#SenecaProud

Pat Perdue  00:01 

Hey, I'm Pat Perdue, and I'd like to welcome you to Season Two of the Seneca Proud podcast. This is a co-production between my company Ycastr and Seneca College in Toronto. Seneca College is a really great school. And what we uncovered in season one of Seneca Proud is that there's a Seneca spirit. And that comes from the really great people that Seneca attracts. This season we'll be featuring some of those students, staff as well as faculty to not only learn what they do here, but also a little bit about who they are. So, join me on this journey of discovery, as we meet some of the people who make Seneca College, such a special place to teach, work and study. 

Welcome to Seneca Proud Season Two, where I get to introduce you to some of Seneca College's amazing family of staff, faculty, and students. So, if you haven't already, subscribe, and download and let's go meet some of the super inspiring folks here at Seneca. I'm Pat Perdue, and I'm glad you're here today.  

And welcome back to Season Two of the Seneca Proud podcast. This is Season Two, Episode Eight and I am Pat Perdue. Welcome back. Season Two of the Seneca Proud podcast is about bringing forward stories not only of the faculty but of students and staff and highlighting their achievements both while at Seneca and outside of Seneca. 

So got a billion dollar idea or even $100 million idea? Well, this is the Seneca Proud podcast for you. Because in this episode, we're joined by Chris Dudley, who is the Founding Director of Seneca College's HELIX program. What is HELIX you ask? Well, if you walked into building K, on the Newnham campus, you've seen HELIX, it's both a place and a program. This is a quick overview from the Seneca College website. HELIX is dedicated to developing the entrepreneurial mindset. We accomplish this by providing knowledge, mentorship sessions, workspace, access to likeminded peer community and experiential opportunities. HELIX focuses on two important outcomes. The development and launch of successful scalable and sustainable young entrepreneur led ventures and nurturing the entrepreneurial mindset to allow participants to become intrapreneurs and innovate from within companies. The HELIX space is physically located at Seneca’s Newnham campus, but it runs programs at the other Seneca campuses as well as at the broader Toronto and York Region communities. There are no fees to the programs HELIX runs, and it does not take any equity from startups. The two-stage HELIX program begins with the innovation strand, which is a series of entrepreneurial workshops and sector specific support activities. The next step is the acceleration strand providing further opportunity for dedicated enrollment in HELIX incubation activities and mentorship. 

Okay, let me tell you about today's guest, Chris Dudley. Before returning to school to complete his MBA, Chris worked as an executive at both Dun and Bradstreet and the Hudson Bay Company. Chris used the completion of his MBA as a catalyst to combine his business and academic experience to launch a new venture. During his business career he taught a variety of business and management courses at the postsecondary level. In 2002. Chris followed his passion for education and accepted a position of Academic Chair overseeing continuing education programming at Centennial College in 2007. Chris accepted an Academic Chair position at Seneca with responsibilities for Business Management full time studies programming in 2014. Chris took on the role of Founding Director of HELIX, Seneca’s on campus entrepreneurial incubator. Chris's educational background includes a college diploma in marketing, a Bachelor of Administration, and an MBA. Chris is a respected builder of external relationships and has been awarded the ‘Community Collaborator’ distinction by Seneca’s Regional Innovation Center partner Venture Lab, Chris and I began our conversation with Chris providing an overview of what HELIX is and then we talk a little bit about the space. And then we get into some pretty interesting success stories. You're going to love this episode. And now here's my conversation with the Seneca College HELIX Founding Director, Chris Dudley.  

 

Chris Dudley  04:27 

HELIX was started back in October of 2014. And we're a little bit different than a normal incubator. What we do is we strive to develop the entrepreneurial mindset in students and alumni as well as community. If they want to be an entrepreneur, then we're going to support them through mentorship, workshops, events, funding, all designed to get them from ideation to development and to launch. But if they want to be intrapreneurs, somebody who innovates from within a company, they don't want to be an entrepreneur, well, we help them develop that intrapreneurial mindset so that they can help their companies, whatever companies they live in, and work in, innovate into the future. 

What this building is, we're standing right now in the middle of HELIX. What this has allowed us to do is have about seven and a half thousand square foot incubator space where you will see people coming in from all areas of the College and engaging, talking, developing ideas. It becomes a real hotbed for innovation and conversation around new ways to approach new problems as well as old problems.

 

Pat Perdue  05:55 

Right, and I see as we're standing in the middle of HELIX, it's a big open space, with some tables around and some chairs. Some places that look comfy and casual and places that look a little bit more forma.  Has that been designed purposely that way?

