TORONTO, Ont. —  Polaris Transportation revealed today the impact of its Student Leadership Development Program.

The program  is in conjunction with The Ivey School of Business at Western University and the Lazaridis School of Business at Wilfred Laurier. Polaris hires top business students with dual degrees including technology and data science. Together, they founded the Polaris Digital Factory and the product manufactured was customer centric innovation executed through the latest sustainable technologies. Each student had their unique role in the program and as they now return to University, the impact of what they created will carry on at Polaris.

The projects covered by the Polaris Digital Factory co-op students included, improving the Polaris customer experience, cost control and risk management. The Western students participating were Jessie Chen, Ross Cunningham, Jakob Holub, Jerry Wang and from Ryerson, Winston Kim.

“The Polaris Digital Factory attracts some of the best business and technology minds from top Canadian Universities,”  said Jon Saunders of the Polaris Transportation Group. ” These creative and unbounded students are inspiring and encourage entrepreneurism in our workplace, accelerating delivery times and allowing our teams to sharpen their focus on meeting the needs of our customers. A good example is in our accounts receivables management, where through the use of data analytics and historical customer shipping patterns, we can find troubling patterns in some cases before our customers are even aware of them.”

Students from last year’s program have gone on to placements with several Fortune 500 Companies in the areas of technology and consulting. The next student placement at Polaris commences September, 2017.

Executive Director Sharon Irwin-Foulon of Ivey Business School at Western University added: “Polaris has a strong employment brand at Ivey, which resonates with ambitious millennials. The students recognize that this leadership development opportunity offers a real level of responsibility early, true development of their talents and an opportunity to see the impact they have on an organization. This is an association we are proud to be a part of.”