Internships & Research Funding
Are you a student changemaker looking for meaningful work experience in Vancouver’s social impact sector?
At RADIUS, we’re nurturing radical ideas into useful solutions. We’re incubating health promotion-focused ventures, co-creating meaningful livelihoods for refugee communities, supporting Indigenous entrepreneurs, and providing transformative educational experiences to undergraduate students.
Who Should Apply?
Throughout the year, we invite students with relevant volunteer or work experience to join our team to explore and understand the field of social innovation. Whether it’s supporting student engagement strategies, hosting events, or conducting research, students play a key role in helping shape experiences for the RADIUS community.
Current Openings
Thanks for checking in! We have no openings for student work opportunities at the moment.
past interns
Meet Our Past Interns
Eliane joined the RADIUS community when she participated in the first cohort of the their Civic Innovation Change Lab a program that focuses on building economic resilience in Vancouver. The following year she joined the team as one of their first business consultant co-op students. During her internship she worked closely with three social start-ups, delivering a digital marketing plan for a health food company, conducting product-market validation for PlayCity App, and a business development strategy for Graines de Chefs. Now no longer an intern, she wears many hats at RADIUS as a graphic designer, social media and special projects assistant coordinator.
Julian has a master’s degree in cognitive and behavioral psychology. After graduating, he spent a while traveling the world and teaching. After a decision to make a career shift, he reapplied his experience in science and psychology to the field of User Experience (UX) and studied User Interface (UI) to round himself out as a designer. Julian then decided to learn web development, discovering that he had an aptitude for programming in the process. He’s now seeking a role as a developer, but also offers a holistic view with both knowledge of UX/UI, psychology and science. Previous works can be seen at JulianTomlinDesign.com
Zaid was a Research Consultant Intern at RADIUS. In this position, Zaid had the opportunity to work with startups that had gone through the RADIUS Slingshot Accelerator Program. The ventures would present Zaid with challenges within their business which I would then spend time solving and provide recommendations on how to overcome them. My internship was extremely rewarding as I felt I was able to genuinely make an impact with the work I was doing due to the fact I got to work directly with ventures and was responsible for creating positives outcomes myself (with support from the RADIUS team of course!). After RADIUS, I have continued to work at SFU as a Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant. In both positions I have constantly taken advantage of the skills I learned from my time at my internship. RADIUS has also shown me that I enjoy client facing work as well as having the opportunity to solve complex business problems, thus I want to leverage the skills I learned in my internship by pursuing a career in consulting in the future.
past cohorts
Meet the 2017-2018 Entrepreneurship & Changemaking Activators
The E&C Activators served as our ‘on the ground’ student experts as they were each uniquely involved with the various E&C opportunities at SFU and within the community. Their goal was to find a way to better introduce students to the E&C landscape at SFU.
Over the span of one year, the E&C Activators educated over 1,000 SFU students about entrepreneurship and changemaking opportunities through events, booth hosting, and classroom presentations. They developed student engagement strategies to introduce their peers to a broad suite of curricular and community-based innovation and entrepreneurship programs offered by SFU. Additionally, the E&C Activators were provided with opportunities to build their personal and professional leadership capacities through mentorship and conference opportunities.
Social innovation, community impact, and changemaking are my passions. Alongside my BBA in Finance, I am pursuing the Charles Chang Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Having grown up in Zimbabwe, I got to see the direct impacts that social entrepreneurship can have, and this is where my WHY stems from. I want to play my part in bettering the life of anyone within my reach through social entrepreneurship.
I have been involved in a number of clubs in SFU, namely, Enactus SFU, CaseIT, and JDC West. Outside of school, I have had the privilege of co-founding a charity – and more recently, a think tank – for young African entrepreneurs, leaders, and changemakers. This is a group for individuals who want to bring impactful change and development to the continent.
