Students aren’t just learning about local and global challenges — they’re tackling them head-on with innovative and impactful solutions to drive change in Laurier’s campus communities in Waterloo Region, Brantford, Milton and beyond.
Laurier equips students with the skills and mindset necessary to innovate with purpose, shaping the next generation of bold innovators and supplying the talent to drive Canada’s innovation economy forward.
Laurier students get hands-on opportunities to develop solutions to municipal challenges brought forward by partners at the City of Waterloo in the Arts course “Social Innovation in the City.” With access to an advisory group including experts from the city, community organizations and Laurier faculty members, students collaborate and conduct research before designing and testing their ideas and policy innovations. This impactful university-community partnership has generated tangible solutions to challenges including increasing civic engagement among local youth, increasing sustainability initiatives in the university district, and updating the city’s short-term rental policy.
In Laurier’s Changemakers Hub, students take action to bring their ideas for a better world to life. Through the Changemakers program, which is home to Laurier’s award-winning Enactus team, students have built world-changing ventures and successfully showcased them at Enactus competitions. Two of these ventures include Kuponya Innovations, which has developed an affordable, rapidly deployable, climate-resilient ‘house-in-a-box’ kit to tackle the housing and climate crises, and Sapphire, Canada’s first comprehensive transition to employment program aimed at increasing employment rates for autistic post secondary students.
“Students graduate from Laurier with theskills, mindset and experiences to fuel theinnovation economy’s talent pipeline inWaterloo Region and beyond — eitheras employees in existing businesses or asentrepreneurs creating innovative venturesof their own.”
In the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Laurier students apply their skills and knowledge to solve real-time business challenges presented by local and global workplace partners through competitive case competitions. Embedded into the Lazaridis School’s undergraduate and graduate programs, case competitions immerse students in real-world scenarios, preparing them to meet tomorrow’s business challenges head-on. Recent competitions have empowered students to innovate by leveraging AI in their solutions. George Weston Ltd. challenged students to enhance user engagement with the PC Health app. The winning team’s innovation included the development of an in-app, AI-powered health chatbot designed to provide hyper-personalized health and wellness experiences.
Students graduate from Laurier with the skills, mindset and experiences to fuel the innovation economy’s talent pipeline in Waterloo Region and beyond — either as employees in existing businesses or as entrepreneurs creating innovative ventures of their own. Ninety-nine per cent of graduates from the more than 40 Laurier programs offering co-op are employed, and 28% of graduates over 25 years old have reported starting at least one business since graduation.
Laurier graduate Danielle Brewin Graham (MBA ’14) has spent the past decade working to create more equity and opportunities for women founders in technology. A general partner at Phoenix Fire, an angel fund investing in women entrepreneurs across Canada and powered by the Archangel Network in Waterloo, Graham in 2016 created Fierce Founders, Canada’s first women-focused startup accelerator, at Kitchener-based Communitech. The program supports the growth of early-stage companies by helping women and non-binary founders think bigger about their markets and validate their ideas. Graham is also the co-founder of The Firehood, an angel-stage fund and network launched in 2021 with a focus on women in technology. In the last five years, The Firehood has invested more than $15 million in over 50 women-led Canadian startups in MedTech, AI, CleanTech and beyond with success stories including Protexxa, Medreddie and Ora Medical.
“The problems of today won’t be solved withthe same mindset that created them in the firstplace. Change is needed, and Laurier createsthe changemakers who will drive change andinnovation forward.”
Laurier graduate Cole Jones (BA ’16) is using technology to address real-world challenges in the agriculture and food production industries. Jones founded Local Line, an award-winning farm-to-fork e-commerce and sourcing platform that connects local food producers with buyers to simplify local food sales and shorten supply chains. Jones has grown Local Line operations to include more than 10,000 farmers in 14 countries, with over $200 million in annual sales passing through the platform. During the past two years, Local Line customers have saved more than 1.5 billion food travel kilometres through supply chain efficiencies and, in some cases, reduced food waste by up to 18%.
From their first steps on campus to their final steps across the convocation stage, Laurier students are encouraged and supported to create solutions to the problems they see in the world. Laurier fosters changemaking through innovation and entrepreneurship programming at all stages of the student experience, equipping tomorrow’s leaders with the skills and mindsets needed to address complex social and economic issues locally and globally. The problems of today won’t be solved with the same mindset that created them in the first place. Change is needed, and Laurier creates the changemakers who will drive change and innovation forward.
