Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund announced their latest investment on Wednesday, and although the dollar figure was well below ones made recently, the funding they said would be amount the most important ever made in the city.

The Knowledge Society (TKS), which runs programs for teens aimed at giving them world class entrepreneurial, tech, and networking skills, received $256,000 from OCIF on March 6, in a dual investment into Calgary.

For their part, TKS which already operates in multiple countries including the United States, is making Calgary their headquarters of operations.

“It wasn’t about the dollar value, it was about the opportunity that we’re presenting our students and the opportunity for us to really tap into our community strengths,” said Brad Parry, CEO of OCIF and Calgary Economic Development.

“We need to give everybody in our community a chance to have these success rates, and this exposure to these kinds of businesses. This is what’s going to allow us to drive that ecosystem for us of having the talent that we need in the community. So, it is a small investment, but I think the impact is probably one of the biggest impacts we’ve had in the fund itself.”

Funding from OCIF will be used to partially cover tuition for students taking TKS programs in Calgary.

Programs a complement to, but not a replacement for in-school education

Nadeem Nathoo, co-founder of The Knowledge Society, said that the TKS program is an intensive extracurricular and weekend program that runs for two years, 10 months at a time, and is split between about 70 per cent learning about emerging technologies, and about 30 per cent for skill, knowledge, and network building in an “innovate” and an “activate” year.

“By the end of the first year, it really is focused on four key areas: knowledge, skills, mindsets, and networks. How do you develop a portfolio? How do you develop a network? How do you develop the confidence mindsets, remove insecurity, all of these things.”

“The second-year program is very different. It’s almost like training to be a basketball player, hockey player or swimming and you’re doing that [recreationally], But now you’ve decided you want to compete for the Olympics.”

He said that was the year that gives students the training to address global challenges and be prepared for the global workforce.

TKS touted, among their graduates, students that have gone on to top schools like Stanford and MIT, and have gotten work at places like SpaceX, NASA alongside creating many multi-million dollar startups—30 to date, which have garnered $85 million in venture capital investment.

Nathoo said that they would be taking up to 160 students, each placed into four cohorts of 40 students. He said tuition was $600 per month, but the OCIF funding would help cover a portion or all of that for students in need.

“The support from OCIF is going to be instrumental to allow us to keep this 100 per cent tuition support policy, such that anyone anywhere in Calgary or the surrounding region will be able to participate,” Nathoo said.

More than 70 per cent of students receive some level of tuition aid.

The kind of students the program is looking for are not necessarily the ones with the best grades—and grades are not something TKS asks for as part of the application process. Instead, they’re after the students who are the most curious about the world, and who are also willing to work hard.

The program is also diverse in who it accepts. It is made up of more than 50 per cent female students, and 75 per cent of all students are from underrepresented communities.

Hard work demanded, but rewards worth it says TKS

Nathoo didn’t shy away from talking about just how hard that work would be. As an expectation, the TKS program would be the number two thing on students’ plates right after their regular schooling.

“It’s like signing up for a gym. It’s not a prerequisite to be fit to go to the gym, right? You can be all sorts of shapes and sizes, different health, doesn’t really matter. As long as you step foot in the gym three times a week, and if you’re eating chicken breast and broccoli, you will see a transformation after a year,” he said.

“However, if you are stepping foot in the gym for half an hour, not putting an effort, you’re cheating all the time eating McDonald’s and whatever the case is, you’re not going to see those outcomes. for us at TKS, it’s really important that this is something that the other person wants to do.”

For those students that do the work, however, the outcomes can be good.

Atharva Rao, a TKS student, said that the program was able to help him find a love of machine learning.

“When I was going through the program, what I discovered was there’s actually like lots of kids like me, and I was able to meet some excellent people, some excellent friends,” Rao said.

“I met a lot of different people who had a similar love of things like robotics, things like AI, things like machine learning, and things like quantum – all of these different types of technologies. We’re able to share our ideas amongst each other, we’re able to get feedback on or different projects, we’re also able to create that portfolio.”

Tackling pernicious problems

Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who serves on the OCIF board, said that there was more than hoping that by the time the students go through the TKS program they will choose to stay in Calgary.

“I’m very interested in working with TKS to see what we can do together. There are some really big and wicked problems that are facing the city right now, and I’d be very interested in seeing what we could do in terms of collaboration. To see whether there are students that are interested in tackling some of the problems that we’re seeing, and how we can put them to work to really make the city a better place,” she said.

“So absolutely. I would like to retain talented folks like this into the future, but I’d like to be working with them right now as well.”

Part of Nathoo’s pitch for students is that they do get to tackle real-world problems at real-world companies and organizations.

“Our young people, as young as 15, are the youngest employees at places like SpaceX, NASA Tesla, Neural Link, Open AI, Deep Mind, Microsoft, and IBM. This is how we structure serendipity. These are the outcomes that we are really driving for and striving for,” he said.

As for the possibility of TKS students working with the City of Calgary at their innovation lab, Mayor Gondek said it was a good idea.

“That sounds like something I’d be very interested in. Anytime we have innovation going on in the city, and anytime we’ve got an organization like TKS it’s got a lot of talent, especially young talent, I’m interested in seeing what kind of partnerships we can strike,” she said.

“We will be having follow up conversations from this and I’m just really excited to see such smart youth in our city that are interested in attending a program that’s extracurricular, to see how they can hone their skills and where they might belong in terms of a work environment.”