 

Chris Dudley  06:14 

Absolutely, we did not want it to look in any way shape or form like a classroom. We wanted it to have a life of its own, you could come back tomorrow, and all the tables will be set up differently because of what's happening in the space. We change it for speaking events, we change it for ‘Insightful’, which is a series of events. It keeps moving around, it's organic, it grows with the needs of the students that are in here. And you're right that we have different types of seats, there's tables, most certainly, but then there's high end tables. As you can see in the back here by the big screen monitor, we have four breakout rooms that are all developed a little bit differently. They have different furniture in them, which allows our HELIXers to engage in them differently from mentorship to developing ideas to just sitting back and spit balling ideas. And then we have a collaboration forum. We're right here as we walk into this lovely space. 

 

Pat Perdue  07:29 

So, we're going into a room that's got some high-top tables, a larger board table in the middle and some comfy chairs in the corners. 

 

Chris Dudley  07:38 

Yeah, and  we use this a lot for mentorship and coaching, we will have our mentors and coaches sit down with groups of five to ten people, or perhaps one on one and they go through their business model canvases and get information to move themselves forward. But we also use it for events and smaller sessions, not only areas within the college that come in and talk about innovation, but also with our HEALIXers. You will notice that we have monitoring here as well. And we can live stream people into it. All the walls have whiteboards all around. So, it becomes a very active space where people can write up ideas and move around and really engage. It's really about innovation, that's what it all comes down to. 

 

Pat Perdue  08:37 

And it's a big space. What's the kind of event that might happen here? 

 

Chris Dudley  08:42 

Most certainly coaching and mentoring sessions, but then we will have small speaker series here where it's exclusive to later stage HELIXers. So, we could have something on financing or a focus on sales. And we'd have a limited number of people in here with a couple of speakers external or internal experts talking. It’s a way to be separated from the noisier incubator space and have this space to really innovate and talk. 

 

Pat Perdue  09:24 

Would speakers from other industries or other companies come in here and give a presentation or are they specific to Seneca College? 

 

Chris Dudley  09:31 

Most definitely. And I think it's important that we have experts from our ecosystem come in and provide their knowledge, but we have a lot of amazing experts within Seneca. It's both it's a marriage between external and internal that that come in here and support our HELIXers. 

 

Pat Perdue  09:55 

Is there an example? Or can you name an example of a speaker that might have come in recently? And what did they talk about? 

 

Chris Dudley  10:01 

Sure, we have an ‘Insightful Series’, which is nice, in site full, and we are standing in the site building. 

 

Pat Perdue  10:10 

Nice, nice. I see what you did there. 

 

Chris Dudley  10:13 

This is a smaller series designed just for high end HELIXers. 

 

Pat Perdue  10:21 

When you say high end, that means fairly advanced?  

 

Chris Dudley  10:25 

That's correct. And it was focused in on finance, that happened on Monday. And we had Elliot Atkins, who is a full-time faculty member in Seneca, he was talking. We also had someone from Ontario Centers of Excellence, which is external, coming in and speaking as well. So that's that lovely marriage of internal and external, talking about funding, and then opening it up to q and a from the audience. So that's an example of one. We have speaker series. And we have two brothers who are actually Seneca alumni coming March 4th, and they will be talking about their journey. They have developed a FX company doing special effects for movies, Hollywood movies, as well as TV shows. So, they’re going to talk about their entrepreneurial journey. But then they've also set up a company developing innovation to the FX industry. So, they're going to talk about the need for innovation. So those are external experts, but Seneca alumni as well. Then in November, we brought in John Bitove Jr, who was the first owner of the Toronto Raptors, we didn't have that talk here, it was down in the Great Hall, and we had about 200 people watching it, that's external. And then finally, as another example, we receive funding from TD to do a series of workshops to support mid-career individuals, we run them every other Tuesday night. And we've done about 19 of them so far. And we run them in the main space. And that every week or every other week, there'll be some internal experts, or external experts, depending on the topic. 

 

Pat Perdue  12:25 

And for the mid-career individuals, this wouldn't be Seneca students who'd be attending this. Who would be attending one of these sessions? 

 

Chris Dudley  12:33 

The primary focus would be a community as well as our continuing education students who are looking to get back into the workforce, or they're in the workforce, and they just want to retool. For example, they've heard a lot about AI, but they don't understand how that is impacting businesses moving forward, this is a safe way to learn, and become strong. There is no cost involved, if somebody wants to attend, this is barrier free. But I'll talk a little more about that in a second. But the primary audience are those in mid-career, but our students also benefit. And they are allowed to come in and participate because it's for them as well. These are great learning moments, to help them get stronger, wherever they want to be, if say they don't want to be an entrepreneur. This is all free. There are no marks associated with what we do. But then again, there's no need to prove something and there’s no agenda other than driving your ideas forward. We don't charge for this. But we want them to be interactive and constantly moving their idea forward. 

