As part of the RBC summer student program, students were placed into teams of 3-15 people and tasked with the challenge of creating a solution that will help engage RBC summer students during their coop term. After conducting interviews of current RBC summer students, our team found that one of the main reasons why students were not as engaged during their work term was that they had a difficult time connecting with people at the company. Thus, along with two other team memebers, I prototyped an application that allows students to connect with other students at RBC by matching users based on both professional and personal interests. By connecting students with likeminded individuals, my team hopes to encourage students to come out to more RBC events, and to give these students a way to share and talk about their own experiences with individuals who are going through similar ones.

If you would like to learn more about this project, feel free to check out our presentation deck here or a dribbble posting here!

Nearly one million Canadian children start school on an empty stomach due to a lack of access to nutritious food, which has been shown to increase risk of developing chronic illnesses, mental health problems and poor academic performance. Vittles is an organization that operates under the belief that everyone has the fundamental right to nutrition and consequently, aims to address this injustice. During the day, Vittles operates as a casual restaurant that provides carefully crafted, made-to-order, healthy meals and at the end of each operating day, packages its food surplus to send to local schools to tackle this inequality.

In collaboaration with 4 other students, we worked to build Vittles from the ground up: starting with an initial business proposition, continuing to market research and the creation of a value proposition canvas, solidifying a sound business model, and finally, in pitching this venture to a panel of judges posing as potential investors. If you would like to learn more about Vittles, you can find our presentation deck here.