MEDI student wins second in Problem Pitch

By Lily Roth, Communications & Social Media Coordinator, Faculty of Environment

A lot of small businesses in Canada are owned by baby boomers with no clear-cut successor and no plan for the future of the business after retirement.

With an interest in the co-operative sector, it’s a problem Masters of Economic Development and Innovation (MEDI) student Meghan Ronson wanted to tackle. “The co-op sector sees this as an opportunity to encourage employees to buy out the company and run it co-operatively,” she says.

Although she had never before considered a future as an entrepreneur, Ronson took this succession problem to the Velocity Problem Pitch competition and snagged a second-place prize.

Encouraged by the win, she’s now considering how to create a job for herself addressing one of the succession problem’s biggest gaps: coordination. And if a job dealing with the problem hands-on doesn’t pan out, Ronson says she would like to continue her research in the economic and development sector, hoping to better understand the problem. Her attraction to the MEDI program in the first place was the problem solving, hands-on approach, “the Faculty of Environment is a good place for someone like me who really wants to make a change.”