Entrepreneurship

I often get asked how I find the time to manage my projects. I think the answer is pretty simple — I make the time.

Every day, I dedicate myself to working towards initiatives that inspire hope and help break down barriers, around the globe and right here at home in Canada. The opportunity to impact lives through sports and languages is something I have been tremendously lucky to experience first-hand, and it all goes back to my time at UWaterloo.

Thinking about the challenges we face as a society can be overwhelming — almost paralyzing. When so much needs to be done, where do you start?

The United Nations (UN) believes you’ll start here on campus and where you live. They’ve identified our most urgent challenges and laid them out in a roadmap of 17 goals we can all work to achieve by 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, cover everything from No Poverty (SDG 1) to Quality Education (SDG 4) and Life Below Water (SDG 14).
 

Originally built as a way to secure cryptocurrency transactions, blockchain is a digital platform that verifies and records exchanges. Blockchains are global networks that can have millions of users, each adding information/data which is secured through cryptography. This creates an indisputable history of these transactions that cannot be modified by a single user, eliminating opportunities for fraud, and it is this feature that has some heralding blockchain as a way of increasing cybersecurity.

Lauren Smith
Student, Faculty of Environment
> Co-founder, Polygone Technologies
> Alumnus, Collaborative Water Program (MES '17)
> Velocity Science
> Water Institute

When tossing in a load of laundry most of us have no idea that other people may unwittingly swallow tiny pieces of our yoga pants or bath towels.

I was almost an accountant.

Well, but for a few minor details. My complete incompetence with figures and the fact that I couldn’t stand my marketing course might have had a thing or two to do with my change of heart.

I started at the University of Waterloo with marketing and business in mind. Someone close to me had convinced me that a love of writing would never be enough to carve out a career. Business was reliable. Choose money, they said. Money leads to jobs, they said.

Megan Tong (MAcc ’09) is co-founder of Kanga, Toronto’s first Australian-style meat pie shop offering ready-to-go, hand-made flakey all-butter pastries with gravy fillings that Chatelaine magazine calls “comfort to go.”

Megan came up with the idea for Kanga during a KPMG work secondment to Australia, where she fell in love with the savoury delights. What started as an idea for a pop-up quickly grew into a successful chain of restaurants.

British and Canadian leaders met at the Canadian High Commission in London, England in February for the Waterloo Innovation Summit, which examined how deep research and commercialization are meeting challenges in the era of disruption. From political leaders to visionaries behind some of high-tech's most exciting startups, a number of key lessons emerged for those wondering where opportunity lies amid the relative chaos.

Leaders from the worlds of academia, business and politics are calling for a more rapid and expanded investment into fundamental science to ensure society capitalizes on the unexpected outcomes of deep research.