Timeline - My Professional Past

Micheal Power, St. Joseph Catholic High School

Michael Power St. Joseph High School is a catholic high school located on the border of Etobicoke and Mississauga, but I call this school my home. Between the years of 2018 to 2022. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some very bright minds, and being shaped by teachers that have cared deeply about my success. I have also taken the International Baccalaureate (IB) program here, marked by an intellectual obstacle course – that tested my prowess in studying, learning and preparing for a number of assessments.

One notable experience from the IB Program was the completion of CAS (Community, Activity, and Service) - for which I did a number of activities – such as poppy sales with the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, organizing a french educational seminar for grades 9 and 10 with a close friend, being a representative of MPSJ’s Student Council and Drumline, and taking work opportunities such as camp counseling for the Focus on Youth Program.

Air Cadets

I began cadets between the end of middle school, a year older than many people in my cohort. Cadets was intimidating at first, but I made friends with people that I now consider lifelong, unforgettable brothers. Through the program, I learned the value of discipline and drill, developing deep respect for the RCAF, Military Canadian History, and marching parades. Many of the life lessons taught as routine in cadet trainings, such as ironing my shirt, maintaining my uniform, shining my boots, making my bed, doing my laundry, waking up early, emphasizing physical fitness, and respecting the hierarchy of the chain of command – taught me valuable life skills that now function as an integral part of the life I work to be a part of.

Cadets additionally sparked my career interests in becoming a commercial pilot. I enjoyed learning about aerospace and defense technologies, core plane education such as bernouilli’s principle, propulsion and exhaustion, heat management, and folding parachutes. Despite my now interest in Technology & Finance is starkly different, my curiosity and desire to learn more has never faltered, and I hope to revisit my passion in flying someday in the future.

Life at Starbucks

In retrospect, my part-time job at Starbucks was my first experience completely alone, performing pure competence and learning the brutal reality of the workplace. I obtained my position at Starbucks by professing my desire to connect with people, challenge myself, and grow professionally through my position. Starbucks challenged me in ways I didn’t expect, where I learned to multitask, sequence drinks, maintain calmness in the face of numerous clients, act in a way that brought value to the rest of my team by restocking during downtime and supporting stations when others were busy, and offering to stay late and take others’ shifts when they couldn’t work.

Starbucks taught me a very unique perspective to workplace learning that I still hold to this day. I would be punished if I didn’t do anything, but I would also be punished for doing things wrong, or in a manner that would inconvenience the store, the customers, or the team. So my mind automatically made deliberate choices – no response would mean my supervisors approved my behavior, and a response would mean something was wrong. This is why I’d deliberately use the excuse “no one’s told me that before” because my mental model was to maintain my personal way of working until someone said "this is wrong".

As I continually develop my skills at Starbucks, I’ve started to discover, and personally condemn the influence that organizational behavior has at Starbucks. Often supervisors, managers, and upper-level management shape the behavior of the stores they run, but the gap of mutual understanding and co-creation is low. Baristas have no way to solicit their personal experiences at the job site despite Starbucks marketing itself as a “people-first” company. This observation has followed into my own philosophy of business – where co-creation and mutual understanding with people are a necessary way to ensure the business isn’t just run from the top – where the top might be educated but completely oblivious to real problems.

Pursuing The Psychology Program At UTM:

My initial goal following my first year in undergraduate university was to become a clinical psychologist, who could help extraordinary youths find success and become their best selves. I was also focused on pursuing the Psychology major to improve myself, how I could learn my own breaking points, and addressing my own mental health problems and issues. In pursuing the Psychology program – one of my particular interests centered around the origin of motivation, how people make decisions, how identities were constructed, how attitudes are changed, moral development, resilience & emotions, and human intelligence.

Fast forward to my 4th year in university, I dropped out of my Psychology program because I simply didn’t like the focus on medical science and biology. I didn’t enjoy learning about synapses and neurons, memorizing how subtle associations are made, and memorizing the findings of researchers 60 years in the past. Such information was definitely interesting, but not instrumental for me to solve my own problems, or the problems I wanted to solve.

