New Beginnings

Q2 Updates

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech is one of those pieces of gold that I find myself returning to, again and again. As my life progresses and my goals evolve, there’s a permanence to his message. Yet, I always find a new nugget to hang onto, or interpret his words in a different way. Listening to him, it becomes clear why he has left such a lasting legacy in the world. Highly recommend.

Hello and welcome to my second update for this year. If you’ve not yet read the first, you can find it here. My name is Alexander Yevchenko, and I’m an incoming Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina. Let’s begin!

Awards

Cultura has been making significant progress, and we’ve been fortunate enough to receive recognition from leaders in Canadian entrepreneurship. Unmol, Bagavan and I attended the Ingenious+ National Award ceremony in the nation’s capital, hosted at the brand new Ingenium, a space for entrepreneurs to build their companies. We met with youth entrepreneurs from around the nation, participated in the awards ceremony, and took part in a mentorship session hosted by League of Innovators’ Melissa Allen.

We were also invited to the Ingenious+ Provincial Award Ceremony hosted at Queen’s Park, Ontario’s Legislature. There, we saw many familiar faces and discussed innovation and youth leadership with Lieutenant-Governor Edith Dumont and former LG Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

As the rest of my graduating class walked down the stage to receive their diplomas, I was freezing on a beach somewhere on Lake Superior. As I later found out, I won the Governor General’s Award for Academic Excellence. The award itself is a beautiful medal, a great addition to my college shelf. I also received the University of Toronto Book Award, and subject awards for English, French and History.

I’d also like to express my gratitude to the Schulich Leaders Scholarship for offering me two fully-funded engineering degrees at the University of Waterloo and McMaster University. It is truly an honor.

Travel

Along with nine other Morehead-Cain Scholars, I spent three weeks in the wilderness of Lake Superior and the Superior Hiking Trail. Living off-grid and becoming entirely self-sufficient was a demanding yet very reflective experience for me, especially coming into the next phase of my life — at a new university, in a new country.

If you’d like to read the full reflection I wrote just a few days ago, you can find it here:

Here are some pictures that we managed to take along the way. No matter how hard things got and how miserable we were, we always found the strength to smile (at least for the pictures)!

I was also lucky enough to spend two weeks in Europe with my awesome mom. We spent five days exploring Madrid’s history and gastronomy, and spent the rest of the time soaking in the sun in the south of France.

Spending this time away from school and work made me truly appreciate the importance of family in my life. In the day to day, I’m so focused on the next thing I need to achieve that I forget the support systems who have helped build me from my very first moments on this earth. In a world so full of distractions, it’s all too easy to lose sight of what is truly important, and for me, family is the top of that list. The time to be still, reflect, explore, and enjoy each others’ company is not something I take for granted.

On the way home from orientation at North Carolina, my family and I stopped in Washington to enjoy the history and architecture of the city. Seeing the magnificence of the buildings on the National Mall and the richness of the collections of scientific innovations, founding documents and art prompted me to think about the new life I’m moving into.

The experience reminded me of the good America is capable of. From the earliest ideas of democratic liberty to the immense infrastructure and technological innovation that we know today, the United States has long been the land of prosperity - hence the ‘American Dream.’ I love Canada with all of my heart and will forever consider it to be my home, but I believe that I’m ready for this next step, and all of the opportunities and challenges it brings along.

In Other News…

As the summer wraps up, we’re getting ready for the next series of Collimator episodes being released. Every show, we feature leading scientists, founders and investors from around the world, deconstructing the tools they use daily to propel their success, and their outlook on the future. Here are some of our newest releases.

In two weeks, I head to a new place to start afresh. I couldn’t be more excited. There’s plenty more news to share and a lot going on behind-the-scenes, so if you’re interested in keeping up with me on this adventure we call life, click the button below.

I’m also active on X, shoot me a follow @ayevch. I’ll see you in the next one!