The Lazaridis Review - Issue Three

ISSUE

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Lazaridis Business Review

Sustainable Entrepreneurs How waste can be turned into social good to impact underprivileged Canadians

JDCC Wins Big

With their second podium of the year, this team brings the hardware to Lazaridis

From BBA to CEO See how taking the traditional path doesn’t always mean working a 9-5 desk job

Table of Contents Hayley McGoldrick Editor-in-Chief

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Calendar of Events

Mahad Aamir VP Marketing

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Club News

Maddy Rotman Design Director

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Alumni Corner

Ujjwal Nambiar Content Creator

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Lazaridis #FakeNews

Max Strychaluk Content Creator

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Business News

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Entreprenurial Feature

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JDCC Wins Silver in Florida

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Calendar of Events Thursday, March 7th • LMA x PRISM: Business Card Workshop • REL x LIRA: Risky Business • HRL: HR in Tech Panel Friday, March 8th • SIB: Pitch Competition Friday, March 8th - 13th • 5 Days for the Homeless Sunday, March 10th • LAA x DECA: Accounting Case Competition • WILL: WILL to Succeed Conference • Leaders of Laz: Leadership Brunch Monday, March 11th • SML: Sports Trivia Night • Xlerate x Scotiabank: Industry Talks Thursday, March 14th • LIFA x TD Securities: Case Competition Saturday, March 16th • Startup: Laurier Venture Challenge • LIFA: Inter University Stock Pitch Competition Saturday, March 23th • LIFA: Building a Financial Model Workshop • Lazsoc: Year End Gala

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Club News LazSoc

SIB

LazSoc hosted their annual Lazaridis Formal at the Hacienda Sarria, hosting students from the school for a night of fun to celebrate all they’ve accomplished before their final gathering at Year End Gala.

Sustainability in Business’ B-Corp Conference hosted many representatives from local companies to educate students who want to make an impact on the business world just how to be B-Corp certified, including companies like Cupanion who use the Fill It Forward program to provide clean water.

5 Days The 5 Days for the Homeless campaign, which takes place from March 8th to the 13th, held their Community Outreach Day in Uptown Waterloo Square, giving out donuts and connecting with the community to give back to the less fortunate.

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LMA

WILL

Laurier Marketing Association’s annual InterUniversity Case Competition was hosted in partnership with Canopy Growth, and included an $700 prize as well as an extra Q&A period with Canopy’s COO for the winning team.

Women in Leadership Laurier hosted their WILL Networks event that connects aspiring women in business to professionals from companies such as Unilever, Scotiabank, Deloitte, Fidelity, TD and Corus Entertainment, matching hardworking individuals with potential employers.

SML Sports Management Laurier held the inaugural Laurier Sports Management Conference, sponsored by MolsonCoors. Other than the practice at presenting cases and networking with individuals, the case competition had a prize of $1000.

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Alumni Corner Andrew Williams is the CEO of DHL Express Canada – a division of Deutsche Post DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany. Serving as the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics’ CEO-in-Residence for the month of November, Andrew is an HBBA graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University graduating in 1996 and holds an international business designation from École Supérieure de Commerce in Rennes, France.

How did your interest in business start?

Did going to Laurier lead you to where you wanted to go and where you are now?

I think my interest came out of two key moments in my life where I saw a future in business was going to be in my life one way or another. The first was inspiration from my dad – my dad had immigrated to Canada and started his own business, h went down an entrepreneurial path, so I learned a lot of the lessons I apply even today from my dad. Work ethic, being straight with people, a lot of those fundamental business skills. Another influencer was that I actually took business courses during high school, but they weren’t taught traditionally by teachers, they actually brought in business people from the community, I listened to them and realized that’s exactly what I wanted to do, so I went to business school to try and figure the rest out.

I wanted to be the CEO of a Canadian business, but I had no explanation of how I was going to do it. I envisioned it, but I couldn’t tell you that there was a way I knew that was going to happen.

