Olivia Cao/Staff Reporter
Olivia Cao is a grade 12 student who is committed to pursuing academic excellence in Gleneagle secondary school. She hopes to enter Bachelor of commerce at Queen’s University Smith Business School. Olivia has a strong passion for business, and she also hopes to pursue Ph.D. in education after graduation from business school, combining her knowledge of business and education to help solve problems in society.
Olivia’s parents grew up in a small countryside in southern China, and later they settled in a bigger city, so she grew up there. When she was young, her parents often took her back to the countryside during holidays, so she experienced the inconvenience caused by poverty. She has seen the lack of educational resources, the underdevelopment of transportation, and also the huge gap between the rich and the poor. Through these experiences, she really wants to solve the inequality problem in the future. She believes studying business, finance, and economy knowledge will lead me to my goal, and that is the reason why she wants to study in business school.
She wants to help educate children through her efforts. She hopes that one day children all over the world will be educated and that the lack of education due to poverty will not happen again. She is currently participating in a lot of extracurricular activities to benefit the community, mainly in business and education. She is a member of executives in a non-profit organization named Unitus Forum. She has organized the Career Conference in Unitus Forum for two years, which is a conference to invite industry professionals to share their work experiences with high school students. The event’s purpose is to help high school students to find a major direction. Moreover, the event connects high school students with industry professionals, students have the opportunity to contact industry professionals by asking questions about the industry.
Olivia also founded a company named SO Edu with her friend in January 2022 to focus on children’s education. The members of the team make money by tutoring high school students. They donated half of the profits to Outward Bound Canada to support Indigenous children’s education programs. The other half of the profits will be used for the development of the company in the future.
Extracurricular activities Olivia has participated in 2022:
- 1000 girls, 1000 futures (member)
- Gleneagle Knot Club (executive)
- So Edu (founder)
- Unitus Forum (executive)
- VIVA marketing group (volunteer)
- Metis kids summer camp (volunteer)
Olivia really likes music. She learned to play the piano when she was six years old, she also enjoys listening to music which she believes relaxes her when she is restless. She has participated in Gleneagle choir for two years. She also recorded a few songs in her free time and posted them on her social media account.
Sources:
“How to draw a girl and bring her to life with watercolor”
“Smith School of Business at Queen’s University”
“Fake PhD Degree Menace in Engineering Education”
“Music Pictures, Images and Stock Photos”
“Understanding the Business School Industry and Its Effect on MBA Applications”
“Extracurricular Activities: What You Should Be Doing”
“What does Poverty Look Like?”