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BOTTOM: MARY PAQUET/SOI FOUNDATION 32 BCBUSINESS.CA MAY/JUNE 2023 R I S I N G S TA R S W I N N E R Anjali Menon C O - F O U N D E R , M E D I C F O U N D A T I O N A njali Menon has always been ambitious. In Grade 7, she went to a sustainability conference where she was told that the world would end in 20 years. "I was like, No, this needs to change," she remembers. "So in elementary school I founded my first green team." That same ambition drove the Coquitlam native to start a nonprofit as a 19-year-old biomedical engineering student. Her grandmother's untimely passing in India and her mother's Crohn's disease diagnosis exposed her to the struggle of find- ing treatment for such illnesses in Canada and beyond. Now, with UBC-based MEDIC Foundation, she and classmate Madhini Vigneswaran are trying to innovate for chronic conditions. Since 2020, MEDIC (Medical Engineering students Designing Innovations for a Cause) has been working with faculty, labs and local organizations to target four fields: depression and anxiety, Parkinson's, cancer and diabetes. Each area has its own projects and teams, with Menon's focus being on the Par- kinson's project in partnership with UBC's Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre. She sees patients every week to test MEDIC's new therapy for improving motor function. "They smile at the end with the hope that what I'm doing can positively impact and bring change to their lives. That feel- ing is unmatched," says Menon, now a fourth-year student, who admits she doesn't tend to sleep much. She's passionate about leading MEDIC's global outreach pro- gram to donate medical supplies abroad and hopes to inspire students to pursue engineering with its youth program. "Sitting in a room of 200 men and just me in the front row asking questions in an electrical engineering class is still dif- ficult," Menon maintains. "But I'm proud of myself for dealing with that and persevering." —R.R. W I N N E R Meg O'Hara O W N E R , M E G O ' H A R A C R E A T I V E SINCE LANDSCAPE painter Meg O'Hara won our 30 Under 30 award in 2021, the artist's business has catapulted. She has visited three different continents, been on two icebreaker ships, won her first Canadian Art Council grant and finalized five upcoming expeditions for the next two years. A few months ago, Quebec's SOI Foundation invited her to be one of 10 delegates going on an "expedition with a purpose" to Antarctica, looking at Canada's involvement in the Antarctic Treaty System. Her corresponding exhibi- tion took place this April at the Artist Project in Toronto. Living with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, O'Hara admits that the business of art didn't come easy: "I hear stories of people who used to have lemonade stands and were really born to be an entrepreneur, and I'm always like, Man, lucky. I had to learn this one." In her mind, she only graduated from UBC with a degree in art his- tory because the textbooks were picture books. But O'Hara leaned into what she was good at (her first exhibition was in her dad's living room at age 17), and since launching Whistler- based Meg O'Hara Creative in 2015, began to outsource work like copywriting and marketing. As a Whistler resident, it's only natural that her career started with a sharp dive into the ski industry. ("I love ice," she says with a laugh.) But even though skiing is what sparked her interest in high alpine areas, over the past two years she shifted her attention to vulnerable environments at the forefront of climate change. Among other projects, O'Hara is collaborating with Ocean Week Canada, an annual event held by the Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition to spread ocean awareness nation- ally. According to her, the June event gets 750,000 visitors a year. "At the core of everything I do is to inspire people to seek adventure in nature and then reflect on their role in preserving it," she says. –R.R.