What is your biggest piece of advice for students who want to follow a similar path?

One thing I’ve learned is that this idea of having a career ladder is not true, it’s more like a rock-climbing exercise.

When you came to DHL, was it your ultimate goal to become the CEO? I had actually written out a really extensive career plan for myself when I was about 21 years old and just getting ready to graduate. I wrote on there that

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Sometimes you’re going to have to move sideways to move up, sometimes you may have to step down to gain some experience to move in the right direction. I also learned that when I graduated, I had no language skills except English, and that’s a very valuable skill to have. Another thing is that in the early days, I really thought my success was MY success. The best leaders that I’ve learned from were confident in hiring other smart people to assist them and figured out how all the pieces fit together.

When I had my first management job, I thought that I myself had to have all the answers. You also have to have a strong opinion, but an opinion you’re able to change.

“

One thing I’ve learned is that this idea of having a career ladder is not true, it’s more like a rockclimbing exercise

Could you ever see yourself doing anything other than business?

I love what I do, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve had the chance to lead a really big organization, I have great friends through work, I have travelled around the world through work and I’ve been able to provide a good life for my family. At the same time, it’s not the only thing that I do, so that’s another thing I’ve learned along the way. You have to have other interests and hobbies because you need a way to step away and refresh. If you focus your entire life on work, you an very quickly find yourself stuck somewhere and not able to appreciate what you do have.

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Lazardis #FakeNews “Finance Professors Sacrifice NumericallyChallenged Student During Pre-Midterm Ritual” “It’s a rather old tradition, but despite this, I feel that we are justified in our actions,” said one of the cloaked professors.

“We believe that failing to understand numbers is a sin, and the Futures and Swaps gods demand sacrifice. And so, we shall oblige them.”

“Laurier Professor Urinates On Oft-Stolen DryErase Markers To Mark Territory” “Every morning I come to class and find myself unable to write on the white board. I don’t know where they disappear to, but I was simply stumped,” said the professor, who spoke with The Lazaridis Business Review on the condition of anonymity. “Then, last night, I was watching Planet Earth, and the idea just came to me. It’s ingenious, I think.”

“Laurier Fraternity Issues Statement Slamming Drunken Student Body For Cultural Appropriation” “Getting drunk is a sacred DKE tradition,” says a spokesperson for the fraternity. “We simply ask that you do not hijack our traditions for your own purposes,” he says between shotguns.

“Pearson Announces It Will Now Accept Priceless Family Heirlooms As Textbook Payment” “We here at Pearson believe that what we provide to students simple cannot be quantified in terms of money,” said a spokesperson through his gold-plated grills. “We think that students will be eager to hand over their prized keepsakes in exchange for learning about the fascinating field of human resources.”

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“Professor Revises Syllabus To Include In-Depth Chapter On His Ancestry, Genealogy” “I just feel that in order to understand the core concepts of accounting, students must first know where my great-greatgrandmother was born, and the name her pet horse,” said the professor. “Without this information, I simply don’t see how any of them could succeed.”

“Concourse Starbucks Line Expands Into Third Area Code” At approximately 11 am on Thursday, the 21st of February, the concourse Starbucks line broke a new record, extending well past the arts building, the University of Waterloo, the county lines, and the 401.

“Unwitting First-Year Student Lured Into ThreeHour-Long Conversation With Concourse Salesman” “We felt so sorry for her,” said a crying third-year student.

“She was so innocent and unassuming, but he lured her in.

They’ve been talking about RBC for almost two hours now.”

Our thoughts and prayers are with the student.

“New Venture Team Members Attend Group Leader’s Funeral To Let Her Down One Last Time” “We just felt that the New Venture project didn’t provide us with enough opportunities to let her down,” said one of the members. “And when we heard about the funeral, we all reconnected. In an act of pure selflessness, we decided that we should come here to show our lack of support and toss her under the bus one last time. You know, for old-times’ sake.”

