University of Winnipeg business student Ethan Baron has won a coveted spot in The Next 36, an elite program that selects and supports the next generation of high-impact entrepreneurs with $50,000 in start-up cash plus high-level CEO mentoring. Baron is the only Manitoban to make the cut from over 1,000 leading Canadian undergraduate students from 62 schools across North America.

Baron was selected following an intense weekend of exercises In Toronto in November 2011 that included presenting a business pitch to investors with only a few hours to prepare.

“This is an incredible opportunity,” said Baron, who at 19-years-old is already in his fourth year of a double major at UWinnipeg, studying international business and economics and finance. “I am in a team of four people tasked with developing a mobile venture. We have $50,000 in cash and two high-level CEOs to advise us. I feel as though I am receiving the equivalent of an MBA education, with access to a high level network of people and expertise that would normally take years to develop.”

Baron credits his time at The University of Winnipeg with helping him achieve this milestone. “In our business faculty we interact with our professors in a way that is unmatched, I have learned as much outside the classroom as inside it. And our classes are small, sometimes just 15 students, compared to hundreds elsewhere. That is the biggest advantage.”

Baron returns to Toronto in May 2012 for an entrepreneurial boot camp and to raise additional capital for his startup company.

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