Earlier this year, alumni in Waterloo Region shared their journeys to unique careers. At the Road Less Travelled event, students and alumni joined us to hear from four grads of the last decade who took an unexepected path. In today's episode, we'll listen to their stories.
You'll hear from BeBlended founder Aileen Agada (BASc '21), artist Saphera Peters (GBDA '20), UX researcher Michael Cao (BSc '15, MSc '18) and health tech entrepreneur Keenan Sarani (PharmD '21).
If you like this episode, join us for the next event in the Road Less Travelled series, happening Nov 9 in Toronto: https://bit.ly/3PMvsAN
Earlier this year, alumni in Waterloo Region shared their journeys to unique careers. At the Road Less Travelled event, students and alumni joined us to hear from four grads of the last decade who took an unexepected path. In today's episode, we'll listen to their stories.
You'll hear from BeBlended founder Aileen Agada (BASc '21), artist Saphera Peters (GBDA '20), UX researcher Michael Cao (BSc '15, MSc '18) and health tech entrepreneur Keenan Sarani (PharmD '21).
If you like this episode, join us for the next event in the Road Less Travelled series, happening Nov 9 in Toronto: https://bit.ly/3PMvsAN
Earlier this year, alumni in Waterloo Region shared their journeys to unique careers at the Road Less Travelled event. Students and alumni joined us to hear from four grads of the last decade who took an unexpected road in their career journeys. In today's episode, we'll listen in on their stories. You'll hear BeBlended founder Aileen Agada, artist Saphera Peters , UX researcher Michael Cao and h ealth tech entrepreneur Keenan Sarani. If you liked this episode, I think you should listen to the end for more information about the next Road Less Traveled event. It's happening this fall. Keep listening.
Event host:I would like to introduce our keynote speaker for the evening, Aileen Agada. Aileen is a 2021 Environmental Engineering alum who has successfully ventured into entrepreneurship. She is the founder and CEO of Be Blended, a tech startup focused on the black hair care industry. There will be a Q&A session after her speech, so feel free to ask her questions and please welcome Aileen to the stage.
Aileen Agada:Well, it is an honor to be here. I know when Megan where's Megan? She's the one that did a lot of the organization, by the way, so can we do a quick round of applause for Megan? So when Megan reached out to me, I was kind of like, ah, keynote speech, oh, I don't know if I want to do that, not sure. But I saw the title and I saw the Road Less Travelled and I thought if anything could describe my life right now, it is that title. So, hopefully, my goal is to hopefully make you feel inspired, understand my story and my journey, all the while finding maybe a little bit of yourself in my story, so that you leave feeling inspired and encouraged and ready to change the world. So let's get started. In order to know more about me, you probably should know a little bit more about my background to kind of lay the groundwork. So in order to be an alumni, I have to graduate from here. So I studied environmental engineering. I started in 2015. Ended in 2021.
Aileen Agada:Engineering at Waterloo is like the ring of fire, so I learned to really balance a lot, but I made it out. Still wasn't done being a student, still wanted my foot in academia a little bit, and so I still am doing my master's in business, entrepreneurship and technology. I'm a part-time student. I'm in my second year now and I have about one year left to go. I'm also a founder and CEO of Be Blended. I won't spoil what it is now. If you did your research, you found out what we do, but I'll share more about that journey and you can really see where Be Blended was born through the process. If that's not enough, also start at Lift Off, and Lift Off is an incubator here in Kitchener- Waterloo, focused on black founders who are running their businesses and trying to scale. And lastly, in another life I was a venture capital analyst and I worked at a firm called Emerald Technology Ventures where I was exposed to a lot of companies, hundreds of thousands of pitch decks and I learned the mindset of venture capital. So that's the groundwork.
Aileen Agada:That's a little bit more about myself, but before I go on, to my knowledge, this group I was, I guess, informed that this group is about 50% students, 50% alumni and a bunch of people from everywhere else, and so one question I have to first ask you is is everyone aware of the you Waterloo co-op program? Yes, I've seen some head nods. Very good, very good, okay, great. So the way I'm going to kind of walk you through my story is through my co-op experiences into when I graduated and what has happened shortly after my graduation. So the first co-op I ever had was at Maple Leaf Foods corporate office, so I was a customer service support person. I was a lady that was like hi, this is Aileen, how may I help you today? And essentially everyone at this company who had a work laptop or a work phone and something went wrong. They would reach out to us and we would help fix their problems. I never want to do that job ever again.
