Entrepreneur aids in action plan for youth

A young Calgary entrepreneur is in Toronto this week where he’s helping to draw up an action plan aimed at growing youth enterprise in Canada.

Kevin Alto, of Alto Collective, a company that produces handmade wood products from longboards to wallets to phone cases, is participating in the Canadian Youth Business Foundation’s first Action Entrepreneurship Canadian Summit. About 200 people are participating in the summit.

From surveys and information from small business owners, they’ve tried to compile as much information as possible to get a good understanding of four main action items,” said Alto of the event’s four key needs: entrepreneurial mindset; skills; resources; and markets and growth.

The foundation in late 2013 reached out to 1,000 of the nation’s best and brightest leaders in areas such as business, education and policy development, with roundtable discussions held in 11 cities, including Calgary.

I’m here basically helping to give a perspective from my experiences. Coming out of university I was a mechanical engineer but entrepreneurship, the concept, wasn’t there at all,” said Alto.

I had to meet somebody who exposed this whole other world to me and that’s sort of how I got my introduction into entrepreneurship.

Calgary Herald | Calgary, Alberta