SURREY — The city’s business community will celebrate Surrey’s “Top 25 Under 25” during an awards reception on Thursday, April 20.
The seventh annual event celebrates “the incredible initiatives of Surrey’s youth 25 years old or younger.”
The 25 winners were chosen for their business or community achievements, leadership ability, community involvement, professional achievements and uniqueness of their business or community projects.
The 2016 Surrey Business Person of the Year, Curtis Christopherson (Innovative Fitness, Reflex Supplements) is the keynote speaker at the event, to take place at Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel (15269 104th Ave., Surrey) starting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Admission is free. For details, visit Businessinsurrey.com.
Event sponsors are Kwantlen Polytechnic University, SFU Beedie School of Business, Century Group and WorkSafeBC.
Detailed below are the “Top 25 Under 25” award winners for 2017, along with biographies submitted by Surrey Board of Trade:
Cameron Adamson, age 12
“Cameron developed his business, Sidekick BookMarkz, through his participation in PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs. He initially came up with the idea for a bookmark window as a way to help readers keep track of their place on the page. It was not until later that he realized he had created a powerful tool to help people with reading challenges like dyslexia focus on what they are reading, line by line, without the distraction of the surrounding text. Cameron is currently developing and expanding his business with the support of business mentors, including Surrey Councillor Bruce Hayne. He plans to bring his bookmarks into stores, libraries and retirement communities and is also looking at adding value to his product by strategically partnering with likeminded organizations that promote reading. With this in mind, he has been learning new skills related to mass producing and marketing his product.”
Joban Bal, age 18
“Joban Bal has been actively leading volunteer initiatives with Canadian Blood Services for the past 4 years. In March 2016, he recruited and led a team of 35 volunteers to organize Tamanawis Secondary’s first ever blood donor clinic. In September 2016, Joban Bal founded the One Blood For Life Foundation (OBFL), a non-profit organization that has made momentous strides in blood donation and stem cell donation awareness in Surrey. The organization currently has 85 volunteers, and overlooks multiple programs which includes sending weekly volunteers to permanent clinics, organizing mobile blood donor clinics, and working to increase the genetic diversity in the Canadian Stem Cell registry. In the latter half of 2016 alone, OBFL has had 210 donors come to clinics organized by Joban. He has helped get an additional 152 donors into the Surrey clinic amidst a shortage. Joban is now expanding programs with a youth council of leaders in Surrey and continues to organize blood clinics.”
Tarun Bangar, age 24
“A graduate of KPU, Tarun has been involved in multiple different organizations helping local youth stay on the right path. He currently serves as the Executive Director of SOAR Philanthropic Society, providing scholarships to students. He has worked in multiple different areas related to social service, specifically local youth who require added support. The Vancouver Police Department selected Tarun for a 4 month practicum in the Gang Crime Unit. The Kids Play Youth Foundation has recognized him for his excellence in community service in keeping youth away from the lifestyle of drugs, gangs and violence. His passion for law enforcement will result in becoming a police officer in the near future. Tarun has also served on the Board of South Asian Alliance Vancouver, organizing charitable ventures and projects in the local community, such as monthly sandwich drives, giving back to the people in need. Other projects included raising funds for Mannkind Charitable Society, a local charity that for plants trees and provides environmental resources.”
Simrenjit Boyal, age 20
“Simrenjit (Simren) has been involved with Enactus SFU for the past two years. Simren has been closely involved with project Refresh, which collects and utilizes excess food products from local grocery stores and upcycles them into a variety of enjoyable culinary delights. He was a part of the original team for Refresh and worked with the program from its inception to present day. His current position is on the executive team for Enactus SFU as the Director of Program Development. His role consists of overseeing projects and working with the program managers to set goals, create annual timelines, and develop and track appropriate metrics for project sustainability and growth. In the past year, Simren has also served on the leadership team of SFU Punjabi Students Association (PSA) as a Director. He was responsible for coordinating two major events for SFU PSA, each attracting 550 people. During his year as Director for the club, the PSA had its most successful year in its 20-year history, raising over $32,000 for the Surrey Food Bank through its two pillar events.”
