives. He also a track record of learning things on his own, such as when he taught himself programming at the age of 13 and went on to manage a string of online media sites, and work for a game company even before he entered high school. |
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| Freddy Chen |
University of Toronto, Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2014 Freddy is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Applied Science and an Engineering Business Minor from the University of Toronto. Outside of class, Freddy served as the Vice-President Academic of the Engineering Society at the University of Toronto, where he led various student groups and worked with the faculty to improve the educational experience for over 4800 engineering students. He also received the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Leadership Award for his commitment to various extracurricular activities. Freddy is very excited to be a part of The Next 36, and he hopes to combine his experience in software engineering and passion for design to build a successful venture. Freddy enjoys learning new musical instruments in his spare time, and holds a Diploma of Associate Performer in Piano from the Royal Conservatory of Music. |
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| Jacqueline Cook |
University of Saskatchewan, Bachelor of Commerce, 2012 Jacqueline is the cofounder and former owner of Thread Media, a production and interactive media company that showcases local community entertainment. She has represented Canada at the G8 and G20 Summits in Toronto, the APEC Summit in Japan as part of the Invest in Canada Bureau, and at the G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit in Nice, France. From 2010-2012, she worked for a group of junior resource companies, and was involved in the start-up phase of three successful firms in natural gas, light oil, and potash. Jacqueline is a founding director of Recess Guardians, and has been serving on the board of Care and Share Saskatoon for five years. She was the recipient of a 2011 YWCA Women of Distinction Award, and recently delivered a TEDx talk at the UofS on the “Intuition of Play” found in entrepreneurship. In her spare time, Jacqueline likes to travel and wakeboard at the lake. |
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| Cheryl Cui |
University of Toronto, Engineering Science/Biomedical Engineering, 2012 Cheryl Cui recently graduated with a BASc. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto. Cheryl is passionate about bringing medical innovations to the world and to deliver these technologies, with equality, to everyone. Last summer, Cheryl worked at Innovations in International Health at MIT, where she developed a paper-‐based diagnostic chip for monitoring patient’s compliance with tuberculosis treatment. In collaboration with Harvard Medical School, she established the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program, the first community health screening program at University of Toronto. Cheryl has a strong commitment to biomedical research. During an internship year at the Harvard-‐MIT division of Health Science and Technology, she co-‐authored two research articles published in high impact journals including Nature Nanotechnology. Cheryl also has two patents pending on cancer detection and cellular engineering techniques. |
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| Emilie Cushman |
University of Windsor, Business & Strategy, 2012 Raised in Tecumseh, Ontario, Emilie has amassed experience in leadership and project management having led a team of over one hundred students as the President of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Windsor. Emilie led the SIFE Windsor team to three regional victories having been the driving force in a dozen Windsor based projects. These include a microfinance venture program reaching hundreds of high school students, a business-consulting program for Canadian newcomers on social assistance and a social enterprise clinic providing refugees with legal, medical and social work services otherwise inaccessible. As a recent graduate of the Odette School of Business, Emilie has been nationally recognized as a promising entrepreneur and leader, having being named the HSBC Woman Leader of Tomorrow for Canada. Her interests range from golf and skiing, to classical piano with the Royal Conservatory of Music having been a past music instructor for over five years. |
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| Anthony Darcovich |
University of Toronto, HBA International Relations, Economics & Energy Science, 2012 Anthony Darcovich is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto in International Relations, Economics, and Energy Science. He has extensive experience in both entrepreneurship and finance. After high school, he joined a start-up investment management firm where he worked for a year as a junior associate. As a third year university student, he left school to start his own business, which he operated for a year. More recently, Anthony co-founded Mailatale, a monthly subscription service for children’s book packages. He is also the former President of the U of T Model United Nations Society and the former Director of the Hart House Investment Club. Professionally, Anthony has worked as a Business Analyst with McKinsey & Company and an Investment Banking Analyst with Credit Suisse. |
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| Rafal Dittwald |
