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Kelly Zheng, a driven and ambitious entrepreneur, has been named one of Forbes’ 2024 Top 30 Under 30 for her ground-breaking work in the field of clean energy.  

It was only just over a year ago that Zheng embarked on a new academic journey when she was awarded the prestigious Entrepreneurial PhD Fellowship which allowed her to take her Master of Business and Technology part-time, alongside her PhD studies. Read on to learn how she did it. 

Marking the end of the spring 2023 term is our termly competition roundup to celebrate the successes of Conrad School students.

Graduate students in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program and undergraduate students in BET 300 or Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) performed admirably in both on- and off-campus competitions.

We have winners from the annual MBET end-of-year tradeshow, plus wins at an international competition!

We sent off the MBET class of 2023 last week at the annual end-of-year Tradeshow.

25 student ventures set up on the ground floor of the Engineering 7 building (home to the Conrad School), where passing students, faculty, staff and guests stopped by to learn more about the projects that MBETs have been working on for the last 10 months (or more!).

The Tradeshow was followed by a dinner where speeches were made, dessert was delicious and 5 student ventures were presented with prizes. Check out the winners and their ventures, as well as photography from the event!

As temperatures rise, we're looking back on a busy (and successful!) winter 2023 term with our students.

Graduate students in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) programs and undergraduate students in BET 300 or Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) performed admirably in both on- and off-campus competitions.

Velocity Innovation Challenge: 

With a week to collaborate and devise solutions to global food, health and energy problems, nine student teams from presented their ideas at Velocity’s Innovation Challenge in February.

In another Waterloo first, the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business (Conrad) will launch Canada’s first PhD program in Entrepreneurship and Organization this fall. Conrad has long been a programmatic innovator in entrepreneurship education, having launched the country’s first immersive entrepreneurship graduate program 20 years ago, and a suite of undergraduate entrepreneurship courses and programs.

Unlike traditional business school doctoral programs that focus on management and organizations, Conrad’s new PhD takes a different approach. Instead, it offers students the opportunity to rigorously study human behaviour and organization with a focus on entrepreneurial contexts.

Bertha Bridget Kankam (MBET ’22) recently completed her master’s degree in business, entrepreneurship and technology (MBET) at Waterloo Engineering’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business.

That is a worthy success in and of itself, but Kankam is not your typical MBET student. Better known to many as Yaa Yaa, she is an award-winning singer-songwriter from Ghana.

The 33-year-old crossed the stage to receive her degree at the University’s fall convocation ceremony last year. No stranger to stages and spotlights, Yaa Yaa radiated success as she stepped out in full academic dress robes — a new look for many of her fans.

Entrepreneurship is about solving complex problems, and in a world of rapid technological advancement and unpredictable change, we need to reimagine how we prepare emerging talent. 1Mentor partners with higher-education institutions to better serve their students by providing tools to prepare future-ready talent.

The 1Mentor platform is designed to equip students with the insights to understand what skills and competencies to develop to achieve their career objectives.

The Conrad School is excited to share our students' successes in the fall 2022 term.

All four winning teams in the Velocity $5K pitch competition this term included student co-founders from the Conrad School. We are proud to celebrate with our undergraduate students who have either completed an Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) term or the Bridging Entrepreneurs to Students (BETS) co-op program.

Among the finalists was also Penspyre, co-founded by former BETS student Roman Semin. Penspyre provides contextualized writing prompts that enable a book author to finish the first draft faster without writer’s block.

Out of a total of 72 applications received at the Fall 2022 Velocity $5K competition, 23 student ventures were selected as semifinalists, then eight teams pitched during this week's finals.

The finals included five team members who are or were Conrad School students from both the Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) or Bridging Entrepreneurs to Students (BETS) programs. Four of these student teams brought home $5,000 each at the end of the afternoon.

She's a star performer, known for her vocal skills and stage presence. Now this Ghanaian celebrity has walked a different kind of stage in Waterloo, after graduating with a master’s degree.

The artist known as “Yaa Yaa” won the reality singing show, “Stars of the Future,” in Ghana in 2009 under her legal name Bertha. The show is similar to American or Canadian Idol and is very popular in West Africa.