Aileen Agada:However, I have a strong empathy towards customer support people and so anytime I call anyone now, like Bell or whoever, I'm the nicest to them because you know, don't shoot the messenger, they're just doing their job. They're clocking in and clocking out. So that was my first co-op job. My second I was like okay, Maple Leaf Foods, let's jump into life insurance. And so I worked at Manulife Financial this is a group of my fellow co-op co-workers and I worked as a business system analyst there and I was still intrigued by the IT sector, so remind yourself that I studied environmental engineering. With co-op, you still have the opportunity to work at different places and so I was still curious about the business side and worked there. I worked at Manulife for about eight months, so not the typical four, but eight, mainly because I failed my 1B term. So failure came to me early on in life and I failed my 1B term, which is essentially the first, my second semester of first year, and I was able to work here long term, or for eight months, and wait a year to restart with the second, the year that came after me, Anna Maria, who's the lady with the Santa Claus beard she I confided in her during that co-op term because she had a similar experience about transitioning from high school to university and the difficulties that went with that. After that co-op term I worked at the government of Canada I was like to heck with life insurance let's see what's going on with the government and I was very privileged to work on Parliament Hill and their engineering department and essentially I would go through the co-op term and learn about blueprints and where my work equipment and be on the field a lot of the times. Something I was not a huge fan of was Port-a-Potties, and so I quickly learned I'm not a field person and it was an eye-opening experience, but it was still fun. I rubbed shoulders with politicians a lot of the times. I attended question period, got to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau get questions in Question Period through the opposition, and it was really fun. I had a great time. One thing I would love for you all to remember is that this particular co-op term was a pivoting moment for me, so I'm going to ask you guys to put a pin in this and I'm going to ask the audience later on which co-op term was pivotal for me, and if no one answers, we're just going to be staring into each other's eyes for the remainder of my talk. But you're a smart bunch, so I think we'll be fine.
Aileen Agada:My next co-op term was at the Toronto Transit Commission. I was still interested in the government. I was curious about what was going on. This particular photo was taken by my co-op co-worker in Raj and he was a gem because we would stay at this place for like 20 minutes just trying to get the perfect photo. But it was a fun co-op term. I learned a lot about project management and understood how things work in the government from a municipal perspective.
Aileen Agada:My fifth co-op term which was super exciting, my favorite one by far is when I worked at a startup called Shape, in Belgium. So my grades weren't the greatest, so the best way to go abroad wasn't through an exchange term but going on a co-op in a new country. And so Shape essentially built hardware that would attach to water meters that would track leaks in homes, buildings and infrastructure, and using the software you can detect a leak before it happens and help with repairs before it gets too big and too expensive. And so I got to rub shoulders with a lot of the CEO, the CTO, the COO, all the Cs and it was really fun working at Shape, mainly because what I was doing was directly impacting the company. I can see a change and the customer interacts with it almost immediately. Alex, who's the CEO on the far right, and Greg, who's the COO on the far left. I still stay in contact with them. They're amazing people and this is where the gears of startup world start to take a turn.
Aileen Agada:For me, my last two co-op terms was an enterprise co-op. So essentially what that is is you work full time on your startup or your business and you kind of get your feet wet. In entrepreneurship it's kind of it rips off the band aid a little bit. You understand, mm. Is entrepreneurship for me? Not sure. Yes, maybe, and so I took those two opportunities to work on. BeBlended was a part of multiple pitch competitions and Greenhouse, the incubator, as well as touring Velocity, which has a booth over there, shameless plug, as well as an incubator called Next 36. So there I really really took all the advantages I could take and use at the University of Waterloo and was very fortunate with the outcome of my co-op terms.
Aileen Agada:So here is now the real question. So how is BeBlended born? There was a pivotal moment that happened. I know y'all are a smart bunch. So which co-op term did I tell you to put a pin in? I need to see someone's hand. I'm gonna pick you over there in the black shirt, correct? I knew you were a smart bunch.