University of Toronto, Engineering Science, 2012 Rafal believes that entrepreneurship is the best way to create value and make use of your potential. He has worked five years as a ‘pinch developer,’ being brought onto projects to fix critical bugs (often at strange hours of the night), rapidly prototype a product, or lead a floundering project to completion. Rafal has a passion for improving education, and as an experiment, he founded HackerAcademy, a student organization that focuses on sharpening the skills of up-and-coming developers; he personally delivered over 60 workshops and mentored 17 software projects, earning him the Spirit of EngSci Award at UofT. In his free time, Rafal likes to play board games, which he claims are great for honing one's strategic thinking skills. School used to be his hobby, but now that he’s completed his Engineering Science degree, he says he’s on the lookout for a new challenge. |
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| Ben Docksteader |
University of Prince Edward Island, BSc Computer Science, 2013 Ben is a Third Year Computer Science student at the University of Prince Edward Island. His impressive list of awards and academic standing back his skill and ability as a competitive developer as well as a technology enthusiast. He has been recognized for his entrepreneurial spirit in going beyond traditional course work to build applications in his own time through an entrepreneurial based scholarship. During his first professional internship he was promoted to project lead on a mobile application that he continued to work on during his academic year. Ben was recently recognized as the Co-op Student of the Year due to his involvement in the Co-op program at UPEI and his contributions to the IT community in Charlottetown. His passion for building impactful products from idea to reality are what drives his love for startups and entrepreneurship. |
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| Omer Dor |
McGill University, Chemical Engineering, 2012 Omer was born and raised in Israel, and moved to Montreal at the age of 12. With a strong background in engineering and a passion for innovation, Omer hopes to change the way our generation, and future generations, use technology. His joint-proposal for an integrated energy and food greenhouse won first place in the 2011 $100,000 TD Go Green Challenge. He has also worked in the Porous Media Laboratory at McGill University, where he explored methods for the optimization of fuel cell technologies. In addition to graduating with distinction, Omer has been involved in student life on campus. Previously, he acted as the Director of Major Fundraising Events for Engineers Without Borders and the Chair of the Sustainability Case Competition at McGill University. He has also been actively involved as a Big Brother in the Big Brother Big Sister program. As an avid hiker, scuba diver and athlete, Omer welcomes any opportunity where he can be challenged. |
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| Jessica Fan |
Simon Fraser University, BBA Joint Major in Interaction Design & Business Administration, 2012 Jessica Fan has a passion for design, technology, and social change. As a recent graduate of the Interaction Design & Business Joint Major program at SFU, she strives to create meaningful user experiences through innovative products and services. She has designed interactive market research software for Fortune 500 companies at Vision Critical, and has worked with Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to create a knowledge management system for chapters across Canada. Her project on classroom multi-screen interactions was recently nominated for the D&AD Student Award in Digital Design. As Co-President of the SFU EWB chapter, Jessica supported development initiatives in Africa while promoting fair trade and foreign aid transparency in Canada. Her diverse experiences also include creating the Burnaby Hospital Bedside Arts Program, publishing a paper on bioreactor stem cell expansion, and being an Ashoka Changemaker finalist. She is a published illustrator, avid photographer, and a big dreamer. |
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| Scott Greenberg |
University of Waterloo, Mechatronics Engineering, 2012 A native of Middle Sackville Nova Scotia, Scott recently completed his studies in Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He is very passionate about technology, an enthusiasm which has been developed further throughout university and six co-operative work terms. These work placements have been as far away as New York and have been in a variety of different positions, from mechanical engineering to project management. Scott has also had the opportunity to travel, having previously lived in North Carolina, Toulouse, and most recently Zürich, where he was on an academic exchange at ETH Zürich. Previously Scott was the VP Competitions for the 2010 Ontario Engineering Competition, where he helped coordinate the six engineering events over the three day, $150,000 conference. Scott’s recent projects include creating several applications for the Blackberry Playbook, including chat clients for Facebook and Google Talk. |
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| Victoria Hale |