Switching To Digital Enterprise Management (DEM):

Discovering the Digital Enterprise Management (DEM) Specialist program was a turning point that validated my needs for becoming an entrepreneur and building things of commercial value. I accidentally attended an ICCIT Gala called “Solaris”, for which I thought was an official, end-of-year Gala hosted by UTM, however was one of the greatest things I could’ve ever done for my professional career. I was surrounded by the right people at the right time, and the alumni that attended that event sparked the flame serving my passion for pursuing the DEM program.

Most people see this program as a stepping stone credential into marketing and design roles. In some respects, some people in this program also pursue IT management, security, AI, project management, software development, and risk management. For me, I saw this program as the stepping store I needed to create cutting-edge technologies, come up with world-class, market-ready ideas, and lead large IPO roadshows and Private Placements for companies that would lead the future of technology.

Research & Innovation (R&I) at the Digital Enterprise Management Association (DEMA):

Fast forward 1 year later, after failing my campaign as a Marketing Director for DEMA, a colleague of mine – who deeply admired my campaign, spearheaded the creation of the Research & Innovation department, and asked me to be a lead contributor because of the drive and great ideas for change pitched. Being given this opportunity sparked my entrepreneurial drive to create, explore, and embark on professional topics making DEMA stand out as a society. With my director, I wanted to lead the face of the Research & Innovation department and showcase competence, creativity, and structured idea synthesis aligned with DEMA’s mission: “Shape leaders, create possibilities, champion innovation.”

Structural issues, communication breakdowns, unaligned objectives and priorities, and scope creep made us fail in our pursuits. I began to discover our efforts were obstructed by highly curated corporate theatre, marked by incompetent leaders, power imbalances, and the centralization of direction based on charisma, not logic. Frustration & resentment arose in my inability to mobilize enough people - to mentor, and build my ideas with, and the direction the association took with regards to rewarding nepotism and charisma rather than actual value creation. The department ultimately felt like a facade rather than a professional platform.

Today, I take this experience as an organizational behavior case study and an example of how not to lead an organization. I lead with both truth and experience, while giving the opportunity for the people below me to meet their goals, not just support mine. The experience also taught me the destructive consequences of unbalanced respect – where too much respect that is not earned, but given through luck and improper systems, is a breeding ground for leaders that destroy. It’s the same notion that “people don’t quit jobs, they quit bad managers.” People refuse to engage where respect is concentrated at the top, not equally distributed, where the top disregards the unique value of those below them if it doesn’t entertain socially desirable traits or credentials, and where PR seems to trump actual organizational behavior.

Making The Decision To Enroll in CFA Level 1:

Thusforth, after my experience and failed projects in Research & Innovation, I realized that I wanted to practice business at the highest possible level. I tackled a significant weakness in my arsenal of entrepreneurship, that I felt made me embarrassingly incompetent to not fully internalize and understand – that was finance. I was envious of those in the BBA program could interpret financial forecasts with rigorous fluency, were taught basic accounting – yet I was a DEM student attempting to play in their leagues with very little of the same understanding. At first, I considered learning Finance from Coursera and Udemy, the same way that I picked up Python’s data science library and Blender for 3D artistry.

At a YEC event with a PwC Manager, I told him about my desire to break into finance and learn about investing as a professional discipline. He urged me to take the CFA, a globally recognized professional credential which thoroughly trains you to understand all aspects of financial research. He introduced me to several people, who also suggested that I take the CFA, albeit that the program was very difficult and that I needed to invest significant amounts of time into the course.