Aileen Agada:And so when I worked at the government of Canada, two pivotal moments happened in my life Number one. Number one was I rededicated my life to Christ in Christianity, learned more about Jesus and was able to really go deeper in my faith. So that was one. Number two is I experienced a problem. So, two months into my co-op term, I recognized I have my rent sorted out, I have my groceries, I know transit, I know all that stuff, but I didn't have a hairstylist and I thought you know, there's lots of people around, let me see if I can just find one. And so any sensible person would go to Google. So I went hair salons near me, and with a two kilometer radius I found about 15 hair salons, and so this is very dense.
Aileen Agada:I can walk into multiple different hair salons, and I remember going into every single one of them and all of them turned me away. Half of them were hostile, so super duper mean, and I just remember thinking this is so strange. I don't think it's because they don't like me or anything, but they didn't know how to work on my Afro curly hair texture and so my hair right now is like sleek in a ponytail, so you don't really see it, but my hair is full of afro when I take this out. And I remember thinking why are they hostile? And these hairstylists become hairstylists and go to cosmetology school, get their certificate put at the back of their hair salon and it's like I'm a hairstylist, I walk in with my Afro and then maybe that pokes holes in their credibility and they get defensive. I don't know, but that's what I like to tell myself. So I said, okay, well, this is strange and really uncomfortable.
Aileen Agada:And I walked down the street and I saw a lot of black women and I said where is everyone getting their hair done? And so I had to do the awkward thing where I went up to them, said sorry, excuse me, where are you getting your hair done? And they said a friend of a friend of a sister of a sister of an aunt who lives over there. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, that's a lot of work. How do I find these people? And it turns out that these hairstylists, or freelance hairstylists typically work out of their homes and unless you know their user handle or their name or the network, you won't be engaged in the community. So I, fortunately, was able to find a hairstylist through my church community.
Aileen Agada:But when I went back to Waterloo, I couldn't really sit on the problem anymore. I thought to myself it was 2017 at the time. I thought to myself we've been on the moon, but I can't find a hairstylist. That's so weird. And so I said hold on, data speaks louder than words. If I myself, if it's just my story and I'm the only one that experienced it and I'm the only one that got turned away, I'll leave it be. I'll figure out what the heck I wanna do with environmental engineering. If not and people really spoke and the stories were louder and there's much more data to prove it, then maybe I'll go in this direction.
Aileen Agada:So what did I do? I ended up messaging over 2,000 black women on Facebook Messenger. Facebook thought I was spam, so they blocked me every three days. I had to reset my password, but it's okay. So out of those 2,000 black women, 700 of them responded to me, to a random lady, and a five minute survey that should tell you a lot already, I must say, when you think about data and market research. And so the data spoke for itself. So, 91% of black women they were saying, yeah, I've been turned away from hair salons. But what was interesting was 96% of these black women said, yeah, I don't feel comfortable or confident moving to any Canadian city and actually having my hair needs met. So this means Thunder Bay, this means Sudbury, Saskatoon. They're like, yeah, I don't think it's gonna be fine over there. And so the data spoke to itself for itself and I said, okay, well, I guess I have to do something about this. And that's where Be Blended was born. Oops, sorry, that's where Be Blended was born.
Aileen Agada:And Be Blended is essentially an online platform that connects black women to hairstylists worldwide. While we were talking to these black hairstylists, we recognized that a lot of them were working out of their homes, using iCalendar, random booking systems, acuity scheduling, e-transfers to run their businesses, and that was the informal approach they were taking. An interesting thing as well is that a good chunk of them weren't licensed, and I remember asking them, and the reason was if I wanted to become a hairstylist today, right now, here in Canada and I went to cosmetology school, they will not currently teach me how to work on my own hair texture. So, as a black hairstylist, why would they now go to cosmetology school, pay for a license, then come out to service no one. That matches with the knowledge they've learned and their clientele is a majority of black women, so it didn't make sense. So I said, okay, now with our team, let's build a software to be a business tool for these black hairstylists. So with Be Blended, yes, we connect black women to hairstylists worldwide, but we also build tailored software for them to run their businesses better, and so they reprocess transactions and bookings and finances and chats and all that stuff. So that's essentially Be Blended and that's the Be Blended founder story. So Be Blended today. What are we doing right now? So we currently have a website at beblended. ca that is functioning. It's up there. I would like to call it our highly functioning MVP or minimal viable product. But we have a new product and platform coming soon, this summer. So it's kind of funny that I'm here speaking because I'm kind of prepping for that launch, for you guys to know more about it. But we have been working tirelessly on this platform and my team, nice seque, are phenomenal. They're my ride or dies, and they're amazing and have been building it for the past year and a bit now, and these people have worked tirelessly, time in and time out, to make Be Blended what it is today, and so that's essentially my road less traveled.
