Meet three student ambassadors from the Certificate in Entrepreneurship program

If you’re looking to found your own startup, get acquainted with the Certificate in Entrepreneurship program held at the University of Toronto’s School for Continuing Studies, in collaboration with MaRS. The program launched in fall 2013, and will also run at U of T’s Mississauga campus starting in fall 2014.

The five-week prerequisite course taught by Keri Damen, Foundations in Entrepreneurial Management, got started with its spring classes earlier this month. This course provides students with core business fundamentals as well as techniques they can use to solve startup challenges and navigate through the early stage of their company’s existence. It builds on all the best practices and content MaRS has built for technology and social innovation entrepreneurs, but aimed at a new audience: Main Street entrepreneurs. The program attracts a wide variety of students—everyone from startup founders to recent graduates early in their careers.

Over the next few weeks, we will catch up with three students from the course as they share their experiences and their achievements upon completion of the course, such as validating their business ideas and building a model and a value proposition.

Meet our course ambassadors:

• Daniel Francavilla is the founder of Now Creative Group, a marketing agency focused on social ventures. Catch him on his blog, Design Charity Life, to hear all about his experiences in the course and how he’s implementing knowledge from coursework into his own projects and pursuits.
• Linda North started working in PR at Hill + Knowlton Strategies, and is on the lookout for ways to improve her core entrepreneurial skill set. She also wants to learn to implement actionable strategies and lead her small business clients to better outcomes with measurable impact. Linda says she is a “true believer that you should never stop learning” and she’s excited to represent the course as an ambassador on her blog, North Public Relations.
• Rita Fong is a travel enthusiast and a certified tea expert who is currently working in the financial service industry by day. Rita joined the course to explore the mindset of the entrepreneur and broaden her business skills and techniques. Her blog is Adventures in Tealand. Follow Rita as she navigates through the course over the next few weeks.

Get updates from @EntrepreneurSCS and from course instructor @KeriDamen on Twitter, and join the discussion using #StartUpEdu.