Haskayne School of Business celebrates 50th anniversary

As a surgical resident, Breanne Everett, MD’09, MBA’13, saw an opportunity to help people who suffered from the complications of diabetes and believed that if she created a company, it could save limbs, lives and livelihoods.

One of the main complications of diabetes is numb feet, which means that without the capacity to feel pain in their feet, some diabetics can be unaware of complications that occur there. This often leads to costly treatments, including amputation. Believing that the problem was preventable, she thought a company could create a smart insole that would sense what the patient could not.

Orpyx Medical Technologies was founded in 2010 and is now a Calgary success story that is doing what she had envisioned many years ago. In 2016, Everett was one of the first six recipients of the prestigious Governor General Innovation Awards. On Saturday, Sept. 23, she was one of the featured speakers on hand to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Haskayne School of Business at a gala dinner and she recounted how the business started.

“I spent my first year in residency trying to balance laying the foundations for my company between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. while I was working 100-hour work weeks at the hospital as a surgical resident. I knew nothing about business so I was trying to teach myself about shares, cap tables, business planning and financial modelling in the middle of the night,” she recalled.

“I was trying to come up to speed quickly but I was losing even more sleep in the process. It was completely unsustainable and I was doing neither well. Something had to give.”

Everett decided to take an educational leave of absence to do an Executive MBA at Haskayne and work night shifts at the hospital.

“I sincerely doubted their interest in taking on this overextended, under-educated, overtired resident who just had an idea for a business. It wasn’t long after I submitted that request that I got the call that they did and they welcomed me with open arms. The MBA was the most incredible deep dive into business. Wearing almost every hat in the business it felt like every lecture was relevant, eerily tailored to what I was experiencing day-to-day at the company. The level of support and respect I received throughout the program, despite being the youngest, certainly being the most inexperienced and definitely being the smallest student in the cohort was completely humbling and always inspiring.”

The school of today is a far cry from the original days as the Faculty of Business, which was created by a narrow margin of just one vote in a General Faculty Council decision in May of 1967. The faculty was born on Canada Day, 1967, as the country turned 100.

First dean Jim Robinson recalled on Saturday night those very first days and a meeting he had with then-president Herbert Armstrong. Dressed head-to-toe in a cowboy outfit the day before the Stampede parade, Armstrong gave Robinson the low-down on the new position atop the business school, its $90,000 annual budget and the sentiment that business was not welcomed by all on campus.

“’It will be your responsibility to demonstrate that business is an academic discipline and should be welcomed on this campus,’” Armstrong told Robinson.  

He also told him to hire people to educate the 235 students that had been transferred to the school from the Faculty of Arts and Science.

“You’re responsible for getting teachers to teach them beginning in September. If you intend to introduce a new curriculum next year, you must provide it to us by the end of October in order for GFC to approve it.’

“So began the first day of the Faculty of Business,” said Robinson.

From that first class to today, 25,000 people are now Haskayne alumni and they live in over 80 countries.

The gala — which took place in MacEwan Hall — glittered and buzzed with a celebratory vibe as 330 students, faculty, staff, alumni and community supporters gathered to celebrate the business school. Sonia Scurfield, wife of the late Ralph Scurfield, for whom the school’s home Scurfield Hall was named, was in attendance and watched a video from the 1986 building opening that was recently uncovered in an old box.

Haskayne’s current dean, Jim Dewald, spoke at the gala about the future of the school and the strategic plan currently in the works.

“We are looking forward. We definitely have our Eyes High. We are focusing on entrepreneurial thinking, ethical leadership and are focused on developing a suite of graduate programs, which will really differentiate the school,” said Dewald.

“We owe so much of it to the people in this room. Thank you to our alumni, our staff, our faculty, our donors and to the University of Calgary.”

President Elizabeth Cannon said the evening was about celebrating two important anniversaries for the school: the 50th anniversary and the 15th anniversary of the naming of the school in honour of Dick Haskayne in 2002.

She noted that the school plays an important part in our university’s role in the community as a hub for innovation, entrepreneurial thinking and leadership.

“As a university, we are one of Canada’s most entrepreneurial institutions and it’s because of people like you — students, faculty, staff, alumni and other supporters who have contributed to 50 years of excellence in business education. On behalf of the university’s leadership team, I would like to thank you and let you know how proud we are of all that you have accomplished over the years.”