Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking

First-gen trailblazer               

When you meet Aishwarya Khanduja, BHSc’19 — a superlatively energetic, trailblazing entrepreneur — it’s almost absurd to imagine that she was once unaware of her potential.  

In 2010, she immigrated to Canada from India with her family. Only 13 at the time, Khanduja recalls she felt painfully aware that she “had no idea how to navigate ‘the system.’” For years, feelings of inadequacy kept her from dreaming beyond high school graduation. 

Now, Khanduja is not only solidly at the wheel of her own drive for success, she’s devoted to empowering new immigrants and Indigenous and other youth who, for various cultural and socio-economic reasons, are daunted by the prospect of accessing higher education. 

UCalgary’s Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking helped turn that passion into a practical, sustainable, full-time social enterprise.  

“I was first in my family to attend post-secondary in Canada,” says Khanduja. “I only came to realize I deserved an education because I had an older friend who acted as my mentor in high school.” Once she’d found her wings, Khanduja set out to break down barriers for others around registration processes, scholarship applications and other unfamiliar procedures. “Many people don’t have the cultural understanding of how to get an award or a textbook grant or any of the little things that make such a huge difference.” Her non-profit, First Generations Organization (1GO), provides outreach, advocacy and mentorship to students across Canada who lack access to resources. 

Khanduja says the Hunter Hub opened her eyes to an entire entrepreneurial ecosystem. “Through a pitch competition hosted by the Hub, I found the resources and connections to push me to create a sustainable non-profit,” she says. Not only did her enterprise idea win Audience Favourite, but she became a social-innovation student-ambassador for the Hub.  

“I was going to apply for medical school, but, through my experiences at the Hub, I learned that I love innovation,” says Khanduja, whose interests lay at the intersection of business, law and medicine. After a busy year growing 1GO and, more recently, launching Loop Education (which employs post-secondary students as educational strategists-for-hire), Khanduja is poised to begin graduate school at Cambridge, where she’ll focus on the commercialization of biotech.  

Wherever Khanduja goes from there, no doubt she’ll ensure the path is wide and clear for everyone who follows.