Building the Best Business Skills

Hey everyone! My name is Laurel Dong, and I'm a grade 11 student at Markville Secondary School. I'm so excited to be able to have this opportunity to learn so many new things at the Illuminate event and improve my skills as a business leader! It was already an amazing experience to be chosen as one of the finalists for the Concentra Case, and things have only been getting better. I wanted to highlight what I learned about leadership and CPAs.

A quote that really resonated with me was "You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.” – Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company

Workshop #1: Leadership and Mental Fitness

You never know if a situation is good or bad, and it's up to you to make it positive. This really helped me to think about how every situation, whether its good or bad, can have a gift.

Workshop #2: Paul Bain & Company

Here I really learned about market sizing, and how to find information to help your clients. It really showed me that there are many aspects into determining you market size, and that your ideas based on information that you collect can really change.

Deloitte Keynote:

The most important thing I took away from this keynote was inclusive leadership. Some of the points that resonated with me was that everything takes time, and that you cannot always rely on other to include you and that you need to assert yourself.

I think I am an entrepreneur in the way that I know how to step back and listen to others

I am looking forward to applying my business skills to future case competitions and my upcoming career in business. I would like to share to everyone that, everything changes based on you mindset, so make an effort to make it positive.