When fourth-year student Kartik Anand flew back to his home in New Delhi, India, at the start of the pandemic to continue his studies virtually, he set himself a goal of staying motivated and involved with opportunities through Trent’s renowned School of Business.

He achieved that (and more) through his role at the 2021 APEX (Achieving Professional Excellence) Conference for undergraduate business and STEM students, hosted by York University’s Schulich School of Business.

“I started looking for online opportunities for business students across Canada that could help me enhance my skills and knowledge, and keep me engaged at a time when it was very easy to get off track,” says Kartik. “I found APEX on Instagram and after learning more about it, knew that this was something that I could use to network and learn from some of the brightest minds in Canada.”

The highly competitive APEX Conference selects the top 150 Business and STEM undergraduate students to participate in the four-day event aimed at improving essential soft skills, not typically taught within the classroom setting. The event plays host to leading experts from academia and the corporate community who share their experiences with the students.

The theme of this year’s event was “Game Changer” and it lived up to its name for Kartik, who participated as an external campus ambassador (ECA) responsible for recruiting fellow Trent students to attend.

“There’s a bunch of key concepts I have learned from my university experience that helped me perform my duties as an ECA,” says Kartik. “I am specializing in Marketing, and I was able to apply many of the skills I have learned in the classroom, such as presentation skills, conducting case studies and some key concepts from the course about online marketing, to recruiting 29 students to apply to attend APEX.”

Getting involved and building connections

During his time at Trent, Kartik has been involved in various extracurricular activities – serving as project manager for Enactus Trent and as vice president and now president of the Trent Marketing Association. These experiences have allowed him to build critical skills in communication, time management, leadership and public speaking, all of which helped him to be one of the APEX Conference’s top two ECAs.

Kartik recommends getting involved in activities, such as the APEX Conference and the Trent Marketing Association, to all undergraduate Business students.

“Networking with the brightest minds of Canada an amazing experience. I had the opportunity to learn from some influential leaders from large corporations such as P&G Canada and MasterCard,” he explains. “Their insights into the future of their respective industries, their companies’ work culture and their mindset and perspective about things like the economy, along with a few words of motivation and advice to move forward, was extremely inspiring to hear as an undergraduate student.”