On Sunday, February 4th, the Western Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Club (IEC) hosted the 2024 Hult Prize Competition at the Ivey Business School.
After an extended deliberation period, team CarbFarm, composed of Ivey HBA '24 candidates Ethan Andrews, Kaden Gulamani, Cooper Mandel, and Michael Zhang, snatched first place. CarbFarm is an agricultural carbon credit developer that helps everyday family farmers in Ontario to monetize and implement improved agricultural land management processes (e.g, cover cropping, reduced tillage), and convert these improvements into carbon credits. These carbon credits can then be purchased on a global exchange by corporations looking to decarbonize.
CarbFarm will represent Western University at the International Hult Prize Competition in Boston.
Teams GLEAM and Safety KC were granted second and third places, respectively.
GLEAM designed an algae collection barge to remove algae from Lake Erie and protect drinking water. The team included Melanie Blackburn, Siena Ianni-Palarchio, Tim Kerkhoff, and Meghan Kings. BSafeKC promotes safety awareness through aesthetic, non-lethal safety keychains, founded by Zixuan Yang.
Launched in 2009 by students from the Hult International Business School, Hult Prize is an international pitch competition for university students dedicated to social entrepreneurship. Participants must ideate and pitch a business that addresses 1 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by the United Nations (UN). Qualifying teams are selected first from university-wide competitions, after which another round of pitch submissions determines the winning teams that are eligible to attend Hult Prize’s Regional Summit in June in Boston, MA, where they will compete for 12 spots at the prestigious Global Accelerator program in London, UK. From there, they will have a chance to win a $1,000,000 grand prize.
The day began with a powerful keynote from Nadia Ladak, HBA ‘20, CEO of Marlow, a startup focusing on menstrual products and the creation of its flagship product, the first lubricated tampon. Nadia, along with 3 long-time HBA friends, brought Marlow to life through Ivey’s New Venture Project, a final-year course where students were to find a problem they were passionate about solving. In alignment with the overarching theme of UN’s SDG, Marlow expertly addresses Good Health and Well-Being (#3 on the list) Reduced Inequalities (#10), and Reasonable Consumption and Production (#12).
The competition judges included Christina Fox, CEO of TechAlliance, Esteban Perez, serial entrepreneur, Gailene Tobin Vandenheuvel, Executive Director of Western Research Parks, and Karmesh Bisht, Ivey MBA ’24 Candidate.
The competition was made possible by the work of Shirley Zhong, HBA ‘25 candidate, IEC’s Co-Vice President of External, who orchestrated much of the event logistics as the Hult Campus Ambassador for Western, and Nick Fox, HBA '23, Entrepreneurship Advisor with Morrissette Entrepreneurship, who advised organizers throughout the process.
The 2024 Hult Competition was supported/sponsored by the Bertil Hult family, founders and owners of EF Education First and benefactors of the Hult International Business School, and the Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship Powered by Ivey.