The entrepreneurially driven initiative teaches non-business participants the foundational skills for identifying opportunities and developing innovative solutions to start a new business.
Gabrielle Cooper-Saint-Cyr had already finished her BA in International Studies at York University’s Glendon College and was part way into a degree in translation services when she saw a poster for Glendon ENtrepreneuriat et Innovation A L’international (GENIAL) initiative on the hallway wall opposite her class.
“I thought this seems like the exact thing that I’m looking for. And it was already ongoing on campus, which was easily accessible,” she says.
At the time, Cooper-Saint-Cyr was trying to figure out how as a non-business student she could get the entrepreneurial skills and guidance needed to propel her work as a freelance translator forward. The GENIAL initiative did so much more. It gave her the confidence and know how to start her own translation business, not just do it off the side of her desk.
GENIAL, a bilingual initiative, offers Glendon students, Faculties and Ontario francophones training, extracurricular activities, and a research program in entrepreneurship and innovation.
The fact that the GENIAL entrepreneurial incubator was open to everyone regardless of their degree and was in Cooper-Saint-Cyr’s first language, French, as well as English was a huge bonus for her.
“It’s especially nice if you’re working and living in Ontario as there aren’t always French resources available and not everything is bilingual. It also helps establish a better sense of community,” she says. “Translation is not like a traditional company that you’re creating, so it was a bit more complicated, but any questions I had was easily answered.”
Cooper-Saint-Cyr is one of the winners of last year’s business pitch Student Entrepreneurship Competition presented by Glendon GENIAL and Desjardins Financial Group, which donated more than $775,000 to this initiative and a second initiative, YSpace’s ELLA for women entrepreneurs, to expand both accelerators. That gift helped not only with infrastructure needs for the GENIAL incubator and its Entrepreneurial Skills Passport Program (ESP), but also resources for the experiential education component of the courses, specifically in social enterprise design, as well as the entrepreneurship project course. In addition, it allowed more modules to be added to the ESP Program and provides seed funding to the student entrepreneurs.
“It really helped us get to the next level,” says Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship Angelo Dossou-Yovo, who launched the GENIAL initiative in 2017. So far 64 students have gained entrepreneurial knowledge through the ESP Program.
This year’s competition on Sept. 26 will again offer students, interested in developing their entrepreneurial spirit, the opportunity to pitch their venture project and get seed funding.
Dossou-Yovo joined York’s Faculty of Glendon as a business faculty member in its four-year Dual Degree Program, which offers students the ability to combine two years of studies at Glendon with two additional ones at the EM Lyon Business School in France to earn an International Bachelor of Arts (iBA) in International Studies and a Global Bachelor in Business Administration (GBBA).
But when he saw the tremendous interest liberal arts students showed in attaining entrepreneurial skills, he realized there was an opportunity to offer something unique to the francophone and bilingual community.
“In this initiative we try to create an entrepreneurship mindset by focusing on the early stage of the life cycle of a business. We look at how to identify and develop business opportunities. How to know when something is worth spending time, money and resources on in the long run. The starting point is solving problems, and how to discover and identify opportunities, but also how to test them and make sure that you come up with something with a higher probability of success,” says Dossou-Yovo.
“We’re in the business of helping would-be entrepreneurs and those interested in entrepreneurship to develop entrepreneurship skills they can leverage later on either to create a business or to look for a job in organizations where intrapreneurship skills are needed.”
Within the GENIAL initiative is the 15-week Entrepreneurial Skills Passport Program, a series of workshops, entrepreneurial activities, and presentations, where Cooper-Saint-Cyr developed the skills to start her translation business years before she originally intended. Despite not having a business background, she felt she was in the right place.
“I received a lot of help throughout. There wasn’t ever a point where I was like ‘Oh, this is something I should rethink doing’ because I kept getting the help I needed, which is great. If you’re going to go into a program of that sort you want to feel like you’re on par with all the other students and can learn at the same pace.”
The final piece, the pitch competition, teaches students to communicate the value of their business to potential partners and to hopefully attract seed funding to launch and scale their business.
Although Cooper-Saint-Cyr wasn’t sure what to expect when she started, she says, “It definitely went beyond my hopes.” By the end of a few months, including some time off to concentrate on her other studies, she had already registered her company and lined up several contracts.
“That was amazing. They know what they’re doing for one, but they also know when to push and when to allow you to take a step back. They are great in helping you push forward when you have your doubts.”
She is now looking to expand her business and offer more services.
“I think that’s a success story,” says Dossou-Yovo. “You know, that wouldn’t be possible if she did not have access to the GENIAL initiative while being a student at Glendon.”
It’s also another way organizations like Desjardins are stepping up to help York create positive change now and into the future.