Aileen Agada:I mentioned to you my undergrad experience and I also mentioned to you my where we are today. Where I am today, but in the middle is where something happened, where my brain chemistry changed, the way I think and approach life changed, and those things were a life event, happened to me as well as after undergrad experiences that stem from that life event. So about two years ago around this time, my amazing father passed away. So after finishing my undergrad, about to graduate, my father caught COVID. He recovered from COVID but then had very severe organ failure and passed away. All within three weeks. My heart was broken, I was shattered. I had to pick myself off the ground and it was a piece of trash figure out life, but it was such a heartbreaking moment.
Aileen Agada:Growing up, my father would always mention if he were to pass away, he'd like to be buried in his childhood village in Nigeria. So not only did we have to mourn our father, but we had to figure out the logistics of burying him in Nigeria. And that was some heavy, heavy stuff for someone like myself who had not lost someone super, super close to me, let alone a parent. And so what took place was not only was I now a founder of BeBlended, I was now a mourning founder of BeBlended. Not only was I a team leader and trying to lead my team, but I was a mourning team leader, and that just opened a different level in my heart to understand what it means to lose someone, what it means to grieve, and I feel like I have a sense of empathy and understanding of life in its own way when you lose someone so amazing. And so I'm actually wearing the same dress I wore in that picture in honor of my father. It would be exactly two years tomorrow since his passing, so it's really interesting and timely of this event.
Aileen Agada:And so, in the midst of the chaos and the risk and the uncomfortableness and my heart breaking in the process, I started searching for a sense of stability. Entrepreneurship is far from stable, heck. At the time, we weren't even making money and I needed to pay bills. I needed to figure stuff out, and I was trying to search for some sort of stability. And what did I do? I don't know why I did this, but I got a job, and so I ended up working at a venture capital firm, and the reason I took the job was because not only would this help me as a founder, but it would also give me a sense of stability and help pay my bills. So I ended up working as a venture capital analyst at Emerald Technology Ventures. I worked there for about a year and a bit. There I experienced a lot of what the VC venture capital mindset was about. I went through multiple hundreds of thousands of pitch decks. I learned what it really meant to run a business and the eyes of a venture capitalist, and it was interesting because every time I would come across an entrepreneur I would just think oh, I know what they're going through, I try to get them in in any way possible. But I recognized I was getting more excited about the entrepreneurship journey rather than the VC position, and so, as I felt more stability after a year and a bit of working there, I decided to take the leap and work full time on Be Blended. So I left there about early February of this year and have been a full time entrepreneur at Be Blended ever since. I've been a full time entrepreneur for three months, which is risky, but I feel so confident with my team and our product and our customer base and where my heart is leading. So that's essentially my road less travelled.
Aileen Agada:I told you about my undergrad experience, the life event. So my father passing, trying to search for stability through getting a venture capital job, and then now, where I am today, working full time on Be Blended, and so this is my story. When I started undergrad, did I know I would end up here? Absolutely not. And the interesting thing is, you might be like, oh, what's next? But honestly, I don't know. It's really to be continued.
