Ivey students reaching out to help COVID-clobbered local businesses

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Some top-notch talent is helping London-area businesses better navigate the near-constant chaos and interruptions caused by COVID-19.

Students from Western University’s Ivey Business School are joining other business school interns across Canada to help employers manage and even expand their pandemic–ravaged businesses through a first-of-its-kind program backed by Vancouver-based Mitacs.

“These business strategy internships are a new thing for us,” said Mitacs chief executive John Hepburn, of the program that helps solve business challenges by funding half of the $10,000 stipend for a four-month internship.

Mitacs, backed by provincial and federal funds, is a non-profit national research organization that works with schools and private industry. Last year, it oversaw 17,000 internships, Hepburn said.

Ottawa recently increased its funding by 50 per cent to help pandemic-ravaged businesses “develop business strategies,” he said.

Elyse Sheare, Southwestern YMCA’s marketing and communications vice-president of marketing and communications, said when they were approached about hiring a half-price intern from Western, “We couldn’t say no.”

“Simply because we are a charity and we run lean anyways,” she said. “COVID impacted our operation so we definitely were not in a hiring position. But this allowed us to bring in a really strong asset in the student.”

The Ivey intern spent four months sifting through their data to organize and analyze it.

“That helped my team to understand our customers, our members, their activities and allowed us to develop some strategies and tactics we are looking forward to deploying once we are . . . able to open up fully in 2021,” she said.

Bosco and Roxy’s, a London-based gourmet bakery for dogs, welcomed an intern to help trim technology costs as it pivoted quickly from producing dog cookies to also making bread and other baked goods.

Ivey management master’s student Calvin Ncube, 26, stepped in to help automate the company’s production process.

“I thought this was interesting because it was outside of my comfort zone,” he said. “You learn how to walk that tightrope of how to execute things technically and academically, at the same time creating value for everybody involved. And the business keeps running smoothly.”

Hepburn said the idea is to assist small and medium businesses or non-profits who normally couldn’t afford to hire someone with such extensive training to help them go online or change their product line.

“The interns are young,  energetic and very, very smart, so the idea is for not too much money these small companies get the business strategy expertise that they need to change the way they do things,” Hepburn said. “The benefit has been quite enormous.”

HRivers@postmedia.com