Innovative Projects Realized

Digital Marketing Intern

Crankworx is the world’s premier global tour of mountain biking slope-style events. As a Digital Marketing Intern with Crankworx, I will assist with several aspects of the company’s promotional strategy. Mainly, I will help deliver value for its sponsors and audience through digital channels, such as social media.

Business Development Intern position at Talent Bureau

Talent Bureau’s core business was booking speakers for in-person events. COVID-19 completely derailed that, and we had to cancel or postpone hundreds of events and hundreds of thousands of dollars in booked revenue. Since the pandemic broke out, we have pivoted into virtual events as well as leaning into influencer marketing and partnership opportunities for our talent. While we slowly anticipate the return of some in-person events in the second part of 2021, these new business units will not go away. Some anticipated projects are: Helping Talent Bureau identify scout potential talent to reach out to, using social media and other means of research, helping Talent Bureau team identify key organizations and conferences to pitch talent and speakers to for mainly virtual outing, helping the Talent Bureau team prepare pitch decks and research lists, helping the Talent Bureau identify potential brands to target for partnership opportunities, etc. This is a big opportunity for a candidate to contribute to a growing entertainment company that has weathered the storm so far of COVID-19, but many challenges lay ahead.

Finance Internship

The student can contribute with a fresh perspective and bring new ideas on how to do things from a different point of view. The student will help with marketing campaigns, researching projects where the supervisor hasn’t had time to conduct, be in touch with clients/customers, catching up on the backlog of administration amongst other contributions.

eCommerce Strategist

I will be continuing my time at Flywheel Digital, a technical marketing agency focused on digital-first businesses. As the new eCommerce Strategist, I will continue to work on the website, social media profiles, automation platforms, and paid advertising accounts of Flywheel’s clients, such as Glory Juice, Juniper, and AG Hair. My contributions will help take Flywheel’s business ‘to the next level’ and establish the agency’s eCommerce competence as among the best in Canada.

Communications Specialist Intern

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted Crankworx Events, as it is an events-based company that would normally produce three large-scale mountain bike festivals in Rotorua, New Zealand, Innsbruck, Austria, and Whistler, British Columbia. Without the ability to draw large crowds and host clients on-site, Crankworx Events has pivoted to focusing on digital engagement with its audience and partners. With an evident need for frequent communications while maintaining brand relevancy, the support of the Communications Specialist intern is vital to staying ahead and staying agile. The role will consist of crisis and risk management planning, public relations, and monitoring brand usage and consistency.

Evaluation of a Blockchain-Based Identity Management System: An Exploratory Multiple Case Study Approach

This research project will suggest guidelines that can be used by practitioners to formally represent the business benefits of blockchain. The business benefits focused on in this study are the increased financial value and the improved productivity. Formal methods will be applied to communicate these business benefits in unambiguous ways. Specifically, financial methods will be applied to quantify the financial value and conceptual modeling methods will be used to model the business processes related to the blockchain technology. Even though the partner organization provides a strong technical solution, there is a need to convince prospective corporate clients of the enterprise blockchain solution’s value proposition. The framework produced by this research project can be applied by the partner organization to clearly define the resulting business benefits, which can better support the value proposition for adopting their blockchain solution.

Design and integration of a robotic loading system for an automated saw grinding machine

This internship is intended to address the need for automation in the saw grinding process for the saw mill operations in Canada. The key issues involve the design of a robotic arm that can accurately load the saw blade to the grinding machine and deliver the finished saw on the output stacks blades to enhance the operational safety and efficiency of the grinding process. The proposed design will be realized for ready integration to the grinding machine that is currently being developed by Williams & White Inc. The automated loading system should be capable of handling saw blades of different sizes in a reliable manner. The robotic link is also required to place the finished saw blade in an adequate “finished stack” following the finishing process. The completely developed machine should be able to carry out this operation without any operator inputs during the operation

Development of a Blockchain-enabled privacy-preserving solution to enhance opioid prevention and senior care applications

Lifeguard Health is a B2B SaaS provider in public health with solutions to reduce harm in the opioid crisis and senior care. During 2020, the pandemic deaths accelerated opioid crisis and had a high impact in senior care. Subsequently, the opioid crisis solution was deployed in the province of BC and the contactless senior care solution has begun trials.