Aileen Agada:That's the thing about life. Yes, I would love to finish and graduate from my MBET program. Yes, absolutely, BeBlended will launch. Our team will be successful. I'm super confident about that. There's no doubt in my mind. But life will take its course. Things will happen, and you'll have to bounce back, of course, regardless, and you'll have to stay strong. Ideally, life is difficult, but if you have a support network some of which are in the crowd right now for myself you can get through it, and so I want to leave you all with one question, and that question being will you take the road less travelled? It's OK if you decide not to take the road less travelled. There are circumstances, there are people you have to take care of, there's restraints and constraints, it's normal. But if you do decide to take the road less travelled, I hope that you'll follow your passion. When you fall, you get right back up and you be vocal about your struggles to people that you love and care about, so they can carry you when times are tough. So thank you, that's all.
Event host:That was so wonderful. I'm so excited that you had the opportunity to share your story, Aileen. Next, I would like to introduce Sapher Peters to share her story. Saphera is a 2020 global business and digital arts alum who has now become an artist and content creator. Yay, join me in welcoming Saphera to the stage. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Saphera Peters:Thank you, megan, for that. Hi everybody, just before I start, I want to say thank you to everyone at the alumni team for putting together this wonderful event. This building is beautiful. I've actually never been here until today, so pretty cool, but yeah. So my name is Saphera and obviously I'm here to talk about my journey on the road less traveled, so I think we can get straight into it. So, yeah, like I said, I'm Saphera, but I also go by Saf.
Saphera Peters:I am a GBDA 2020 alumni, so I graduated in the midst of a time where the world was rapidly changing, which I'll get into a little bit later and yeah, I essentially quit my full time job in marketing to be a full time artist and content creator. So, yes, let's get into that, because it's pretty drastic. So, to kind of talk about my journey, I think it's important to talk about how I started as a creative person. So I would say, for as long as I can remember, I've been a very creative person. Early on in my childhood, I did a lot of writing and collaging, as you can see, but overall, I really just wanted to be a photographer. Like that was my end goal and in fact, I even have an album on my Facebook that is still there titled I Want to be a Photographer from about 2012 and no, if you'd go search it, it is privated, so you cannot see it. But yeah, that was a while ago. So, fast forward to university, when it was time to pick a program, I really wanted to find something that kind of fostered creativity but also had the security of business. Like we're always told, creativity isn't a career, it's just a hobby, and so I thought if I found something that had business in the background, it would really help me out. And so I found GBDA, global business and digital arts, and there's a photo of our campus in Stratford and there's also a photo of me during first year orientation on a black and gold day. So yeah, it was pretty cool.
Saphera Peters:But throughout my university career, I essentially wasn't sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. But what I did know is that I wanted something to do in photography, and so I knew if I wanted to go full time into this, I needed to learn how to draw, because drawing means you know how to storyboard and you're able to relay your ideas in the industry, and so that was something really important to me, and so I learned, I tried, so I ended up going on a journey in 2019 for one entire year. I did one illustration. So these are a few of the pieces that came out of that back in 2019. They're a little rough, but I really just wanted to show, like, the raw essence of putting your mind to something and being consistent, because consistency led me to really developing an art style. So here are a few of my more recent pieces from 2023, and I really count this practice to just being consistent at your goals. But yeah, I'm getting ahead of myself, so we're going to go backwards a little.
Saphera Peters:Like I said earlier, I graduated in 2020 at a time where nobody knew what was happening in the world and things were just a little hectic. Everyone. I felt like everyone around me, my peers they were getting full time jobs and so I kind of felt this external pressure to also get a job during a time where I was still kind of figuring out what I wanted for my life, especially in a pandemic. So that's exactly what I did. I ended up working a nine to five job in marketing at Velocity, who are actually here today, so you should go talk to them because they're awesome. But, yeah, I worked in marketing and I absolutely loved working with Velocity. I was able to talk to students, I was able to build community, but at the end of the day, I still felt like something was missing for me and that something was art and that something was being able to foster that creativity in me. And so I ended up after one year of working there, ended up leaving that job, which was really bittersweet, and I ended up doing art full time. So that was about a year ago now, so, fast forward to today.