University of Western Ontario, History, 2014 Victoria Hale is a second-year student at Huron College at the University of Western Ontario where she is working towards her Honours Specialization in History. In 2011 she registered her first business, an independent web design company. She is an accomplished debater and was selected to represent the University of Western Ontario at the World University Debating Championship in Berlin. At Western, Victoria runs Leadership Education Program sessions on ‘Argumentation and Critical Thinking’. The purpose is to teach construction and refutation of arguments and public speaking. Victoria has volunteered at a local veterinary clinic, the Scott Mission, Western Change Camp, the Terry Fox Run, Megan’s Walk and the CHUM city Christmas Wish to name a few. Currently, she is training her small rescue dog to become a certified therapy dog. |
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| Melinda Jacobs |
University of Toronto, International Relations, 2012 Melinda Jacobs is an initiator, advocate and explorer. Originally from Fredericton, NB, Melinda founded two youth organizations to increase civic participation and local entrepreneurial initiatives. Her passion for new challenges led her to Denmark as a Rotary Youth Exchange student, and to Bangladesh, where she spent four months surveying microfinance field sites for a local NGO. Melinda has served as the head of the Trinity College student body, and spent the summer of 2011 working for Social Capital Partners. Melinda recently led a team to produce a documentary on Taiwanese electoral politics. A former nationally ranked synchronized swimmer, she coaches for Toronto Synchro’s Athletes with Disabilities program. Melinda is a 2007 W. Garfield Weston Loran Scholar and a National Laureate of the Millennium Scholarship. Most recently, Melinda was awarded a Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award for her contributions at the University of Toronto, where she recently graduated with High Distinction. |
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| Simon Jalbert |
Saint Mary’s University, Bachelor of Commerce, 2012 Simon has recently graduated from Saint Mary’s University with a Bachelor of Commerce with majors in both Finance and Entrepreneurship. As his University’s Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) team Co-President, he led multiple impactful social entrepreneurship initiatives in Halifax. Simon is the co-founder of SMU Angels, a program that assists entrepreneurs with organizational issues. He is also the founder of a successful food delivery service in Halifax, which he operated all while completing a full university course load. Last year Simon received the David Henderson Bursary for Entrepreneurial Leadership for his commitment to fostering entrepreneurship within the city of Halifax. |
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| Samantha Juraschka |
Bishop's University, BBA Finance & Marketing, 2012 Originally from Waterdown, Ontario, Samantha recently finished her B.B.A in finance and marketing at Bishop’s University. She is a four-time Academic All-Canadian for varsity soccer and was awarded the Quebec female University Athlete of the year award for leadership in fall 2011. Samantha has been recognized for her leadership contributions by the province of Quebec, and at a national level when she was chosen as one of 20 young champions of women by the White Ribbon Alliance in New York City. Samantha is the founder of one of the largest charities on campus, The Gaiter Walk for ALS, which has helped contribute more than $14,000 to the Tony Proudfoot foundation. Her work with the Student Alumni Association inspired her to launch an online magazine www.Uconversation.com, which helps aid university students to develop online journalism experience while connecting with alumni for advice and mentorship. |
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| Layan Kutob |
University of Toronto, Industrial Engineering, 2013 Layan Kutob is an innovator, a visionary, a driver and an athlete who wants to have an impact on the world. Originally from Jordan, Layan grew up in an entrepreneurial family and competed as a member of Jordan’s national karate team. She is an international award winner for her invention of a unit to decrease the pollution caused by residential chimneys. An active member within the Engineering Society, she increased sales of the Engineering Stores by 40% while serving as manager, and has led many other groups and events on campus. Layan has co-founded the You’re Next Career Networks, which serves 2800 students, and is chairing the National Business and Technology Conference 2013. She recently finished her work term at AMD as a program manager. Layan has won numerous awards for excellence in leadership and academics, including C. William Daniel’s Leadership Scholarship at the University of Toronto. |
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| Paul Lee |
University of Waterloo, Math/Accounting and Computer Science, 2012 Paul is pursuing a double major in Math/Accounting and Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. With 16 months of co-op experience in public accounting, Paul was on his way to becoming a Chartered Accountant. However, he found his passion with entrepreneurship while volunteering for Impact to promote youth entrepreneurship and went onto start his own company, Findit Off Campus. The company was featured on CTV News and many tech blogs for its intuitive approach on finding student housing. Recently, Paul worked for Gilt City in Manhattan, New York as a Software Engineering Intern. While in New York, he collaborated with students from the New York University and developed a winning mobile web application at HackNY 2011 competition where his team competed against students from 30 universities including Harvard, Yale and Princeton. |
