Empowered and Illuminated by Illuminate!

Hello all, I am Saad Nouman, a grade 12 student currently attending Sinclair Secondary School, in Whitby, Ontario, Canada. As you can see from the cover photo, I love to travel and explore. Naturally, that also means I love trying new things. When I first heard of Illuminate from a friend, I was sceptical as I thought it was just going to be a boring conference. Boy was I wrong! After reading about it, I felt that this would be quite interesting and decided to sign up.

Alinah's story was so inspiring, and as someone who wants to pursue entrepreneurship, her insight was extremely valuable and even gave me a bit of direction on how I should pursue my dream of entrepreneurship.

In addition to this, Mash's slides were very useful to me because I also have an interest in cybersecurity and want to get into blockchain and combine that with entrepreneurship. As someone who also is south-Asian who endured the same struggles, his story was easy to connect to and was very refreshing. I also love how his presentation was simple and straight to the point, didn't use a lot of over-complicated business jargon and was easy to understand.

Seeing that screen also made me really happy, because I love to compete, and the conference gave me a channel to do that. I also loved the fun interactive pieces, like the mind map and the slide karaoke.

Overall, I had a blast, learned a TON and am very grateful for this opportunity. Thank you to the Illuminate team and those that organized this event.