William Brenner, age 24
“William is the CEO and one of five co-founders of Orello Hearing Technologies. Orello Hearing Technologies is a start-up company that originated from the Surrey-based Technology Entrepreneurship@SFU program. Orello could potentially disrupt the hearing aid market by producing the first device that a customer can custom-fit and tune from the comfort of their home, at a fraction of the cost of comparable hearing aids. The typical cost for a custom-fitted and custom-tuned hearing aid can be up to USD $1,500 and a wait time between 2 and 8 weeks. Orello’s competitive advantage is its unique technology allowing it to be sold to consumers through a much less expensive distribution model (expected price is USD $399). William is now a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Entrepreneurship course at SFU Surrey. In his own words, ‘Being able to share my knowledge, failures, success, and passion for entrepreneurship with the next generation of student entrepreneurs has been a really rewarding experience for me and I hope that I’ve inspired a couple of them to start their own business and follow their passions.’”
Tobias Carryer, age 15
“Tobias is the creator of 56 Paper Clips, a blog for teenagers in the Lower Mainland whose writers are also teenagers. It is a community project meant to give youth experience working in journalism and to expose more teenagers to the opportunities available to them. Tobias managed to grow the blog in only 2 months, a time frame where many other blogs would not survive. 56 Paper Clips consistently receives 100+ views on most posts with the best receiving 700 views. Last year, he was awarded the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. This year, he became one of the founding directors of Inova Computer Association, which hosts events for tech-savvy youth in the Lower Mainland. Recently, Tobias was granted a position at Illuminate Vancouver to grow the non-profit to have conferences beyond Vancouver and possibly beyond the country. Tobias is expected to graduate high school next year, a full year ahead of his peers.”
Calvin Cheng, age 20
“Calvin works on the Refresh and Banner Bags programs with Enactus SFU. His first leadership role was with the Banner Bags program, which takes used banners from different companies and cities that would otherwise go into a landfill and brings them to high school sewing classes to be made into bags. By critically analyzing the program’s structure and leading his team, they have been able to educate, engage, and empower over 1,300 local high school students on the importance of environmental sustainability and encouraged them to make a difference in their own communities through upcycling. Refresh focuses on taking excess food produce that are visually unattractive to our local grocers’ standards and upcycles them into new products to resell again. Calving is an ongoing recipient of the Gordon M. Shrum Major Entrance Scholarship, valued at $24,000. Recently, Calvin also received one of 32 Canadian Picture Pioneer Student Scholarships, which assesses personal profiles and how their education and life will benefit society.”
Joseph Fredrick, age 22
“Joseph is currently CEO of Zephyrsol, a start-up that aims to help remote communities eliminate diesel usage. He and his team identified that many remote communities relied on diesel as a source of fuel, even though it was costly to maintain and harmful to the local environment. He and his team are in the process of developing a plug-and-play adaptable storage unit that is designed to work with any green energy generator (such as solar panels or wind turbines) to help communities reduce their dependency on diesel fuel. This also reduces their environmental impact, and the health impact that is has on its inhabitants. As the CEO, he currently facilitates the strategy, sales, marketing research, operations and finance side of Zephyrsol. He is also the External Relations Specialist with the SOAR Philanthropic Society, which is a non-profit organization that provides financial assistance to graduating high school students wishing to pursue post-secondary schooling. Joseph has helped organize the SOAR Summit, the SOAR Gala, and many other events in the last two years.”