And so, from mid-April to September, I took it upon myself to dig deep into the CFA curriculum, and learn what I believe was business at its most rigorous. I delved into Statistics, Economics, Corporate Finance, Accounting, Equities, Advanced TVM & Fixed Income, Derivatives, Alternative Investments, Portfolio Management, and Ethics. Already, these topics strike fear to many students who dislike deeply mathematical concepts and confusing financial jargon – however, my love for math and problem-solving made me waltz into the program with genuine curiosity. I’d dedicate 5-6 hours doing questions on the Learning Ecosystem, and dedicating myself to 1 chapter a day for at least 90 days, while working 30-35 hours at Starbucks weekly to fund my tuition.

And in my journey, it took an immense amount of effort in reminding myself why I was doing what I was doing. Part of it was to show the people, especially the people in my association that overlooked and even disregarded my efforts, that I was more than just a DEM student. I wanted to be the best in my field, representing the highest standards for what a DEM student can accomplish and achieve. In my pursuit of excellence, I developed a unique ethos to leadership and my own standards that emphasized facing my own professional fears. Whether it was being questioned, or presenting in front of an audience, or even appealing a disagreement with a professor, I particularly emphasized normalizing these behaviors to alleviate my anxiety of the gravity of the situation. My pursuit of the CFA, and it’s rigorous, unrelenting pace made me enjoy rigor and strive to achieve the highest level of readiness in professional environments compared to anyone else.

Today: Achieve, Connect, Empower (ACE) UTM & UTM Capital:

I’m now currently apart of 2 major school clubs – ACE UTM and UTM Capital.

ACE UTM, standing for Achieve, Connect, and Empower, is the largest chapter for business students in Canada that focuses on business case competitions. These case competitions span marketing strategy, corporate finance, ESG, crisis management and turnaround strategies, corporate governance, technology, and organizational behavior. I’ve contributed to ACE UTM through the hosting of the consulting training, and as a case writer for a major case competition referred to as the Global Launch Challenge.

UTM Capital is indeed another large school organization focused on providing finance education and experiences for future investment professionals, traders, corporate finance executives, consultants, accountants, and many others. Here, I had the opportunity to work as an analyst for an Investment Research case competition, conducting significant and thorough coverage on the copper industry. I have also been given the opportunity to work as a case competitions associate - writing cases, and leading events.

I hope to use the experience from these 2 major clubs to build credibility, network, and climb into an internship role within the Big 5 Canadian Banks – where I can apply my critical thinking, software development, and analyst skills within a real, high-stakes role.

Present Focus - What Am I Working Towards?

Translating Vision Into Quantifiable Metrics:

Going further into FinTech, my goal is to translate what I envision into quantifiable progress I can track. This extends beyond money budgeting and into systems that allow me to clearly see if the value I’m creating is consistent with the value that my customers demand, and that I demand from myself.

For example, I’ve been trying to translate these visions through smart financial dashboards that track my actual expenses, and try to model, predict, and separate my future cash reserves into separate accounts. This is a way for me to visualize and track how money changes and if it’s going in the right direction.

Another involves how I’m managing my time. Right now I set myself goals that I complete by the end of the day, but I oftentimes see people allocate 1-2 hours of study time to XYZ. I’m not comfortable doing that because I don’t follow these schedules, but I’m trying to learn why – what stops me, what I’m missing, where I’m flawed, and what resources I need.

Bridging The Gap Between Invention & Innovation:

In my Digital Marketing Class – covering the topic of Schumpeterian Theory, my prof talked about a very specific difference between an invention and an innovation. There’s no better way to describe such a juxtaposition then with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the cofounders of Apple Inc. And in that sense, the definition of each becomes obvious, inventions involve building a new, brilliant idea, whereas innovation is the output at which marketing new ideas builds new products.

The way I see innovation is an agile process which, in its simplest form, attempts to surprise people rather than focus on building something completely new. With Steve Jobs’ infamous MacBook Air showcase, for which he emphasized the thinness of the MacBook Air as so thin it could fit inside an office envelope designed specifically for papers, innovation is the process of solving a problem nobody’s believes is possible to solve.

