Entrepreneurship

Sometimes, we don’t know what we’re missing until we look.

A missing umbrella is no big deal until it rains. An executive panel full of male faces may be accepted without a second thought, until someone has the audacity to question the absence of diverse voices.

Unintentional bias is like that. It’s a part of our culture that feels so comfortable that we tend not to notice. It becomes engrained in our social norms, so that non-normative items or individuals are overlooked, dismissed or somehow seen as lacking.

Three Waterloo women entrepreneurs (left to right) Rachel Friesen, Alexa Roeper, and Laura Smith

In celebration of the United Nations’ Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, we talked to three women who are part of the University of Waterloo’s Velocity’s startup incubator program. 

The University of Waterloo broke ground this week on Engineering 7, an $88-million building that will feature some of the best engineering research and teaching facilities in the world.

Voltera V-One, a custom circuit board printer developed by University of Waterloo engineering students, has taken top prize in the International James Dyson Award competition - beating out a record 710 entries from 20 countries.

At the University of Waterloo, innovation is in our DNA. Building one of the world’s top innovation universities takes talent, curiosity, drive, passion and a single-minded focus on creating real-world change.

You’ll find the latest on how the University of Waterloo continues to redefine higher education in Defining Innovation, our 2015-16 State of the University Report.

Thanks in part to the University of Waterloo and its entrepreneurial spirit, the Region of Waterloo is growing fast. Growth is great, but managing it takes careful planning to ensure its citizens are healthy, its economy vibrant and environment protected.

Amir Sharif may be a new grad this week, but thanks to Waterloo’s co-op program he’s already worked at startups in Waterloo and Silicon Valley and is looking forward to a full-time position at Facebook.

When people started putting mannequins in the backs of their cars to try and sneak onto HOV lanes during the Pan Am Games in Toronto, it was an extreme example of how desperate we can become when faced with major traffic congestion. It was also proof that Miovision’s potential solution to transportation management couldn’t come at a better time.

In the days after Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans leaving horrific flooding in its wake, Elizabeth English entered the area and managed to get a firsthand look at the devastation.

Two Waterloo alumni successfully pitched their company PopRx on the season premiere of the Dragon’s Den webisode series Next Gen Den.