“Laurier Marketing Professor Surprised Gorilla Advertising Such A Success” “I’m just so surprised that Gorillas are such effective sales tools. They can’t speak, but man, can they sell.”

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Business News Amazon vs. The State of New York

argued that the city and state had just saved 3 billion dollars; others argued that the city had just lost 25,000 jobs. Both are valid arguments.

In November of last year, Long Island City, which sits across the East River from Manhattan, experienced a minor economic boom. In a matter of weeks, the slowly gentrifying neighbourhoods in and around the downtown area experienced an influx of investment. All the bustle was the result of another, larger investment: Amazon, along with 25,000 jobs, was coming to New York.

Now, there are many sides of this story, but we’ll stick to the ones with business implications as this is a business magazine and you are likely a business student if you’re reading this.

Despite being popular among those who actually live in Long Island City, the agreement was criticized for being far too generous to the multibillion-dollar corporation. Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill De Blasio were disparaged by a “vocal minority” for granting Amazon roughly three billion in incentives.

A few months later, in mid-February of this year, Amazon reneged on the deal, citing public backlash. While those that had vocally opposed the deal rejoiced, others lamented. Those that saw Amazon pulling out as a victory

Government incentives, which come largely in the form of tax breaks on land and earnings, are used to encourage corporations to establish themselves in a given region. If no-one offered these incentives, large corporations would likely go where relevant taxes were lowest.

You may recall that early last year, Amazon issued what is more or less a call for tenders, inviting cities across North America to “pitch themselves” to host the next headquarters.

Toronto offered no incentives whatsoever.

Other cities did not follow suit. By the time they issued the “call for tenders,” it is likely that Amazon had already selected Long Island City as the location for the new headquarters, but wanted to raise the incentives, and so pitted cities against each other to raise the “bid.” Not a bad strategy, but it certainly did backfire.

Now, Amazon, being as large as it is, has set a bizarre precedent. Cities across the United States and Canada will likely be much more hesitant to offer incentives for fear of angering their citizens. It will be quite interesting to see what happens when another company elects to use the same strategy.

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Samsung and 5G This past Wednesday, February 20th, Samsung unveiled its new line of smartphones, among them a rather odd foldable touch-screen phone.

Perhaps it will be revolutionary, perhaps a dud.

More important than the design of the phones, however, was their use of 5G. “4G LTE” is glued to the top left of many phones these days, but I would imagine that many people aren’t sure what that truly is. It stands for “4th Generation,” referring to the network on which phones operate, which is, predictably, the 4th version. The 5G network, which requires current infrastructure (mostly towers on top of high-rises) to be replaced with a more complex version, will drastically increase internet speeds, reducing the time it takes to download a large file from minutes or hours to a matter of seconds. The entire network, across the globe, will be revamped. There are significant security concerns regarding international espionage and such, but I won’t get into that. For now, you can just look forward to an absurdly fast Google and Netflix.

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Foldable iPhones in the Future With fashion trends from the early 2000’s seeming to make a comeback, people look at technology the same way, longing for the days of shutting their flip phone to end a call.

According to the supplier of glass for Apple, Corning, a foldable iPhone could be seen in stores as early as 2020. Foldable touchscreen phones already have dipped into the market with both Samasung and Huawei tapping in with foldable phones, but the $2,000 price tag may seem out of reach to some patrons.

Motarola, the creator of the iconic Razr foldable flip phone, has also been reportedly putting together a modernized version of the cellphone.

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Entrepreneur Feature Hempergy

How did you get the idea to start Hempergy?

When Justin Trudeau said he was going to legalize cannabis, I thought about all the waste that was going to be leftover and so I started exploring different ways that cannabis and hemp can be used to make things. From there, I kept doing research and I saw there was a huge housing crisis in Indigenous communities across Canada, I put the two ideas together and from there I found out that hemp can actually be used to make some products.

What was the process like applying for the RBC Venture Launch funding and what is it like working with them?

