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Mount Royal Student Awarded Women's Entrepreneurship Day Scholarship

Arielle Fitzgerald; Student Founder, Health, Community and Education Student and winner of WEDO's Inauragal Women's Entrepreneurship Day Scholarship

By Emily Knight

Today, November 19th, 2019, is the first official Women's Entrepreneurship Day in Alberta. Last week, at the inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Day Summit, the Alberta Minister of Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women, Leela Aheer, officially declared the celebration as the first of its kind in Canada.

Hundreds of supporters gathered at the event to hear from local entrepreneurs who shared their stories about their experience with the intersections of starting a venture, gender, race and parenthood. To wrap up the afternoon, three student entrepreneurs were awarded scholarships based on essays they submitted about their own experience as female founders. One of these students was Mount Royal Student Arielle Fitzgerald.

Arielle recently shared her journey as both a serial entrepreneur and a competitive athlete at the Entrepreneurs Organization Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. Arielle's story is one of perseverance, creativity, and self-care; I can't summarize it more eloquently than the words she left the judges with during that pitch, "Fall Forward".

Arielle's award of this scholarship could not be more fitting being that her most recent venture, Mooch, co-founded with Vickie Nzojibwami, Silvia Bezzi (MRU Alum), and Marc Nzojibwami (MRU student), tackles new mothers' struggle with the quantity of nutrition-rich breastmilk and brings awareness to the experience of postpartum depression. The team pithed Mooch at the 2019 JMH LaunchPad Pitch Competition and walked away with $15,000 in cash to begin the process of bringing their snack bites to market.

Along with Arielle, Kathy Bui, Co-Founder of CareFind and Jenna Galloway, Founder of Wymbin and BEAM Yoga Foundation were also awarded WEDO Scholarships. Congratulations to these fantastic founders and happy Women's Entrepreneurship Day.