 

Pat Perdue  13:57 

We’re in building K and it takes up a huge amount of building K. It's an amazing facility. There might be a lot of people listening to this, wondering how they can get involved. They might be you know, maybe they're in the fashion department or some other department. They've got an entrepreneurial idea. What might they do with that entrepreneurial idea to involve HELIX? 

 

Chris Dudley  14:19 

What they can do is contact us. They can come by, or they can email Kate Collins or myself. And they can also go to our website. The HELIX website will show all the events that are coming up. And they can go to the career recharge website that will show all the workshops that happen every other Tuesday. The nice thing with a career recharge is it is live streamed as well. So, if somebody is listening from our King campus, for example, they really want to engage in career recharge, that's okay to be engaged via live stream. And you can watch it either up at King campus or even at home and engage. If you have questions, you can connect in and ask the questions of the presenters. So, we really want to engage all areas of the college. 

 

Pat Perdue  15:24 

That's great. And do you have individuals from other campuses participating as well? 

 

Chris Dudley  15:28 

Yes, in a number of different ways. HELIXers will come in from all different campuses and engage with their entrepreneurial idea. But we also run sessions, for example, our Summer Institute, think of it as a two-week design jam, where we go and work with a hospital and understand a problem that they're facing. And then we build two weeks of mentorship workshops, to help participants/our students find solutions to the problem that the hospital is having. Part of that 10-day journey, we'll have them most certainly up at King campus, but also embedded in the hospital. So, they can see the problem from different vantage points and touch a problem engage with different stakeholders of that problem. Patients, families, hospital administration, doctors, nurses, to really understand it. They will also travel to Venture Lab, where we have a tremendous partnership and get training from them as well. And then in the end, they pitch back their ideas to the hospital. And it's tremendous, this group of cross disciplinary students last year, we had students from 19 different programs come together, they don't know each other. And by the end of it, they are one big family. They each have a voice. They have different perspectives that all come together and create tremendous ideas that have blown away the hospital. 

 

Pat Perdue  17:18 

That's amazing. And you mentioned a partnership with Venture Labs. Can you talk a little bit maybe about that, and maybe some other partnerships that you have? 

 

Chris Dudley  17:25 

Yes, of course. What we do, we do incredibly well here, but we can't do it all. So ,we have connected with some tremendous partners in the ecosystem, such as Venture Lab that provide complementary skills for our HELIXers. Venture Lab is a regional innovation center. It's like Mars, Mars is a regional innovation center for downtown Toronto, Venture Lab is one for our region. And they help take companies that are already in market and maybe making, you know, half a million dollars and take them up to $10 million. So scaling, what we do is we take people from ideation, and then get them into market and get them up to a point that Venture Lab can then take over and move forward. So, we've had a partnership with them right from the beginning. They deliver workshops for us here. We have space in Venture Lab, and as some of their clients are flowing to us, our HELIXers are flowing to them and some of their people mentor for us as well. They sit as judges for us. And actually, Seneca received ‘Collaborator of the Year’ honors from Venture Lab, because of the way we connect with them, but also the broader ecosystem. We do events with York University. I am working with Humber right now to support the colleges from a high end. We're operationalizing it down in the incubator.

 

Pat Perdue  19:19 

You mentioned your collaboration with Humber. And of course, there's Ryerson and what is the is the environment for collaboration in this specific space among the various postsecondary institutions in Ontario?

 

Chris Dudley  19:34 

We collaborate with York with Humber with Centennial with Durham with Northern College, and in doing we help them, and they help us. And in actual fact, all of our HELIXers are stronger because of it. It's a way forward truly and what we do doesn't interfere with what Humber does. We actually are working on an entrepreneurship conference together. And as we move outside of the postsecondary ecosystem around incubators, we have partnerships with associations such as the association of Chinese Canadian entrepreneurs, or ACCE. We collaborate with them. They provide $1,000 scholarships for HELIXers in here to move forward their ideas. We actually are collaborating around a women's entrepreneurship event which will take place March 8 in HELIX.

 

Pat Perdue  20:49 

Anybody who's listening to this podcast and might be interested in finding out more of that specifically or attending it, can they just show up and attend? Is it open to everybody? 

