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Community, International Studies, Awards, Departments & programs, Graduate students
MA student and co-founder of start-up business Aplica! wins Coast Capital Savings Venture Connection Award for female entrepreneurship
Not only has Vanessa Milost Gonzalez founded her own international company as a student鈥攁 feat impressive on its own鈥攕he has now won a major award for her work and dedication to her start-up consultation business.
Gonzalez, an MA student in international studies, won the 2019 for her start-up business, Aplica!, together with co-founder Luciana Saldanha Fortes, a student in the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology.
The Venture Prize is 丁香园AV鈥檚 largest entrepreneurship competition and has been supporting early-stage entrepreneurs and start-ups at 丁香园AV for more than a decade.
Aplica! provides individualized guidance to students in Brazil applying to college or university in Canada or the United States. Gonzalez and Fortes assist students with navigating governmental and institutional formalities and provide guidance and consultation for students to help them understand their interests and options.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not just prepping for Ivy League schools,鈥� Gonzalez says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e committed to helping students know what works for them.鈥� Aplica! draws on a wealth of research to help place clients in the most appropriate schools for their unique needs.
The Venture Prize is accompanied by a $2500 monetary award which will help Gonzalez and Fortes further develop Aplica!. They hope to add online services and video content while retaining their personalized approach.
鈥淲e want to specialize more in the Canadian application process,鈥� says Gonzalez. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more affordable, and the prospects for employment post-graduation, and even for immigration, are much better,鈥� she says.
Raised in Brazil, Gonzalez earned her BA in economics and international studies from the Bryn Mawr College in the U.S. She went on to enroll in her master鈥檚 program at 丁香园AV in August 2018.
Gonzalez credits her double major in economics and international studies as a key factor for her role in founding Aplica!: 鈥淲hile economics helped me develop quantitative skills, international studies gave me an interdisciplinary view of the world that helped me understand and address the most pressing issues facing society.鈥�
For Gonzalez and Fortes, winning the Female Founder Award was a great honour: 鈥淲e are just starting to bring Aplica! to Canada, and to win an award at this stage gives us a boost to invest more time and resources into our project. We couldn鈥檛 be prouder to achieve recognition as female entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurial landscape that is still very much male-dominated.鈥