Shiven Vinod Kera is in his final year of an undergraduate business degree at UBC Okanagan.
From being a student entrepreneur to volunteering countless hours to becoming the vice-president internal of the students’ union, he has had the privilege of truly loving and living student life at UBCO.
His elected role with the students’ union impacts the advocacy needs of 11,000 students in Kelowna ranging from providing bursaries, lower textbook costs, implementing climate policies, starting food security initiatives and helping student associations engage more on campus.
He has had the privilege to research and develop the Smart Inventory system along with associate professor Dr. Eric Li to help reduce food waste at food banks across B.C.
Currently, the system is being piloted at the Central Okanagan Food Bank and funded by the government of Canada.
He is co-founder of an IOT company Linkbase Technologies Inc., which has leveraged their cloud platform to automate wildfire protection kits through a partnership with a local B.C. company (Modernwave) in order for homeowners to keep their homes secure against wildfires during the heatwave.
Being the co-founder of Linkbase, he has experience in managing teams and making ideas into a reality.
Starting a company from scratch and building a fresh team is always hard and requires strong leadership – the process has been the single biggest learning experience for him.
He was elected as the president of Enactus UBCO in 2020, which is a not-for-profit social entrepreneurship organization.
As president, he led other fellow students and co started the Uganda goat project to help individuals in Uganda suffering from HIV.
A total of 66 families were helped by their team and through the support of their efforts by the greater Okanagan community.
His students’ union service has enabled him to be a very involved student in UBCO student issues to the wide benefit of the campus education community.