21 industry professionals from 15 different companies were among over 80 students, alumni and staff who took part in the 13th annual Algonquin Meet & Greet networking event on Monday, Jan. 26.
Brian White, Tracy Turnbull and Algonquin professor Al Picher were the featured speakers, inspiring students to follow a plan they were passionate about and to make their chosen careers more than just a job. White, who works with Winning Charities in Ottawa, spoke on how technology and organizations are improving and becoming more complicated at an exponential rate. This led to his discussion on how we need the newer generation of business professionals to be able to cope with unpredictable change. White encouraged the attendees to challenge themselves for the future.
Along with Winning Charities, some of the companies represented included Citizen & Immigration Canada, IBM and the Canada Revenue Agency.
“This one was the best by far,” staff Dr. Ian Knowles said. “And people are sticking around. They’re happy.”
But for many students, it was their first time experiencing an event of this calibre.
“It was my first networking event,” said second-year business student Cole Morgan. “It was pretty cool, lots of useful people approached us.”
“There were so many types of people,” second-year business student Vahil Refteri continued. “It was refreshing.”
“We had great food, a great crowd, we met a lot of employers and the program coordinators for the first time,” business student Jacob Slootsky said with a laugh. “It was a great night overall.”
Douglas Cuzner, a second-year applied business student tasked as one of the event organizers, described that the general mood was optimistic. Cuzner was happy to witness the cooperation between the students and the professionals.
“The employers and the professionals learned a lot about our students,” Cuzner said. “Last year there wasn’t a dinner. We just wanted to try something different.”
Overall, the dinner proved to be a successful night in creating and maintaining a network.
“We had a really great turnout, we had a great speaker and the venue was great.” Cuzner continued. “It’s inspiring that the professionals here are interested in us.”