Saphera Peters:I've been able to dedicate a lot of time to growing my skills and learning pattern design and licensing my artwork out to brands. I even have an Etsy store online where I sell handmade stickers, art prints and greeting cards, and I also do a lot of in real life markets, which is a really huge jump from working from home and, you know, being alone, to finally being able to talk to people again. Outside of that, I do a lot of client work as an artist, so a few of my clients that I wanted to mention were Velocity, of course, the city of Brampton and CBC KW. I also have a lot of public artwork coming out this summer with the city of Brampton, so I would love for you guys to check that out later because I'm super excited about it. Another really big industry as an artist that's been helping me on my journey right now is actually in the world of Web 3, so I'm not going to get into too much into this right now. It's kind of complicated, but I just wanted to highlight some really big wins that have happened to me. So I've been able to have my art displayed at NFT NYC, which is one of the largest NFT conferences, as well as Art Basel Miami and a couple different charity events one that's happening right now for Mental Health Awareness Month with Timepiece Magazine and Deepak Chopra. So that is my logo next to his face, which is pretty cool. And another really cool thing is through my 365 journey.
Saphera Peters:When I started doing art, I fell in love with painting as well, as this was another medium. I started practicing and during, I think, February, I painted this Telfar bag for fun, because I wanted to, and Brandy Zuckerberg's co-worker ended up purchasing it for her as a birthday gift. So that was a pretty big win. And for anyone who's like, who the heck is that? The guy who made Facebook? His sister? I don't know if you guys have heard of him, but yeah, so yeah, that was a really cool win and, honestly, none of this would have been possible if I didn't take that jump and follow my passion, as risky as it was.
Saphera Peters:I knew that in my life. If I didn't try and if I didn't take the jump to do art full time, I would regret it, and who wants to live a life full of regrets? Right? So, really quick. Also outside of that, I just recently started a YouTube channel. It's a really big passion of mine to share my journey with others, so it's fitting that I'm here today so I share about tips, tricks and how I came to where I am as a full time artist, as well as on TikTok and all those other apps. But it's been really great and, honestly, overall, my mission really is to just spark joy and inspiration through others, through art, and I feel like creating art but also creating content really helps me do that, and so, if you're going to take anything away from my little talk here today, I would say do what makes you happy and really take the jump, because you don't want to have any regrets in life. So, whatever that may be, try it out. But yeah, thank you so much and yeah.
Event host:Alright. Thank you so much, Saphera. That was a great story and if you guys have any questions, you would be able to catch Saphera at the reception table after. Next, I would like to introduce Michael Cow to share his story. Michael is a 2018 Masters of Kinesiology alum who is currently working as a UX research manager at the SCORE. Please welcome Michael.
Michael Cao:Hey, how's it going? How's the volume? Good, yeah, can you hear me all right, cool, so nice to see so many faces at an event like this and shout outs to the UW team for putting it together and also the speakers. The presentation was beautiful, the deck design wonderful, and also we have so many CEOs in the house. That's so amazing.
Michael Cao:So, anyways, I'm here to talk about me, and essentially what I do now is I oversee research at this company called The Score. The Score has a media app as well as a sports betting app. They operate in North America, a couple of brands. In Canada, they're known as The Score, in the States, they're known as Barstool Sportsbook, and I oversee the UX research team there. And so what we do is learn about the users, learn about what their mental models, expectations, goals, motivations are, so that we can then inform the product on better strategic directions and, essentially, what to build. How do we build cool stuff that people would resonate with? So how did I get here?
Michael Cao:My undergrad was in kinesiology, which is nothing close to this whatsoever, and I think it's like through my undergrad at kinesiology at Waterloo, through the co-op program, that I started to get started, to become pushed more towards a career that I have not envisioned in the past. So I went into university thinking that I'd be a doctor. Shout out to Aileen and yeah, that didn't happen. My first co-op term as a kinesiology student was in this thing called ergonomics. It's a funny word, but essentially it means the study of work. So the job was more around understanding workers in either an office, setting a factory so that we can produce better equipment, better workstations, tools for them, and so what I really enjoyed about ergonomics was the name, but also the fact that it was so open. It was so problem focused. Like you're handed this problem this person needs to be more efficient, or this person needs to produce this thing, widget, in a safer way. How do we do it? And so the path to get there was pretty much up to creativity, up to research. We got to figure it out. There's no right solutions. There's no recipe to follow. I really like that part about it, but I really didn't like the physicality part of it, where everything was in real life. I was more like a techie. I liked digital experiences. I thought the robots were going to take over the factories anyways, and I wanted a job in the future. So is this a dead industry.