Innovation is difficult to practice because it requires you to constantly question assumptions – in asking in what way information about something benefits someone, and how it can be applied elsewhere. For example, in the FinTech sector, let’s take the time value of money and apply it to present bias. Economics assumes people prefer rewards now rather than later, which means that technology has an opportunity to allow people to take higher, guided risks if they have the information to do so. It’s worth noting that information isn’t a siloed concept – it involves visual stimuli through the form of UX, data, branding, appealing to both the rational and emotional state of the user. This observation also builds the foundation of Wealthsimple’s business model, a company that is widely regarded as a disruptive competitor rather than stable.

Building Expertise In The Entire Value Chain of Cutting Technology Startups & Businesses

The ever-evolving information age, now engulfed in the mass popularity of Artificial Intelligence means job market competitivity needs to be rethinked. But people miss a very special trend of AI that’s not yet controlled by corporations – democratization and access to higher quality, structurable, organizable information which has very powerful implications on bridging knowledge and competence gaps when used correctly.

In building expertise in the entire value chain of cutting edge technology startups, I am building the exact paradigm shift that AI seems to be shifting towards – more resources, better organization, with the intervention of less people. Knowing how to operate, how to market, how to build, secure, and maintain software, and knowing how to make financial and investment decisions to reach my money and life goals – allows me to maintain competitivity as a sole, independent business owner. My decisions will ultimately motivate new sole, independent business owners to solve problems, which I believe is what’s needed to counteract monopolies and encourage competition for the right reasons.

Clarifying To Others What Digital Enterprise Management Actually Means:

For many, the Digital Enterprise Management program is a foreign term. For outsiders, it means a business program, or it may mean software or computer science. For people in the program, it’s a stepping stone into digital marketing and design, software development, IT management, strategy consulting, information security, and business intelligence.

Digital Enterprise Management in its literal sense, is a program where students are taught how to manage the needs of a majorly or fully digital organization. We cover everything up to risk management, operations, marketing, organizational behavior, economics and finance, approaches to innovation, basic web development, entrepreneurship, law, and applications of current technologies.

For me, the Digital Enterprise Management program is an opportunity to turn value into technology – whether that’s software or hardware products, and thusforth turn those products into businesses. My unique pursuit of Digital Enterprise Management followed self-taught computer programming, the CFA program, building entrepreneurial ideas through market fit, and working on myself to become a better leader – which will eventually translate in my work as a Tech Entrepreneur with a focus on the Financial Services industry.

Living My Values: Learning From Failure, Leadership Through Passion, Innovation Through Independence, and Trust Through The Highest Standards of Virtue:

As I continue to learn more about myself, finance and technology, and the world, I discover that only by doing does one learn how things work. It’s not enough to merely infer how things work through mental models and theories, but through practice you begin to realize what information you missed, and where your thinking fell short. When I pursue an undertaking, whether that undertaking’s discussing a topic in detail, coming up with a solution for a business, or building software for a client, I invest all my resources into the assignment, and take only the feedback where my shortfall can lead to a real consequence.

Leadership through passion means being the person who’s motivated by opportunity. Everyone wants to make money, earn respect through fame, and win validation. I want to be the kind of leader that takes people on critical missions – where they create value and win big, where the sense of camaraderie and thrill outpaces the salary or the work itself.

Innovation through independence is my pursuit of full autonomy in service of my own personal goals. Besides my professional goals, I want to travel the world, model, experience nightlife in luxurious countries, practice martial arts and dance, and chase creative works like authorship and poetry. I want to truly say I own my life and I own the world I live in – and I want more people – especially the youth - to live the exact same way, owning their lives rather than the other way around. This way, I get exposed to new people, bright ideas, and new ways of thinking, allowing me to solve in-demand problems and embrace the hidden social aspect of innovation.

Trust through the highest standards of virtue means staying true to myself. Never lying, never cheating, never misrepresenting, and taking full responsibility & accountability for mistakes. The world needs more people who live their values not for show but because they genuinely care about the outcomes of the world and want to make it better. I stand in line with those who genuinely care, and urge others to act in the same faith.