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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.

This winter term, Enterprise Co-op students carried on the tradition of the Ignition Week pitch competition. Meet the winter 2023 pitch winners!

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.

This fall, the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business welcomed seven University of Waterloo PhD students to the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) classroom through the inaugural Entrepreneurial Ph.D. Fellowship program.

The fellowships were awarded to support outstanding, business-minded Waterloo doctoral students who are interested in commercializing their research. The following recipients will complete the three-year part-time program alongside their regular doctoral studies, tuition-free. 

This fall term, Enterprise Co-op students submitted five-minute video pitches for prizes of $5,000 at the Ignition Week pitch competition. Each student's video pitch was evaluated by a panel of judges. Meet the fall 2022 pitch winners!

The Overbeeke Family Award is awarded based on the development of an outstanding presentation, business model and plan review, clarity of business description and preparedness to lead a venture or social enterprise.

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.

Last month, the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business celebrated its 20-year anniversary.

In 2002, we opened our doors to welcome the first cohort of the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program, with a mission to expand on Waterloo’s culture of entrepreneurship.

Two decades later, our ­­graduates have launched successful start-ups and innovated in companies globally. They’ve raised millions in series funding, taking top prizes in national and international pitch competitions, and ranked among the best and brightest of the world’s talent.

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.