Yashvi Shah, co-founder of MyVision, sat down with Her Campus McGill to talk social enterprise, teamwork, and entrepreneurship.
Yashvi Shah has the contagious energy of a young twenty-something, yet she is wise beyond her years. In her four years as an undergraduate at McGill she has learned so much, and has so much to share. I spoke with Yashvi for just under an hour, but what I learned from her is enough to warrant a short novel.
In her second year at McGill, Yashvi co-founded MyVision with fellow McGill student Joanna Klimczak. This global network gives students the resources they need to build their own social enterprises. What started out as an idea amongst two friends now consists of seventeen branches across ten countries, the first university branch being MyVision McGill.
Each chapter mentors young entrepreneurs and runs social business initiatives. The McGill branch founded Learning is For Everyone (LIFE), a program that aims to reduce the dropout rate in Montreal. In partnership with the Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) Tutorial Services, they arrange for a portion of tutoring fees to finance a mentorship program for youth. The mentors are McGill students who work with high school students at the Boys and Girls Club of the Dawson Community Centre in Montreal. As of today, LIFE has helped sixteen students graduate high school.
Yashvi explains why this service is so crucial: “Quebec has the highest dropout rate in Canada and education is something that we, as McGill students with a world-class education, can advocate for.” She stands behind experiental learning, trading in textbooks for real-world experiences. “Helping a high school student study and succeed in their classes is a more wholesome experience than sitting in the Leacock 132 lecture hall.”
Yashvi and the myVision team members also consult social entrepreneurs, helping them develop their business plans and connecting them to social investors. They are currently mentoring teams competing in McGill’s Dobson Cup, a campus-wide start-up competition. One such initiative, KickDrum, partners local music artists to cafes in a joint promotion where the cafe features the musician’s logo and code for a free song on their coffee cups. Genius!
Academically, Yashvi comes from a purely scientific background of psychology and neuroscience. “Before starting myVision, I didn’t know what a balance sheet was,” she laughs. Yashvi had to learn while her social enterprise developed. “In my second year I was auditing a lot of management classes, reading Startup, and reading so many management books.”
Yashvi stresses that you shouldn’t feel limited by your major. “In my first year I felt limited by science and exclusively saw myself at medical school, but that’s not the case now.”
When asked about the setbacks she has faced, Yashvi brings up a surprising fact. When she goes to the Dobson Centre for her mentorship, she’s one among very few women, and sometimes the only one. “I find it shocking because that’s not the case in social entrepreneurship, but when I’m here at McGill, at least in the entrepreneurial club, it’s very much male-dominated.” Yashvi urges that there is room for McGill to facilitate more female empowerment. “A lot of women are just timid. When they have an idea, they question themselves, asking ‘What if this blows up in my face?’ yet when a guy is faced with a similar challenge he’s more likely to respond with ‘I’ll figure it out!’”
Yasvhi says it isn’t just a stereotype and that she’s seen these differences among men and women first-hand. “If McGill provided more resources for women, such as more female mentors, it would encourage women to get involved.”
Yashvi draws an interesting parallel. “There are a lot of women who are incredible thinkers and a lot of men who are incredible doers. If we push women to be as incredible in their doing as they are in their thinking, we could see such great things.”
It’s not always easy to work with a business partner, but Yashvi insists that she and her partner Joanna are the perfect pair. “Joanna is the visionary and the thinker. I help put her thoughts into action.” A self-proclaimed “doer”, Yashvi grounds Joanna’s ideas while Johanna encourages Yashvi to take risks. Yashvi initially thought Joanna’s suggestion of recruiting Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus for their board of advisors was unimaginable. Yet, the next thing she knew, the two of them were sharing their ideas with the professor himself.
Yashvi sought out other mentors, including Anita Nowak, a professor at McGill’s Management Faculty who helped her put her ideas into action. Many of Yashvi’s inspirations will be speaking at MyVision’s 2nd Annual Social Business Summit on March 24th, including Richard St-Pierre of Harvard Business School and McGill Dobson Cup winner Bernard D’Arche.
When asked about the future, Yashvi sees herself working at a healthcare company that’s doing something to directly impact the healthcare system. “I want to improve the patient experience and clinical workflow to make healthcare more successful and efficient here in Canada and around the world.”
How’s that for a lofty aspiration? An aspiration which I have no doubt Yashvi will accomplish.
Her decision not to apply to medical school was probably one of the best decisions she ever made. For if she had not, MyVision likely wouldn’t have existed and there would be a dearth of support for hundreds of social entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and the power to change the world.
Images provided by the interviewee.