 

Chris Dudley  20:59 

I would suggest coming to the HELIX website, where information will be there on how to register. All of our events require registration, just so we know who's coming and space, etc. So, all the details will be up there. Or you can drop by and talk to Kate, Colin, Oscar, myself. And we can talk about all the different events and how they can plug in. 

 

Pat Perdue  21:26 

That's great. Do you have many people dropping by out of curiosity, just to see what goes on at HELIX? 

 

Chris Dudley  21:32 

Yeah, yes. And we welcome that. It's, incredible, the number of students who are coming in saying I've heard about HELIX, I have an idea. How do I move forward? And that's great. We've had faculty do the same. 

And now if we can walk because I want to show you something. We are now seeing more and more of faculty as well as, as students. Come in. And they want to use this. And what I'm pointing to is in stage, in stage is a unit developed by HELIXers. It's virtual reality, and it helps students in public speaking, most people have a fear of public speaking, by going into this unit, into a virtual reality, one scenario will have you in front of 100 people all staring at you. And you present, you can see your PowerPoint in it, you present. If you're not engaging the audience, they will pull out cell phones, they will nod off just like a real audience. You finish your presentation; you answer questions from the audience. And then as you finish, this unit will send a scorecard to you and rate your speech, where you were looking, how many umms, ahs, pauses. But now we're having faculty coming by and saying, I've heard about this, I want to get my students through it. 

 

Pat Perdue  23:19 

It's so interesting that you mentioned that. On a previous episode of the podcast, we had Joy Gooding from campus talking about this very application. 

 

Chris Dudley  23:28 

And that's correct. The collaboration with Career Development, HELIX, King City Giving Circle, as well as the academics at King, we put in a proposal and won and now there's going to be a unit up there. But our students use it, our faculty use it, career development uses it to get students ready for job applications, because that's another scenario, a job interview. And then of course, our HELIXers use it to get ready for that pitch or going into competitions or going to get seed funding. And then teams like OCMC, Ontario Colleges Marketing Competition can go through this and practice because they will be pitching in front of a large group of people. This will help them get stronger and get ready for it. So, there's a beautiful story here because that's a HELIXer developing a venture which in turn helps other students move forward. 

 

Pat Perdue  24:43 

I love the fact that it's also across different campuses. The overall benefit is not just here at Newnham or York, but individuals from many campuses can get involved and benefit from it. 

 

Chris Dudley  24:59 

Many can get involved. Absolutely. But what is really exciting, and a bit of the secret sauce is the collisions between the different disciplines coming together to solve the problem. So, in the Summer Institute, where we may have a group that has a marketing student, a nursing student,  an accounting student, and somebody from, say HR all coming together to solve the problem, that's interesting. 

 

Pat Perdue  25:28 

Is that problem predefined? Or is that a problem that somebody brings to that conversation already as this is something that needs work on?

 

Chris Dudley  25:35 

No, this is a real problem that the hospital is having. So, they want to see it solved. They provide all the data and the ability to interview and see the problem actually take place. And then these groups of engaged students find new solutions, they see different ways of solving the problem. They are digital natives. Whereas we're perhaps digital immigrants. And because they're digital natives, they apply different solutions to the problems. And it's extremely exciting, especially when you add in all the different disciplines working together. 

 

Pat Perdue  26:21 

Can you think of, or are you in a position to name if it's not top secret, some projects that are taking place right now here at HELIX that might be on the verge of breaking through to that next level? 

 

Chris Dudley  26:33 

Sure, of course. We have a number in stage I just mentioned, right? They're about to hit and hit big. Taz is another company. Very, very simple idea. Taking homeowners that need odd jobs done nothing that needs specialties or certification like electrical or plumbing, that you need to clean out your basement or your garage or mow your lawn because you broke your leg. Those odd jobs and connecting with students who need work. They've set up a platform to connect a great idea taking a sliver of every transaction. And they've had significant funding to get that moving forward. They're about to hit extremely big. 

 

Pat Perdue  27:29 

And so, if we look at their journey a little bit, somebody had a great idea. And they came here and benefited from HELIX. What would their experience of HELIX have been in order to help them move forward? 

 

Chris Dudley  27:43 

Stepping back, one of the founders is a serial entrepreneur. He is very young, he's dynamic, professional, but he's tried a number of different companies and they failed. There's a lot of strength in failure. And then he's come up with this Taz  idea. And he's come in here, and he's worked with our mentors. He's engaged in a number of different experiential events that we've had. He's met ministers, he's met the Premier, who toured the facility. And because of all that additional support, and his passion and his team that he's pulled together, he was able to launch this and start to grow. When he started, he was still a student. And we've had numbers of students that have graduated with a diploma or a degree and the business.

