When Amy Zhu (BDes, 19) graduated from Emily Carr University, she stepped directly into a role as an Interaction Designer with Vancouver startup Copilot AI.
As a two-time participant in the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship’s Design for Startups program, she says she made the leap without missing a beat.
“Design for Startups really ended up changing my life,” Amy says of the program, which pairs student designers with local technology companies looking for a design solution to a particular problem, and mentors those students throughout the process.
“I was able to apply the classroom knowledge I learned in a work setting,” Amy says. “That’s something you would never be able to get in a classroom setting … Because in the classroom, you would learn a blue sky is possible, but developers will tell you what challenges you might face in the real world.”
Amy now works full time for Copilot AI, tackling everything from product and marketing design, to developer support, to coding and feature writing. Her success story is just one of many which have emerged since Design for Startups was first piloted in Fall 2013.
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