Nadia Gill, age 24
“Nadia is the Founder and CEO at Knowledge Builders, which is a mobile tutoring company that will focus on teaching, coaching and mentorship. If anyone would like to sign up as a tutor, they can create an account on the Knowledge Builders online platform. From there, kids who require help can see the tutor available on the Knowledge Builders and see information on the tutor’s background, education, and experience. Nadia is using an approach that Uber took for ridesharing to shake up the Surrey tutoring industry. She also sits on the Board of Directors as the Executive Director at SOAR Philanthropic Society, which is one of the largest youth run non-profits in all of Surrey. She oversees a team of 50 youth who run the organization. Nadia has a Bachelor of Science degree from UBC and is currently working towards her MCAT to pursue her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree. She plans on attending Stanford, Harvard or Yale Universities. As a medical profession, one day she plans on practicing in the Surrey community that has provided her with so much support.”
Yosof Hakimi, age 19
“Yosof is founder and CEO of Pixel Solutions, a digital media agency that provides services such as website development, graphic design and social media. As a self-taught developer and designer, Yosof started off by helping small, local businesses in Surrey. His education in business helps him provide professional business advice to his clients and gives him the ability to apply his learning to real business cases. He is also a Production Manager at Coast Cards, a not-for-profit business that reuses used coasters from restaurants and upcycles them into beautiful greeting cards. This social enterprise recruits recovering addicts to make the cards and help them to develop real life job skills. Yosof’s role in the program is to work along side the recovering addicts and ensure quality control. This year the program sold over $1,200 in cards and is planning to use that money to fund recovery facilities. Additionally, Yosof works full-time during the day as a Financial Administrator at iA Financial Group, and completes his studies at SFU in the evenings or online.”
Daniel Li, age 18
“Daniel founded the Young Years Program, an in-class paper and pencil mathematics competition for elementary and middle school students in BC in grades 2-8. The competition is a short-answer math contest and students write the competition individually to try and achieve the highest score of all students in their grade. What makes this competition unique compared to other math competitions is that the majority of the math problems in the competition are aligned with the learning outcomes from the BC Ministry of Education Mathematics Curriculum to help students apply the mathematical concepts that they learn in class and to improve their overall skills. Furthermore, this competition is offered for free for all students. During the first year, there were nearly 1,000 students from 25 different schools in BC who participated. The next year, the competition expanded to more cities in BC with a total of over 2,000 students from 51 schools in 19 different cities across BC who participated. Daniel’s goal for the 2017-18 school year is to increase student participation to 4,000 students and hopes to expand this competition into a Canada-wide competition within the next 5 years. Daniel does this by leading a team of 20 volunteers, in addition to the many community initiatives and events he volunteers for.”
Napassorn Limapichat, age 19
“Napassorn recently took on the role of Public Relations Manager at Soap for Hope, a social enterprise operating under Enactus SFU. Soap for Hope collects slightly used bars of soap from hotels, sanitizing them through a triple rinse cycle and ultimately, transforms them into new liquid soap. The final product is then distributed to local businesses and community members. All of the sales revenue is used to fund transitional work programs. Napassorn implements marketing strategies, manages social media accounts, and collaborates with her team of twenty-three university students to ensure that the program runs smoothly. She played a crucial role during the product launch in November 2016; she executed a successful social media campaign, which reached over 4,500 community members within two weeks. Napassorn enhanced the program’s online presence and increased followers by over 34% during her term. She is also involved in various community initiatives, which include being a mentor in the Beedie Mentorship Program, a member of SFU Young Women in Business Club, and a presenter in the Enactus Regional and National Exposition. Within the past year, she has also been a participant in JDC West Competitors of Tomorrow case study program and a competitor in local business case competitions.”
Crystal Lin, age 20
“Crystal is a part of the Banner Bags program through Enactus SFU. In her first year with Banner Bags, she was the Go Green Challenge Manager. This year, she has assumed the role of Program Manager. Banner Bags takes used banners from different companies and cities that would otherwise go into a landfill and brings them to high school sewing classes to be made into bags. Through the transition of leading a team of 10 workshop coordinators to a team of 20, while overseeing a program with three different components, she has gained the organizational and leadership skills needed to run this program. As the Program Manager for the 2016-2017 year, she has been taking steps to make Banner Bags self-sustaining in the community. She and her team have reached out to school board directors to propose how the program can run independently from Enactus SFU. She strives to incorporate the mantra “leaders create leaders” in everything she in involved with. Crystal hopes to not only inspire others to take environmental initiatives, but to take a leadership role in everything they are engaged in. She hopes to guide people to find their passion and share it with others in order to build a community of leaders.”
