After months of hard work, three rounds of submissions, and public voting, two students in Niagara University in Ontario’s MBA program will pitch their idea for SkillsX, a digital platform that identifies employee training opportunities, during the final round of the Canada Comeback Challenge. Their final pitch takes place at 3 p.m. on March 31, 2021, and can be viewed here: studentchallenge.bher.ca/event.

Larissa Filice and Lubna Abu-Jazar, along with their peers from the University of Toronto, the University of Alberta, and George Brown College, were selected as one of three teams to go on to the final round of the national online skill-building competition, which connects postsecondary students with employers to tackle real-world problems in Canada's public, private, and nonprofit sectors. The SkillsX team, under the guidance of NU professors Dr. Galina Boiarintseva, assistant professor of management, and Dr. Anna McNab, associate professor of management, created the digital platform to identify the need for and assess the effectiveness of an organization's training programs. Their idea was chosen from 10 presented in a final round that took place from March 22-26.

The Canada Comeback Challenge, sponsored by the Business Council of Canada, seeks ideas to respond to the question of whether companies should take on a larger role in the education, skills development, and training of both new hires and current employees to bridge the gap between the needs of employers and the skills of Canadian post-secondary graduates.