“I wanted to get involved in student government, and there were only a few things the school was doing annually, like a school dance,” he says. “By Grade 12, as a group, we implemented events like spirit week and different fundraisers. It was cool seeing those things come to fruition, but it wasn’t without challenges.”
Those challenges, he says, included getting buy-in from all groups of students and teachers.
Implementing change, or more precisely, working with and across teams to make something new and exciting happen, is what Marc did in his role as Product Specialist for Medisys (now part of TELUS Health).
Prior to joining the company, however, he went to Western University and earned his Bachelor of Science with a Specialization in Biology, going on to graduate from the University of Toronto in 2018 with his Master’s in Management of Innovation. He’d always been interested in science, but also had a keen interest in the business world, specifically wanting to work for a health company.
“Science is often working at an individual level in a clinic or at the cellular level in the lab, and I wanted to work in [the field] more practically,” he says.
Marc was passionate about combining science and business, so he balanced his science studies with undergrad electives in business, accounting, and project management to gear his career toward the healthcare technology industry.
He landed a solid opportunity at Medisys, a company that supports corporate and employee health clinics across Canada by developing and providing wellness solutions via digital products and services. The company offers programs via a few channels, namely occupational health programs(such as health screening in highly regulated fields such as mining and risk-injury prevention) as well as preventative health assessments to C-suite executives.
In his role, Marc looked at innovation in the healthcare space that is useful in the corporate world and will push the industry forward.
“So in other words,” he says. “I worked on finding really cool new products in the healthcare industry and choose which ones we should partner with, resell and distribute for our different clinics.” But to get new products developed and ready to go to market, Marc serves as a key point-person across all teams—marketing, operations, and finance—and he must get buy-in from everyone: from administrative staff and physicians to the executives.
“I introduced products, then worked with different stakeholders across the company to get the project running and ready for launch,” he explains. “It’s interesting because it’s very similar to Hudson student council.”
”As a group, we struggled a bit to get buy-in from students, teachers, and groups, and in my role, our team had to get everyone to understand what the technology is, get them trained, get them excited, and tactically get it launched...you have to ensure you have all the resources allocated, that the inventory is there, the budget is met, and digital work has been done.”
Marc says in both scenarios, the point-person is trying to get people to understand and agree to something that has never been done before. “You have to appeal emotionally, you have to have the capacity to connect with all groups, you have to be strategic...these are all things I started to learn about at Hudson.”
From his early days at school, Marc helped make change for the Hudson student body and today, he’s making impactful change. First, in the innovative world of healthcare tech. His Product and Technology team worked on a virtual care app which a person can use to see a clinician via FaceTime, get a prescription, or a referral as well as a device that can help busy executives manage their vitals such as their temperature and their heart rate. Currently, he is pursuing a Juris Doctorate degree at Queen’s University. Soon he’ll be in the courtroom where he hopes to move the dial.
“Hudson was great for providing me with the right tools: communication, collaboration, and attention to detail. It’s more complex, but getting everyone on the same page, engaging with people in the right way, making sure a project (or event) is organized...that experience [student council] was most similar to when you go on to university or when you start working in the real world.”