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| Draco Li |
Queen's University, Commerce, 2012 Draco Li is an entrepreneur and self-taught programmer with a degree in Commerce from Queen’s University. Two years ago, Draco co-founded DayOnBay, a financial blog for students interested in finance. Since then, DayOnBay has attracted thousands of students from universities across Canada. Last year, Draco founded Draken Solutions, a creative mobile and web development company, and had successfully led the development of two large-scale iOS applications. Draken Solutions’ first iOS application, Pocket Database for SC2, has been downloaded more than 50 thousand times from all around the world. Last summer, Draco worked at the early stage mobile startup, Envirolytics, where he collaborated with two other engineers to develop iViro, an award winning home energy analysis tool. Draco’s other hobbies include filming and travelling. |
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| Daniel Licht |
Wilfrid Laurier University, Honours BBA Co-op Candidate with a focus in Entrepreneurship, 2012 Daniel was one of fifteen students across Canada to be awarded the prestigious 3 year GE Foundation Leaders Scholarship for his leadership skills and academic excellence. He founded the first ever Laurier Marketing Case Competition, ran marketing conferences, taught social media marketing and he has run many revenue generating philanthropic events. Daniel’s goal is to create an impactful technology business. Consequently, he chose co-op placements based on what he could learn and use towards achieving this goal. At his first co-op placement, he conducted market research to analyze the company's customer segmentation and current operations and provided recommendations to improve operations and profitability. Daniel then designed and implemented marketing campaigns at an agile mobile gaming startup (on games such as Inspector Gadget and Degrassi). He received awards for his creative problem solving abilities at both firms. He then worked in a marketing and human resources role at a moblile analytics startup. Daniel partially owns and manages a rental property in downtown Toronto. Daniel enjoys traveling, biking and skiing and recently began kite surfing. |
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| Konrad Listwan-Ciesielski |
University of Waterloo, Bachelor of Mathematics & Computer Science, 2015 Having grown up in the suburbs of Toronto, Konrad discovered his entrepreneurial spirit through Shad Valley Lakehead, where he led his team to develop an electrocardiograph-watch hybrid. Since then, he's been fortunate to have worked with incredible teams, from building a better housing search with two co-founders, to leading teams of dozens of students across Canada in national organizations focused on student leadership and entrepreneurship. Konrad is shaped by his diverse work experience from data science at Nuance in Montreal, to software engineering at Minted, a venture-backed startup in San Francisco and possesses a hunger for building things that people want. Being a strong believer in lifelong learning, Konrad loves enriching his knowledge base with everything and anything from astrophysics to number theory. In his free time, he also enjoys mountain biking, cross-country skiing and spending time outdoors. |
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| Alexandru Litoiu |
University of Toronto, Computer Engineering, 2012 Alex Litoiu is a fourth-year Computer Engineering candidate at the University of Toronto. For his research contributions and academics, Alex has been awarded a University of Toronto Scholarship, two NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards, and an Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship. Over the past two summers, Alex has rejected offers from both Google and Amazon to work in top UofT research labs in the areas of high-performance middleware software, and adaptive peer-to-peer video conferencing. Alex’s fourth-year design project, “Predicting the Stock Market with 250,000,000 Tweets,” managed to predict the change of index fund prices one day in advance with at least 60% accuracy. This project, which earned him an ECE Outstanding Design Project Award, is pending commercialization following more advanced testing. Alex became hooked on technology entrepreneurship after he released his personal habit-forming Android app, and hearing many of its 10,000 users express that it had changed their lives. |
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| Morgan Moe |
University of Calgary, BSc Kinesiology, 2012 Morgan Moe has recently graduated from the University of Calgary with a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology and is also a Registered Emergency Medical Technician in Alberta. She has received both the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award and the Millennium Excellence Award for leadership, innovation, academic achievement and community service. She continues to strive for excellence in all of these areas by actively volunteering in the community and pushing the envelope for innovation at work. Morgan’s main focus resides around the management and prevention of chronic disease as well as advancements in the delivery of rehabilitative care.Her infectious personality and motivating nature continually helps others achieve their goals of better health and wellness. Morgan is a determined healthcare innovator with a strong vision for the future of healthcare delivery. |