I applied for the E&C Activators program so that I could share my passion with other people. I believe that having an innovative, entrepreneurial mind is beneficial asset regardless of what career path you chose to go into; therefore, the impact I want to have is to see more students from different faculties taking advantage of the entrepreneurship opportunities at SFU.
Cody is a passionate student leader who strongly believes in using an entrepreneurial approach to tackle social, environmental and economic issues. As the former President of Enactus SFU, Cody led over 150 engaged SFU students in the creation of projects to address local issues in the community. Cody also works as a Marketing Specialist at Insight Global Education, where he creates strategic partnerships to further bring awareness to international development and the United Nations’ Sustainable Goals. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and skating.
I began my changemaking journey when I joined Enactus SFU in my second year, teaching at-risk youth about financial literacy. Shortly after, interned in Kampala, Uganda, for a social enterprise called Sawa World on the Marketing and Partnership Development Team. I was able to learn from local entrepreneurs who teach local youth about innovative solutions to help them become financially capable and surpass the poverty line.
In my fourth year, I enrolled in Health Change Lab, where my team and I worked on a refugee resettlement venture. I went one step further with this venture and developed the business model through the RADIUS Trampoline Program. To dig even deeper and learn more about the challenges of refugee resettlement, I participated in the Oxford Skoll Global Challenge (now called the ‘Map the System Challenge’), luckily placing as an SFU finalist. I continued my work with refugee resettlement through the RADIUS’s Beyond Borders lab.
The E&C Activators Program sparked my interest because I wanted to show business students that there can be a bridge between what we learn as BBA candidates and creating social change; there are opportunities within social innovation where our skills are incredibly useful. Ultimately, I wish to influence the curriculum at the Beedie School of Business to incorporate social issues and to put a greater emphasis on entrepreneurship.
I currently am working at RADIUS as the Office and Special Projects Coordinator and am excited to continue the work I started as an E&C Activator.
I’m currently pursuing a joint Major in Business and Interactive Arts & Technology (Marketing & Design). I have been involved with Enactus SFU since I was in my first year. I started as a graphic designer for a program called Hunger Actions, where we taught low-income mothers about financial literacy and healthy cooking. I also served as the Project Manager for Soap for Hope, non-profit social enterprise that collects and sanitizes gently used bar soaps from hotels and upcycles them into liquid hand soap. Partnered with a non-profit organization, we worked towards providing wages and transitional work opportunities to marginalized individuals who help with production, all while diverting reusable materials from the waste stream. In addition, I was a mentor for the BASS Mentorship Program and was a BASS LAUNCH leader! In my spare time, I love attending live music concerts, collecting vinyl records, exploring Vancouver, reading, and playing video games. My curiosity drives me to learn more about things I’m not familiar with and discover new experiences!
I’m currently studying Business and Interactive Arts & Technology, with a concentration in Media Arts and looking into Strategic Analysis.
My journey to changemaking started with participating in Map the Systems (previously the Oxford Global Challenge) and enrolling in Health Change Lab soon afterwards. Both experiences showed me the importance of interdisciplinary learning and its relation to changemaking. As a part of the E&C Activators, the impact I want to make is for students to realize the entirety of their changemaking journey starts off with themselves, primarily of their values, and how they can work towards issues that are most meaningful too.
Stephanie is a 5th year student studying Health Sciences, concentrating in the Population and Quantitative Sciences. Her passions lie within humanitarian advocacy, educational development, and exploring ways to create change within the health of various populations. She has worked on the organizing team of various organizations including Project Pulse Vancouver, UNICEF SFU, and TEDxSFU. Her journey in entrepreneurship and innovation come from her time at RADIUS SFU’s Health Change Lab project. She then went on to compete in the Map the System Global competition where her team won 3rd place, shedding light on the mental health experience of 2nd generation Asian immigrants in Vancouver. Currently, she is finishing off her degree and working as a Clinical Research Assistant with OVCARE at the BC Cancer Agency. Stephanie is excited to continue learning about innovation as she explores ways to intersect entrepreneurship in medicine, one of her biggest passions.