Henry Lo, age 24
“Henry is a co-designer of Farmooo, an immersive virtual reality (VR) game designed to function as a method of pain distraction for teenage cancer patients during their chemotherapy treatments. By understanding, firsthand, that cancer is an illness that touches a patient’s physical and psychosocial well-being, the game is designed using a farm metaphor to symbolize hope and growth. Henry was diagnosed with Lymphoma and was treated for it during his high school years. Despite the effects of the chemotherapy and cancer, Henry didn’t give up. This project was built on two decades of research using VR as pain distraction. Henry and his co-designer Janice brought together a technical expert and an oncologist, built the game, and conducted the pilot study at BC Children’s Hospital. Based on these findings, they are revising the VR game so it can be used in the Youth Oncology Clinic at Surrey Memorial Hospital. They plan to commercialize the game for other non-profit oncology centres in BC and Canada with help from Surrey’s Innovation Boulevard. Henry believes that how successful you are isn’t based on how much money you have, but on how committed you are to your values. He acts on his belief by ‘giving back’ what the world has given him.”
Madeline Millsip, age 22
“In 2011, Madeline founded YoutHatch, a program that encourages students to learn about and become involved in salmon sustainability. Through YoutHatch, she has become an environmental leader in the community, and was nominated for the Pete Swensson Outstanding Community Youth award. Madeline has an extensive and impressive record of community involvement within SFU and beyond. She has represented SFU at business competitions internationally, including an upcoming competition in Serbia. In addition to participating as a competitor, Madeline has mentored other students as a competition coach. Madeline also excels academically and has served as a Teaching Assistant since 2015, teaching over 300 students technical skills in Microsoft Office. She has also been a Research Assistant to a professor, investigating the impact of experiential learning on student engagement in project management courses. Madeline was valedictorian of her graduating class and has earned $53,000 in academic and community-based awards. She recently won the Odgers Berndtson’s CEO x 1 Day contest, which gave her the opportunity to shadow the CEO of BCLC for a day.”
Alexandria Mitchell, age 23
“Alexandria has a background as a small business owner, writer, editor, publisher and public relations professional – from covering the Olympic Games in London, looking at low carbon development in Guyana, working on sustainability in New Delhi, to working as an analyst at high level government negotiations on climate change. Recently working at the City of Surrey in the Economic Development Division she focused on workforce development and supporting the growth of the clean technology industry in Surrey. Alexandria designs unique and innovative programs that support local economic development. Her ‘Business Walks Program’ was nominated for its creativity and local impact at the BC Economic Development Association and Economic Developers Association of Canada annual awards. Alexandria is also the chair of Rotary Youth Adventures in Leadership, and a Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum Vancouver Hub, just two of the many organizations she has volunteered her time with. Alexandria was selected as a Weston Loran Scholar, Canada’s top undergraduate scholarship award valued at $100,000.”
Velaphi Angela Mkwananzi, age 18
“Angela immigrated to Canada in 2010 as a refugee and has been dedicating her time to her community since. Mayor 4 a Day is a unique program that Angela founded in effort to stimulate gender equality. The goal of this program is to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls to pursue politics. Mayor 4 a Day is an initiative that strives to provide high school students with an opportunity to spend a day interning with Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner. This program believes that women and girls have a right to equality in all areas. Angela founded a non-profit initiative called Project AFRI (Angels For Relief Initiative). In December 2015 she travelled to Zimbabwe to provide school supplies for over 60 orphans. In 2016, Angela went to Morocco to provide school supplies to over 100 orphans. In June, Angela will spend 6 weeks in Thailand being an English teacher supplying school supplies to a local school. She was invited to be a Canadian Ambassador and Delegate to the Global Peace and Social Development in Morocco, where she spoke to Parliament on behalf of Canadian youth. Angela aspires to be Human Rights Lawyer; it is her dream to work with refugees in conflict zones.”