During the internship, a privacy-preserving blockchain-enabled transmission channel that augments the trust of the users, who are wary of compromised security during the app communication with emergency centres, will be developed. The project may also design a blockchain-enabled opioid supply chain system, to be piped into the Lifeguard App solution, to curb the spread of illegal opioids.

Data Ethics & Privacy by Design: Unlocking Health Innovation

Healthcare innovation is a major focus across Canada and the globe. It can be defined as, “activities that generate value in terms of quality and safety of care, administrative efficiency, the patient experience, and patient outcomes.” Efforts are underway to transform health care by leveraging technology and data so that Canadian provinces and territories promote efficient use of limited resources and blaze the trail for new medical treatments and services. This shift has resulted in exciting innovations and the emergence of numerous health-related commercial companies and start-ups across Canada.
Additionally, big data demands, as well as the increasing commoditization and economic value attributed to health and health data is on an upward trajectory with no indication that it will slow down or decrease. For instance, it has been projected that by the year 2025 genomics (personalized healthcare) will constitute the largest data demands in the world surpassing astronomy, YouTube, and Twitter as major generators of big data. The commercialization benefits of data have pushed privacy boundaries and tested consumer trust at new heights, both within Canadian healthcare and elsewhere in the world.
This proposal addresses the need to implement ethics and privacy design to unlock health innovation.

Conseil de la culture de l’Estrie

Mené en partenariat avec le Conseil de la culture de l’Estrie (CCE), le projet vise à évaluer les pratiques d’inclusivité, d’accessibilité et d’équité de quelque 65 organismes culturels, en vue de formuler des recommandations stratégiques pour les améliorer. Dans le contexte québécois de démocratisation de la culture, l’optimisation de ces pratiques est nécessaire, d’une part, pour rendre l’offre culturelle accessible à tous les publics de l’Estrie et, d’autre part, pour assurer la pérennité des acteurs culturels de la région. Outre son importance en matière d’admissibilité aux subventions et financements, cet effort pour adapter les stratégies d’entreprise apparaît d’autant plus critique face aux conséquences de la pandémie Covid-19. Le milieu culturel compte en effet parmi les secteurs les plus sévèrement affectés par les implications de la crise. Dans ce contexte complexifié, le CCE souhaite ainsi entreprendre des mesures concrètes pour aider ses membres à adapter leurs stratégies d’affaires et contribuer significativement à relancer le secteur culturel de la région, au sortir de la crise.

Business Models to Successfully Implement Clean-Cooking Technologies in Tanzania

My research question is, “What business models can successfully implement clean-cooking technologies in Tanzania?”.

As we move towards the clean economy, it is imperative that all three pillars of sustainability are considered – the environment, the economy, and society. Studying the business models that will ensue clean-cooking technologies to have long-lasting impact in rural communities is an integral thread to weave into the solution for climate change. Currently, almost half of the world is using carbon-intensive biomass fuels for cooking. This is because they are the cheapest fuel source available to them. Biomass fuels result in a variety of issues, namely indoor and outdoor air pollution, gender inequities, and greenhouse gas emissions. Due to social structure, is it women and children that sacrifice their education, health, and income-earning opportunities to cook these meals for their families. This research proposes to determine business models that will make clean-cooking technologies more economically feasible in these rural communities, which will also shift the community into using a clean renewable source for cooking and liberate women and children to live fuller lives.

Cultural, Social, and Environmental Factors in Implementing Clean Cooking Technologies in Tanzania

After 40 years of attempting to implement cleaner cooking technologies (Batchelor et al, 2019), successes have been muted, leaving approximately 2.8 billion people (IRENA, 2020) to spend hours gathering biofuel and enduring smoke-related harm due to cooking with fire. Despite the years of research examining reasons for the failures, there do not appear to be enough studies of the social, cultural, or environmental factors that could predict the success or failure of a given project. By researching previous projects, the cooking cultures and energy deficits of certain countries, and three solar cooking technologies, insights and questions will be developed for the interviews with the East African diaspora living in Calgary. Together, these will yield a framework through which clean cooking technologies may be effectively implemented in Tanzania.