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Hi Everyone ! My name is Abenayan and I am a Grade 9 student at Maple High School
Today, I had the pleasure to attend the Illuminate x North York Regional Conference. Here is my blog which showcases what I have learned about executive thinking, collaboration, consulting, finance and entrepreneurship.
The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. ~ Nelson Mandela
Workshops
Workshop 1
My key takeaways from the first workshop were the framework that Dan showed us during his presentation and his words about how passion changes and how career paths change. The framework was Reflect, Explore, Activate. This framework seems very useful and I will definitely use this to aid me, in the future. I learned that Dan has worked for 6 years for a startup called Fintech and has also worked for banking operations. This framework was used when when we participated in the workshop which was called Elevated Pitch. In this workshop we were placed in breakout groups and presented mock scenario of introducing ourselves.
Workshop 2
My key takeaways from the second workshop are Swish's success story( from being a Law student to being an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and investor) and his words about taking a calculated risk; that may fail, but is still better than the feeling of regret when you do not take that risk. I found it interesting his words about how his company works on creating a genuine audience instead of working with phony influencers. I learned that Swish is an entrepreneur whos company works with data. He has numerous accolades including but not limited to being a 3x TEDx speaker, being awarded the United Nation's Outstanding Youth Leadership Award, and having 2 acquisitions that raised over $4.1M. All of which he has at the age of 23. Swish is a testament to the quote that the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow.
The Keynote
For the Deloitte Keynote I was able to collaboratively work with my group members to with analyze and solve a critical problem that affects present day solutions. Through this experience I was able to discover different methods that can be implemented in education. This keynote made me reconsider and think about certain things in our current education system. This keynote helped me gain some experience in working under a short period of time as it emulates scenarios in the real world where we might have to give presentations without a long amount of preparation time.
What An Entrepreneur Means To Me
I consider myself an entrepreneur in the sense that I am creative, flexible and I am willing to take risks. I believe these are all important traits that an entrepreneur must have. If I were to create a business and I only had $5 in my pocket, I would make a website hosting business. I will offer to host a website for 2-5 dollars and I would ask the client if affiliate marketing for the products on the site would be okay and if the ad space on the website could be sold. Using this idea, I could potentially make more than what was in my pocket, in time. In starting this business I have taken a risk as there is always the possibility that the site would not have enough traffic in order to make profit. Taking risks is an important of the entrepreneurial mindset and I will take more risks in the future in whatever I'm doing.
Closing
I am very passionate about the financial aspect of business and I am looking forward to the different Keynotes and workshops, next year at Illuminate x North York. One thing I learned about leadership is that you should enjoy the process of it as no matter the result, you will learn from it!