 

Pat Perdue  28:52 

That's amazing. They don't graduate looking for a job. They graduate just to grow their business, 

 

Chris Dudley  28:59 

They graduate with a business looking to employ people. That's amazing and that changes the whole conversation. And this is where we're going. And Seneca has a very strong leadership team. The C team that sees this as a point of differentiation and where innovation is something that moves us all and it doesn't matter what discipline you're in, doesn't matter what area of the College you're in. Innovation is our lifeblood. And this is where students can innovate and move forward. 

 

Pat Perdue  29:38 

And where  and in what area would you like to see more of? Do you ever wake up in the morning or have conversations where you're like, boy, if we only had, I guess more of either this kind of company or this kind of person participating?

 

Chris Dudley  30:02 

I don't think I can say the type of company. Because we are open to all areas, we have a niche focus, we started with a niche focus in healthy living and healthy lifestyle. But we are open to all areas. I can't say this type of company or that type of company. To answer it, I would have to say, more exposure to a greater group of students from other areas of the College. Because as I mentioned earlier, this collision between different disciplines around problems and creating ideas, there's magic there.

 

Pat Perdue  30:47 

Do you find that the folks who come tend to lean heavily toward the technology? I'm thinking if somebody's listening right now, they have a great idea, but it's not around technology, it's around some form of innovation. Is that something that they should probably bring forward to HELIX?

 

Chris Dudley  31:03 

Absolutely. We have Tamara as a great example. She is passionate; a woman who loves making cupcakes. And she tells a story about making them with her grandmother. And she wants to carry that forward, and she's built a company. And we've helped her in that journey. Not with recipes, she's got them and she's a wonderful, wonderful baker, but around the business aspect of it. And now she's in market. It's such a heartwarming story, but it's not an app for this or it's not a technology-based company, it's a cupcake company. But it is of value. It is fulfilling a dream and she has such passion around it. That's a huge success. 

 

Pat Perdue  32:09 

Huge success. That's amazing. What a great story. And she's making cupcakes!

 

Chris Dudley  32:15 

You've got to combine tastes. They are absolutely awesome. We've had one HELIXer. Nautilus this is their device. It's a Lotus flower, but with one drop of water, this opens up, it collects all the water on its petals, drives it into the middle where it's purified, and then stored. Rain stops, it closes. This is a minimal viable product. If any of your listeners want to come by HELIX to see it, it's here on display. This one runs off electricity, which is great, but they've developed one, no electricity, no battery, no motor, no solar. So, you can put it anywhere. And when you think that there's 2.1 billion people a day that don't have access to fresh water, this is important. Not just giving back in their time, which they all do, or helping each other, which they all do. But he's our first Christian Navarro to give back from dollar sense.

 

Pat Perdue  33:23 

That's great. That's great. And the cycle continues. 

 

Chris Dudley  33:26 

Yes, yeah, absolutely. Because he's very, very thankful he's sold his company. But he's very, very thankful in the support that he got in HELIX, and he wanted to help others. 

 

Pat Perdue  33:39 

That's amazing. As we wind down our conversation, is there anything that you'd like our listeners to know about HELIX, either in terms of accessibility or innovation that we haven't touched on yet? 

 

Chris Dudley  33:52 

I want to stress this is open most certainly to our students and our alumni, but also to our staff. If you see ways to, innovate in whatever way, shape or form come by and talk to us, we can perhaps help in that. If you're a faculty member that wants to learn more about the in stage unit,  drop by and see us. If you want to connect into any of the programs that we offer, please drop by, you're welcome. We're all Seneca. We are all here to support one another. I will end by saying this is an incredible place just to be part of to hear the electricity and the ideas that are coming up. If you are ever having a bad day, drop by HELIX and just listen to our future. It's extremely bright because these minds want to change and disrupt the future and they are going to.  

 

Pat Perdue  35:06 

That's awesome. Well, on that very happy note, thanks so much for joining the Seneca Proud podcast. It's been a pleasure to have you on it. Thank you so much. Bye. 

And that was my conversation with Chris Dudley from HELIX. Are you inspired? Do you have an idea or even a perspective? Maybe a visit to HELIX would lead to an interesting conversation that could just change the direction of your life. There's a saying, you can't make a splash without throwing the rock into the pond. Okay, I just kind of made that up. But hey, maybe HELIX is your pond. I'll be sure to put the contact info in the show notes. The rest is up to you. Thanks to my guest, Chris Dudley. And also, thanks to you for listening. 

This has been the Seneca College, Seneca Proud podcast, and I'm Pat Perdue. Until next time, stay proud Seneca.