Michael Cao:Ultimately, I landed on wanting to do ergonomics, but digital ergonomics. At the time that's what I called it, but in hindsight it was just called user experience research, but at the time I didn't know about it. So I was like how do I get here? How do I get here? And it was close to time to graduation and I had to pursue the next steps. Again, my default was going to medical school. So I started applying to med school, asking a bunch of profs for reference. There's this one prof that I just slayed her course. I think I was getting a 95 or something and I was like she's going to write me a great reference letter. Go into her office. And I'm like please write me a great reference letter. She's like cool, I will. But have you considered doing a master's with me in neuroscience? That's what it clicked. I was like wait a minute. If I wanted to do digital ergonomics, digital experiences are all perceived through the eyes, perceived through our ears, our touch, and so if, maybe, if I understand how the brain works, then maybe I can fool a company into hiring me so that I can work on their apps. So I did it.
Michael Cao:Two years later, I graduated with a neuroscience degree and was just shipped off to the job market and it was not pretty. There was a lot of random applications that I would send. Essentially, it got to a point where if the job title had the word research in it, I would apply so policy research, environmental research. I couldn't do it, but I could try. So ultimately I was super lucky.
Michael Cao:Through lots of failure, I landed my first gig at the Department of National Defense, working on a lot of wearable technologies, and that was kind of my way in. So I liked it. I liked it, but at the end of the day it wasn't like a tech company, it was a government of Canada. It wasn't like fast-paced or anything. So I was consistently striving to strive to get closer. Then I moved on to a career in research with a professional baseball team in Japan it was cool, but it wasn't tech and then moved on to consulting for a couple of years in for this huge company called Cognizant that just has their hands in different pockets. But ultimately I just kept trying to get there and inching closer and closer as of 2022, landed at The Score. I was the first researcher, grew the team to about 12 now and love every day of it. So that's a little bit about my story, and you can find me at the booth. Thank you so much.
Event host:Alright, thank you Michael. Last but not least, I would like to introduce Keenan Sarani to share his story. Keenan is a 2021 doctor of pharmacy alum who is now the COO and co-founder of Avro Life Scien ce, a clinical stage biotechnology company. Welcome, Keenan.
Keenan Sarani:Thank you very much. It's fantastic to be here. I can recognize a couple of faces in the room. I'll keep this generally short and sweet. In my journey let's, I guess, take it way back where it started. First, I would like to point out I too always thought I was going to go to medical school and be a surgeon one day. So I guess that's the running trend in the room and, look, we're turning out OK. I guess we'll see. So my journey starts way back 2017.
Keenan Sarani:I started at the University of Waterloo as an honor science student. I was always a science kid. I guess I should preface this by saying I never took a business course, a marketing course, anything outside of STEM. So I continued that at Waterloo, started honor science, took all the required courses, knowing, hopefully. I was going to pursue a pathway to become a clinician somehow.
Keenan Sarani:In first year university I became friends, like many do at Waterloo, with lots of engineers. All of my friends actually were engineers at the time and they brought me to one of these events at the Student Life Center where Velocity another lovely shout out was doing their Velocity Fund Final Pitch Competition. For those of you that don't know, the VFFs is an opportunity where the institution Waterloo awarded funding to students to go out and build a corporation, to build a company. If you had an idea, a dream, but you were willing to put in the work behind it, they were willing to take a bet on you. And, my God, I could not believe this. My mind was blown. What institution in the world was giving like 19 year olds funding to go out and do science in a lab? I was so in, but again a little bit different than what I thought I was going to be doing. With, I guess, some encouragement from my lovely engineering friends, we decided what the heck, let's try something out and let's try to join. So later that year, 2017, we joined Velocity. With the director at the time, I clearly remember him taking a bet on us, but also knowing we were just bright-eyed 19 year- olds with no clue what we were doing, and he forced us to literally print out a stack of research papers and he would not continue helping us until we went through all of them, got back to him, showed him we did our diligence and we continued along, fast forward to the end of that year, we actually formed a company, more so, a name, called Avro Life Science. We started tinkering away. I was also continuing at the same time on my academic journey in honor science. So all my co-founders they were doing their engineering degrees pursuing at the time, nanotechnology engineering, and the plan was we didn't really know, but I think that's kind of the beauty of entrepreneurship.
