Peter B. Gustavson School of Business, Uvic

Over the past decade, Uvic has vastly stepped up its efforts to partner with First Nations groups and help provide education to Indigenous people and communities. A prime example: the Gustavson School of Business's Aboriginal Canadian Entrepreneurs (ACE) Program, which began about eight years ago. ACE aims to enable business ownership, self-sufficiency and full economic participation by Indigenous people in projects that take place on their traditional territories.

To that end, ACE, with its 16 two-day workshops plus 16 weeks of coaching, has graduated 24 cohorts totalling 352 Indigenous entrepreneurs who now run 96 businesses across 67 communities in B.C.

“We don't push the program on anybody; we're invited in, and we say, OK, what role would you like entrepreneurship to play within your community? And it really is different in each community,” says ACE program director Brent Mainprize. “That whole process takes almost two years from when we get an invitation to when we start delivering, because those conversations take a long time and those relationships build very slowly, and part of it is understanding each other as partners.” •