Sam Macmillan, 2006 W. Garfield Weston scholar

Sam Macmillan (Upper-Year W. Garfield Weston 2006) chose to study marketing communications at the British Columbia Institute of Technology because he thought the program would be the best preparation for entering the business world. As it turned out, his extracurricular activities with Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE) also provided him with invaluable experience—in both the entrepreneurial and nonprofit sectors—that serve him well in his current role as an account executive with DDB Canada.

As a member and president of ACE—since renamed Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE)—Sam strove to fulfill the organization’s mandate of creating economic opportunities within local communities. A project he helped run in Mount Currie, BC, was a notable success story. “We taught First Nations students business skills and helped them run small businesses within their schools,” he explains. “It was a huge success, and we saw the attitudes of a number of students change drastically. We were able to get them thinking about post-secondary education and even starting their own businesses.”

During his studies, he also took advantage of the W. Garfield Weston Award summer program to volunteer in Ghana. Over five weeks, he helped build a new wing for the village school and assisted a local doctor treating malaria patients. Sam was there to help the locals, but he found himself benefiting just as much from their aid: “Although I was in an extremely impoverished area of the world, there were times that I felt they were helping me more than I was helping them.”