My roommate actually sent me the posting for the RBC co-op, I applied and then I got accepted and now I’m working in the RBC term this semester. It’s really cool because I’m able to get access to a lot of resources externally on campus but also, I can really go through and dive deeper into why my business is operating in this specific way, that mentorship and that support is probably the biggest takeaway.

What obstacles have you overcome, what ones do you continue to deal with and what rewards you beating them as a young entrepreneur?

As an Indigenous entrepreneur who’s working in the field of science, I don’t study anything in science, so I’m constantly having to pick and choose my battles with people, especially with trying to articulate the value and benefit of the product. The biggest motivating factor is when I’m able to share my ideas with people and they’re telling me about people they know who do the same thing and seeing what I’m working towards can be done, when I get to meet those people it really gives me that sense of motivation. I also want to be able to use my power, privilege and higher education to do something good.

Where do you see yourself in and with the future of this company?

What other plans do you have for Hempergy?

I honestly don’t know, as it didn’t really start out as a business it just started out as ideas addressing problems that are taking place.

Moving forward obviously I’d love to see this grow and be able to and focus not so much on hemp but more on the services we’re going to be providing to communities. By that I mean instead of having people simply be the end user, they would also be employed throughout the supply chain. We want to expand to Indigenous communities and work co-operatively with them to revitalize some of their land-based knowledge but also Indigenous ways of architecture. That’s kind of the five-year vision.

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Through the induction of the RBC Venture Launch Program, the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation has been able to help students achieve their start-up dreams by provide them with funding at the same level as co-op wages and time to work on their projects rather than work a 9-5 job. Zaffia Laplante, a recipient of the funding, sat down to speak with us about her venture, Hempergy.

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JDCC Steals Silver in Florida JDCC Laurier wasn’t just busy soaking up the Florida sun this February; in fact, four of their members went head-to-head against 19 other business schools in the University of Florida’s Heavener International Case Competition (HICC) for four days of case competition, managing to score silver overall! We got the chance to chat with JDCC coach and Laurier prof Sofy Carayannopoulos on being in Florida and the status of the team.

How did accomplishing second feel?

I think it says a lot about the drive and competitiveness in our students when I looked at their faces and saw that instead of being happy, they were disappointed because we didn’t win first - the expression you may be familiar with is that “it doesn’t feel like you won silver - it feels like you lost gold”. However, accomplishing second feels good because this was a new competition for us with a format that was very different from anything we had done before and the competition had a lot of strong schools.

very impressed with them. I had the same feeling in the finals. I love watching our teams shine.

What do you and the team plan to improve on, going forward?

There is always more to learn and improve.

We will continue refining our communication - being more concise (we tend to use too many words) and continuing to build out our solution toolkit. All teams watch each other and improve so we have to keep moving as well.

What did the team enjoy most about heading to Florida?

The weather! It was nice being in the sun for a week.

How has the general success of this team been this year?

Outstanding. This is our second competition this year (JDCC was the first) and we have brought home podiums in both. Over the last year the JDCC international students plus JDCC domestic have brought home podiums in all of the competitions they participated in.

What was your proudest moment in Florida?

When our team presented their first case and they were so clear and strong in their recommendations and insights. The advisors of the other schools in our division all were Lazaridis Business Review

Pictured: Daniel Roytman, Samantha Sells, Stephany Desroches, and Ruslan Nikolaev

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The Lazaridis Review is a collaborative effort of many of the bright, talented students the school has to offer. Each of them put countless hours into this publication, and are forever grateful for those of you who choose to put your interest into what we create. Each month, we will continue to showcase the diverse talents that exist within this community, and we hope you’ll continue to join us for the journey.

Love, The Lazaridis Students’ Society & The Lazaridis Review Team

Want to contribute to The Lazaridis Review? Email hayley.mcgoldrick@lazsoc.ca or mahad.aamir@lazsoc.ca to inquire about getting involved.

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