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| Michael Murchison |
University of Toronto, BSc Psychology, 2012 Michael is a fourth-year psychology student (BSc) at the University of Toronto. Growing up in both Canada and the United States, Michael attended elementary school in Ottawa and middle school and high school in Brooklyn, New York. He now calls Toronto home. Most recently, Michael studied and lived in New Zealand where he became an active member in its local startup community. There, he co-founded and participated in an intensive startup validation programme. He also placed in the Top-10 of the Audacious Entrepreneurship Contest, a business contest sponsored by New Zealand’s national bank. Prior to his travels, Michael worked in the corporate finance division of a boutique investment bank in Toronto. In his spare time, Michael enjoys studying user-interfaces and playing guitar. |
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| Anne-Marie Paquette |
McGill University, Architecture, 2011 Passionate about innovative design that can challenge the status quo, Anne-Marie comes to The Next 36 with a degree from McGill’s School of Architecture and a minor from the Desautels School of Management. Her personal vision is to successfully use the process of ideation, investigation, iteration and implementation in response to a problem or opportunity to benefit society today and in the future. In 2010, Anne-Marie spent four months in Burkina Faso as a Junior Fellow with EWB’s Rural Agricultural Entrepreneurship team working with a cooperative of women which allowed her to translate her vision into action. She is a hard-working, challenge-seeking opportunist with an intrinsic motivation to learn about new cultures, places and people in an effort to gain a greater perspective on how to have a positive impact in the world. |
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| Jade Proulx |
McGill University, Food Chemistry, 2012 Jade Proulx recently obtained her BSc. in Food Chemistry from McGill University. In 2011, she was awarded the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology Prize. In 2012, Jade was the recipient of the McGill Eliza M. Jones Award. As part of the McGill IR Group, she conducted academic research about novel whey protein applications. Jade has also gained extensive industry experience, developing new quantitative analysis methods for proprietary salt enhancer formulations. As the McGill Food Science Association President in 2011-2012, Jade was committed to increasing her dicipline’s global visibility. She organized the first-ever Gastronomy & Science Symposium, which featured world-class guest speakers from France, Canada, and the United States. Jade is now further developing her entrepreneurial skills in the hope of bringing changes to the food industry. |
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| Henry Shi |
University of Waterloo, Computer Science & Economics, 2015 Henry is a recipient of the distinguished National Scholarship from the University of Waterloo and has been passionately involved in entrepreneurial endeavors since high school. Through the Junior Achievement venture program, he developed 3 student startups and was president of a venture that was runner up to the prestigious Company of the Year Award in Southern Ontario. He also has extensive experience in the technology industry. He worked on the initial backend system for TwitSprout, a social media analytics startup that was featured on CNN Tech and Mashable. He has also worked as a programmer analyst at Scotia Capital, where his work on their derivatives trading engine has impacted users around the world. He recently worked in New York at Bloomberg Sports (a startup within Bloomberg), where he developed a suite of powerful statistical analysis, competitive optimization and data visualization tools for MLB Clubs. In his spare time, he volunteers for the national executive team of Canada's largest undergraduate technology conference, CUTC, where he helps to organize and run a 500 delegate annual national conference held in Calgary and Toronto. |
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| Edward Sun |
University of Waterloo, Computer Science and Business Administration (Laurier) Double Degree, 2015 Edward has had a strong interest in entrepreneurship since a young age, when he developed and sold numerous websites for clients and his own interests combining for millions of pageviews worldwide. A big fan of competitions, Edward won a BlackBerry hackathon in New York City, was 1 of 26 invited for a development camp by Google Android in Mountain View, and was selected as a finalist in the 2011 Impact Apprentice business competition. He is currently in his second year pursuing two degrees - Business Administration at Laurier and Computer Science at Waterloo. Recently, Edward worked on Chrome Accessibility as a Software Engineering Intern at Google. In short, Edward loves to explore diverse perspectives on difficult problems. He is big on enjoying what he does, big on contemporary history and politics, big on swimming and baseball, and believes - in the strongest sense - that laughter is the international pastime.
