Fourth-year student Jessica Fan is starting off the New Year in elite company as a member of “The Next 36.” The prestigious entrepreneurial leadership program seeks out the country’s most promising undergraduate entrepreneurs and challenges them to create their own ventures.

Fan, who is majoring jointly in business and interactive arts and technology, will spend much of the year working with cohorts at Queens University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto — with a $30,000 advance from The Next 36 to develop a start-up company.

Nine teams of four – 36 students in all from across the country – were selected from more than 1,000 students to form the program’s second cohort.

Fan hopes to focus on a social enterprise that will help address a community-wide issue. She’s among a group of SFU classmates who earlier developed Home for the Heart, a Mandarin and Cantonese language home-care service for the elderly to help them remain at home longer. The business model was part of a social entrepreneurship course last fall.

“My interest is addressing the bigger social problems we face, such as the underfunding of healthcare,” says Fan. “It’s a big responsibility we all share and I think creating social ventures is a more sustainable solution.” She earlier set up the Burnaby Hospital Bedside Arts Program, which seeks to improve the patient experience through art and music.

Fan is also working with Engineers Without Borders (and is co-president of the SFU chapter) to create a knowledge-management system to be used by chapters across Canada.

A published illustrator, avid photographer, singer, and graphic designer, Fan has received multiple awards for her academic and volunteer achievements.

All candidates will return to Toronto in May for the Entrepreneurship Institute, an innovation boot camp where they will build their ventures with guidance from the world's top faculty and support from Canada's top business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Championed by founders that include Jimmy Pattison and a long list of prominent Canadian business leaders, The Next 36 has been described as an intense “hot-house effort” to stimulate young entrepreneurship in Canada.