Hassan Murad, age 23
“As the Co-Founder, CEO and Robotics Lead at Intuitive Robotics, Hassan expressed his concern about the efficiency of the available recycling programs in the market. His passion in sustainability and technology drove him to find a solution that could change the way of people recycle today. Under Hassan’s leadership, Intuitive Robotics competed with the best artificial intelligence ideas across the world and was selected as one of the start-ups by Next Artificial Intelligence (NextAI) by Next Canada, an incubator based at the University of Toronto taught by professors from Harvard, MIT and backed by technology giants IBM, Google and Nvidia. Hassan has also completed internships in the Autopilot team with Tesla Motors. Besides his involvement in the student organizations at SFU Surrey, he also taught robotics courses for 2 years to junior students aged from 9 to 12 at Surrey Schools. Hassan now has only one goal in mind: to develop technology that eliminates recyclables and dangerous materials from entering landfills and oceans. This solution could potentially transform our way of living and significantly enhance the efficiency of our city’s sustainable efforts.”
Janice Ng, age 24
“Janice Ng, along with Henry Lo, created, built and clinically tested Farmooo, a virtual reality (VR) game designed as pain distraction for teenage cancer patients during their chemotherapy treatments. Janice and her co-designer Henry brought together a technical expert and an oncologist, built the game, and conducted the pilot study at BC Children’s Hospital. Based on these findings, they are revising the VR game so it can be used in the Youth Oncology Clinic at Surrey Memorial Hospital. They plan to commercialize the game for other non-profit oncology centres in BC and Canada with help from Surrey’s Innovation Boulevard. Janice also works for the City of Surrey not only as a User Experience Designer, but as a leader of varied project directions, ensuring that the most appropriate experiential designs meet citizens’ needs. Further, Janice plans and runs design workshops as a facilitator; the aim is to promote the most up-to-date work processes for employees in order to develop products and services that are customer-centric, user-friendly experiences.”
Bukhosi Nkosi, age 22
“Working closely with his business partner, Bukhosi co-founded Frontrvnners, a streetwear company that makes high-quality garments. Bukhosi was recently awarded the Venture Connection Small Business Award for Frontrvnners. His company has grown into one of the most established streetwear brands in Vancouver, with a community of more than 30,000 supporters worldwide and a customer base in five continents. He is also the co-founder of Co-llective Marketing, a member of the Forbes Agency Council where specialists aggregate creative resources to help customers execute their business objectives. He is also involved in the SFU community as a Team Leader for Brooked Events and The Schedule SFU, which are organizations that host social events for SFU students, many of which are held at the Surrey campus. He was also the Vice-President of the African Students Association and the Marketing Director for the annual SFU Fall Kickoff event. In his spare time, he is a volunteer at the recently built Charles Chang Innovation Center, a new graduate student residence and innovation facility in downtown Vancouver.”
Braeden Peterson, age 22
“Braeden is the president and founder of the student club, Actions Worth Taking, which organizes events such as blood drives and clothing drives in Surrey. He also founded Students for Humanity, a humanitarian group that provides aid, relief, assistance, education, and promotion of health and well-being in the Surrey community. Through the student club Enactus, Braeden served as the External Relations Director for Jumpstart, a startup accelerator that provides workshops and resources to student entrepreneurs. This year, he was chosen as the SFU delegate for the 2017 Student Energy Summit, where he will represent SFU and Canada amongst 800 delegates from 130 countries to discuss current issues and trends in the energy sector. Braeden has been the Sales & Marketing Director for Calico Jewellers for the past two years. He has continued his entrepreneurial ventures with the launch of his two new companies, LOCUS and SmartParks. LOCUS is a location-based analytics company. SmartParks is an Internet of Things-based company that utilizes hardware and software analytic tools to introduce intelligent monitoring and management of resources for city park facilities.”