Keenan Sarani:2018 is probably the next big milestone where my life really got shaken up. In 2018, I was accepted into the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy. Okay, it's not quite a physician, but it's still a clinician. My parents will be happy and I can keep doing this. At the same time, Avro started to pick up. We realized we might have been on to something here. We were spending every night basically tinkering around in the lab. Those of you that are science students are at Waterloo. You'd recognize ESC 319, that's the old Velocity Science Hub. Tinkering around every single day and a quick sidebar and I guess this is a story that relates into maybe a lesson I have later.
Keenan Sarani:Our very first investment that we got that year in 2018. Was because of an email we got at midnight from an old co-op employer who told us hey, there's a pitch competition the next day at 7am. I know it's midnight, but if you show up and pitch, there's a chance you can pitch on the main stage in the real room. But we said what the heck? We showed up, we pitched, we ended up getting. We ended up pitching on the main stage. We got the floor wiped with us. It was awful, but there was someone in that audience that liked us and that chance turned into our very first angel investment, where, in 2018, I had this crossroads of pharmacy school company, my co-founders dropping out and moving across the world because we got into an incubator in Silicon Valley. What do I do? I decided to drink a lot of coffee and do both. So in 2018, I ended up continuing through pharmacy school.
Keenan Sarani:My co-founder moved across the world and I spent the first four months of my PharmD program flying to California every two weeks, taking the red eye on Fridays, coming back on Sundays doing school on the plane, trying to raise funding. But I'm so happy. I kind of said yes to that opportunity Because four years later, I was able to continue. Now my bread and butter is I work as the COO and co-founder of Avro Life Science. We're a clinical stage biotechnology company. We've raised about $6 million. We have a team of 15 based in Waterloo and we've built out an incredible wet lab, trying to get to the end goal of building drug delivery systems in the field of dermatology. But along the way I was able to somehow finish school, make my parents happy and they're still figuring out what it means to be a founder, but I think they're slowly getting there and also getting involved in things like velocity in student government by saying yes to a ton of opportunities.
Keenan Sarani:All of this, I think, is a long-winded way of saying I have three main takeaways from my time so far getting involved in student government, entrepreneurship, raising funding and becoming a registered pharmacist. Number one it goes back to that story of our first angel investment. Everyone knows that you know to become successful there's a lot of luck involved, but you can engineer this luck and this is something a YC partner explained to me one time and this light bulb went off. Put yourselves in situations where you're bound to get lucky or you're more likely to get lucky. Say yes to the events, go to things like this, show up and when you really don't want to go, that's when you know you really should go and who knows, there might be someone in that room that takes a bet on you and changes your life. Number two this one's so cliche and I'll be the first to say it's pretty cringe but I have really understood this one as of late.
Keenan Sarani:You know your network is your net worth and this doesn't matter what field you're in. I think you can be in art, you can be in business, you can be in science. Go out and talk to people, talk to them about sports, talk to them about life, talk to them about their profession. But I think by making these connections you never know how it'll come in handy down the line. And with that, always have a plan, but don't get too attached to it, and I think this one I've really learned. I've been the guy that has been really freaked out. When I don't have a plan, I get really anxious and I try to have a backup, but I don't get super, super attached to it, because life can change like that. You know we've heard from stories in this room already and be open to those opportunities. I hope I didn't go over time. I probably did, but thank you guys so much. Come find me in the back, thanks.
Meg:Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our feed. Want to hear from more young alumni with unexpected career paths? Well, join us in Toronto for the next Road Less Traveled event. We'll be at the Gladstone House on November 9th. Students and alumni are welcome to attend, and tickets include a beverage and hors d'oeuvres. Space is limited, so follow the link in this episode description to snag your seat. Uwaterloo alumni podcasts are produced and hosted by me, Meg Vander Woude. I also happen to be a proud alum. Thank you to Angle Media for editing this episode.