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| Anthony Vaz |
University of Toronto, Finance and Economics, 2012 Anthony Vaz is a graduate with High Disctinction of the Finance and Economics program and a Dean’s List Scholar at University of Toronto. Through internships at Google and Synergy Software Systems, a boutique consulting firm in Dubai, Anthony has pursued opportunities to challenge himself by going outside his comfort zone. At Google his work included identifying opportunities to increase revenue in Canada; at Synergy he helped bring a major project back on track for a client in the utility industry. On campus Anthony uses his skills to improve his community. He consulted for a local non-profit startup to develop a strategic roadmap that helped them go on to win an award from the mayor’s office. He also led business development on campus for Students Offering Support, a charity that has been recognized nationally for offering exam prep sessions to fund school construction in Latin America. |
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| Ryan Wagner |
University of Waterloo, Nanotechnology Engineering (Honours), 2012 Ryan is a recent graduate of Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo receiving the President’s Scholarship of Distinction and the Waterloo County Entrance Scholarship. He is passionate about using technology to make an impact in the world - most recently using nanotechnology to advance the field of cancer treatment. Ryan researched nanoparticle drug delivery at Harvard Medical School, designing a novel inorganic nanoparticle for siRNA delivery. At Waterloo Ryan developed a PCT patented starch nanoparticle for cancer treatment winning the Nanotechnology Engineering Design Symposium Award. Apart from his work in the lab Ryan has worked at Toyota, Kingston Process Metallurgy, Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and Pravala Inc. In his free time Ryan enjoys travelling, skiing, golf and wakeboarding. Ryan is active in several charities including Salama Shield, Grandview Baptist Church and coaching tennis.
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| Jeffrey Wandzura |
University of Saskatchewan, Pharmacy, 2013 Jeff Wandzura, a fourth-year pharmacy student from the University of Saskatchewan, is passionate about innovation in the healthcare community. Jeff currently serves as the President of the 3500 member Canadian Association of Pharmacy Students and Interns (CAPSI). He also sits on the Blueprint for Pharmacy Steering Committee, a group spearheading pharmacy practice changes across Canada. Stevia, a natural, calorie-free alternative to sugar and aspartame, has been Jeff’s most recent entrepreneurial venture. By developing and testing multiple formulations for this versatile product, Jeff has had the opportunity to travel around the world and experience the challenges and opportunities in international business. Up until last year, Jeff played in the Canadian Junior Football League for four seasons. He played competitive golf growing up, and despite all his ventures, he still tries to find the time to keep his game up. |
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| Jane Wu |
Queen's University, Bachelor’s of Commerce and B.A. Environmental Studies, 2012 Originally from Calgary, Jane is a recent Commerce and Environmental Studies dual degree graduate from Queen’s University where she was a Chancellor’s Scholar. She studied abroad at Herstmonceux Centre in England - a 14th century Tudor castle -and at HEC Paris. She spent her summer months working as a Cansbridge Fellow intern at Avantage Ventures, an early stage impact investment firm in Asia, various roles within the TD Bank Financial Group, and co-founding an eco-product startup. She has also served on the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, State Farm Youth Advisory Board and as a judge for Canada’s Top Teen Philanthropist. Some of her favourite adventures involve some combination of couchsurfing, overnight trains and seeking out her next adrenaline rush. Jane tries to live her life by the motto that “only dead fish go with the flow.” |
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| Donnie Yee |
University of Toronto, Mechanical Engineering, 2013 Donnie invests his time in improving student organizations and mentoring future student leaders. His most notable role was when he was the finance manager of the Engineering Cafeteria, where Donnie was able to turn $22,000 deficit into $8,000 profit and created a sustainable business. For his dedicated contribution in student leadership and development, Donnie has been presented with the Director of the Year Award and the Engineering Society Scholarship. Outside of school, Donnie competes in consulting competitions and has won a national consulting competition hosted by Accenture. Before The Next 36, Donnie worked at Loose Button as Director of Operations. At Loose Button, Donnie managed relationships with national partners, scaled the operation to accommodate an average monthly growth of 60%, and reduced cost by over 12%. Donnie also likes to get involved in the community. One of his commitments is teaching mathematics to underprivileged high school student in Toronto. |
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| Jay Zhou |
University of Toronto, Engineering Mathematics, Statistics & Finance, 2013 Jay is currently a third year Engineering Science student, majoring in Financial Engineering at the University of Toronto. In his first year, he was selected by Google FUSE program as one of the top 50 students in all of North America. In addition to this, Jay and his team, representing UofT, won the Ontario Engineering Competition championship in 2010. In second year, Jay conducted research in parallel computing and real time face. This past year as a third year student he specialized in Financial Engineering, where he has engaged in the research of utilizing fractals to predict stock price. Aside from academics, Jay also devoted much time to extracurricular activities. He held many positions in various student organizations, ranging from sports director to co-founder, and intramural athlete to competition coordinator. In Jay’s free time, he enjoys listening to music, practicing Taekwondo and competing with friends in billiard. |
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