Robbie Sebullen, age 24
“Robbie is one of the top students in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at SFU Surrey. Robbie has represented SIAT outside of academia for competitions. His project, IKEA Stay, won the Vancouver UX Awards 2016 in the Student category and the People’s Choice category. IKEA Stay is a service that allows IKEA customers to test out products that best suit their needs through an immersive Airbnb stay and web experience. IKEA Stay allows people who are moving to a new city to visualize the way their homes could look and get a further understanding of what products work for them. Robbie was President of CAC, the largest social club at SFU, and now he serves as a Senior Advisor for the club. He has also served as a Frosh Leader for SIAT Frosh, a two-day event held annually to help new students that are joining SIAT to be engaged with their program, and more importantly, their peers. He also serves as both as an Orientation Leader, as well as the lead organizer for Welcome Day’s biggest icebreaker event involving the entirety of SFU Surrey Orientation attendees.”
Rajin Shokar, age 21
“As the current President of Enactus SFU, Rajin has led his team to volunteer over 48,000 hours to make a difference in the lives of over 2,000 individuals in Surrey this year. The team launched two new projects under his leadership including: a new social enterprise, Coast Cards, and a strategic project, Enactus SFU Hackathon, while successfully transitioning 3 existing programs into the community through formal partnerships. Previously he created Bright Ideas, an 8-week program that empowers high school students in creating their own business ventures by financing them with a micro-loan. It has impacted 115 students, creating 31 businesses, and generating $12,500 in revenue. The Hackathon is a non-coding hackathon focused on idea generation, providing a platform for teams to create innovative solutions to Vancouver’s most crucial problems. It includes a series of workshops that will help prepare teams for a final pitch competition. The event exceeded benchmarks for ticket sales, selling out 10 days before the actual event. This first hackathon has empowered 50 participants, 15 external stakeholders, and 60 SFU attendees. All of his leadership efforts spurred his team onto 4 Regional Championships at Enactus Canada’s Western Regional Exposition – the first time in history. Rajin also sits on the Surrey Board of Trade’s Youth Entrepreneurship Team.”
Emad Sholi, age 23
“Emad supported the global launch of the BlackBerry Passport smartphone during his time as Product Marketing Coordinator at BlackBerry. The launch of BlackBerry’s innovative smartphone captivated an online audience of 50,000 people and achieved 250,000 orders in the first couple of days of launch. Emad played a critical role in supporting the planning of the Toronto live launch for this product and was given the opportunity to be featured during the live product demonstration. At TELUS, Emad leads over 15 Team Managers and over 150 agents to drive customer-first initiatives Canada wide. He is responsible for leading an internal advocacy program that caters to TELUS’ 36,000 employee base. Emad actively dedicated his time to causes and organizations that align with his values, accumulating over 2,300 volunteer hours. He has been involved with Covenant House, BC Children’s Hospital Foundation, Surrey Memorial Hospital, Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Options BC, and the list goes on. He believes in the impact of giving back and uncovering one’s own potential.”
Karamveer Virdi, age 21
“Karamveer is currently involved with Enactus SFU as the Director of Program Development. His responsibilities include overseeing the development of four out of eight programs run by Enactus SFU, working closely with Program Managers to ensure sustainability and to implement strategies to achieve metrics objectives. This role has allowed him to exercise his leadership and business acumen by requiring him to consider all factors and data when providing practical advice to members of the team. He is also working on his project idea to collect used coffee grounds from local coffee shops and to sell them to community gardens as fertilizer. His goal is to hire individuals living in the Downtown Eastside to collect the coffee grounds, providing them with employment and a source of income. He has also has also been involved in a SFU project called Banner Bags. During the time that he served as Sales Manager of Banner Bags, Karamveer and his team worked with the local social enterprise Common Thread to sell $4,780 in upcycled banner bags. Common Thread hires women with employment barriers to provide them with a source of income. Recently, he has secured a co-op position at PwC for the upcoming summer term in their assurance department.”
