Craig Loewen and his UWaterloo team win James Dyson Engineering Award for Canada

Craig Loewen with /university of Waterloo tea, winners of James Dyson Award

Very proud of my son and his award by Dyson. He was interviewed by the University of Waterloo: 

A blog post, written by a visually impaired person about the challenges she faced trying to use the office’s new touch screen coffee maker, was the inspiration behind a recent Waterloo Engineering Capstone Design project. WatVision took home top honours in the national leg at this year’s James Dyson Award for its clever, yet simple engineering principles.

Developed by six mechatronics engineering students, WatVision is a system that reads out words or numbers on a device allowing visually impaired individuals to make a cup of java, select an elevator floor or perform other functions most people take for granted.

“We looked at creating braille readers at first, but decided that would be way too hard,” says Craig Loewen, a WatVision member. “When [a team member] read a blog post about an individual not being able to make coffee because she couldn’t use the touch screen, we all said that we could solve that problem.”

“In about 30 minutes, the person who was blind was able to go through a few screens on a touch screen. Another individual with low vision was able to use it instantly and really liked it,” says Loewen.

In March, WatVision captured a GM Innovation Award as well as second place in the People’s Choice Award during TronCon, an annual mechatronics engineering event that connects alumni with current students.

Read full article.

Family Offices and Wealth Management: What's driving investment trends.

Family Offices: Dave Mason, Jacoline Loewen, Ed Montero, Sarah Beven

In Calgary, the team held a series of events where they presented the proprietary research on Family Offices and Wealth Management: What's driving investment trends. Five families with wealth case studies were discussed about family businesses, and their best practices as well as stumbling blocks.  

Creating corporate governance around wealth is a simple rule to state but as they say, the devil is in the details. Yet, those families, or founders, will fail if there are no rules of the road.  If the goal is ongoing transfer of wealth to the next generation which sparks the second generation to live a happy life, there needs to be thought put into action. It does all boil down to setting up governance in order to keep running family wealth management.

Held at The Petroleum Club in Calgary offered exclusive peer network of other UBS Global Family Office clients to share knowledge and discover new business opportunities.

In addition to the proprietary research, other areas of interest to wealthy families and their wealth management are:

·         Financing and advisory solutions for real estate, art collections, aircraft, hedge fund portfolios, securities backed lending, margin capabilities and more

·         Around-the-clock direct contact with our bankers, traders, specialists and sales teams in every market, product class and currency - Fully customizable real-time reporting of holdings, balances, margin, risk profiles and tax status for assets held with UBS and elsewhere

·         Tailored client portfolios to meet specific investment objectives, along with hedge fund portfolio monitoring

·         Participation in private placement deals for qualified pre-IPO clients, anchor investments and global syndicate offerings

·         Legacy advisory services, including estate planning, a young successors program and philanthropy strategies to sustain achievements and make lasting impact through giving

·         Customized guidance from the Strategic Equity Solutions Group to optimize risk/return profiles, funding, tax and accounting treatment, capital consumption, market risk, legal treatment

·         Full range of core and advisory services from UBS Prime Brokerage for family offices to efficiently gain access to the entire firm

·         Family advisory services, including governance frameworks, governing bodies, corporate advisory, management platforms, asset holding structures and business succession plans.

To learn more about family advisory, please send a request to receive the Family Office Compass, a practical guide for families setting up and maintaining their own dedicated family office.
See my books on Amazon: Jacoline Loewen, Amazon Author's page

5 lessons can we learn from Bezos’s rise to become the richest man

Interesting to learn that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will become the world’s richest person this year, or next. After yet another fantastic report of results, and yet another boost in the company’s share price, Bezos is $5 billion away from the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and likely to overtake him soon.

From my view, I remember when Amazon was just starting and seemed an interesting but not a sure thing on the stock market. I sold my Amazon for AOL back in 1999. I was wrong! 

To learn that Bezos is now passing Bill Gates means that there are lessons to learn and Bezos shares his views. I am interested in how the title of richest person (that is tracked and legitimate) sets a role model for entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world.

After all, if making more money than anyone else doesn’t tell you they are doing something right, it is hard to know what might. 

So what lessons can we learn from Bezos’s rise to the top of the pile? In brief: That you should 

1. Think big, 
2. Innovate furiously, 
3. Ignore failures, 
4. Forget about obsessing over profits, and 
5. Avoid major acquisitions. 

Those are 5 pretty good guidelines for any business heading into the 2020s. 

In the past five years, Amazon’s share price has more than quadrupled, rising from US$220 to more than $US900 as the company powers into new industries and markets. He has already overtaken Warren Buffett and Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of Zara owner Inditex, to become the world’s second richest. 

Read the article HERE

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Jacoline Loewen, MBA, ICD.D, is a best selling author and expert in Wealth Management. She is Canada’s leading wealth, legacy, founder and family business finance expert. Ms. Loewen's clients are entrepreneurs who transition from focus on business to managing their money. She helps overcome common wealth creation issues while optimizing investments in order to manage and nurture significant wealth with confidence.

You never know when you might get that call from a buyer making an offer you can't refuse

If you are thinking about selling your company within the next few years, here are a few reminders to keep you on track. It's from a blog written by Alan Crossley who sells companies and who shares his observations about business owners as they get ready to sell. Here is an excerpt:

Some call these the Dog Days of Summer. The business world tends to slow down. I think it's a great time to reflect and regroup on how ready your business is for being sold. Even if selling seems a long way down the road for you, it's never too early to start. Plus, you never know when you might get that call from a buyer making an offer you can't refuse (or can you?). As for my Dog Days of Summer, I found an article (rather than write my own) on this very topic. A few points here that are worth noting: To read more...

Breaking down blockchain

Truck News

TORONTO, Ont. – If trucking wants to take advantage of blockchain, it needs to come together and work as one unified team.

That was the message from panelists at this year’s TransCore Link Logistics’ 20th annual conference at the Markland Wood Golf Club in Toronto.

Panelists, that included Dave Brajkovich, CTO of Polaris, Jacoline Loewen, director of business development at UBS Wealth Management, Mark Southey, executive v.p. of business development at Traffix, and Moe Sabry, director of IT at TransCore all agreed that the best way for trucking to be successful with blockchain technology is to work together.

The trucking industry is just dipping its toes into the water, so to speak when it comes to blockchain, because many don’t know much about it, or, don’t know how to get started.

Blockchain is, in simple terms, a digital ledger where transactions are made and recorded permanently. It is decentralized, in that information isn’t going to and stored in one place (like a centralized system), rather, several places.

The greatest advantage blockchain will bring to the industry that it desperately needs, is trust, panelists said.

“Blockchain will eliminate paperwork because there’s trust,” explained Southey. “Because we have all these nodes feeding information into a shared ledger…it means that when a warehouse puts 1000 boxes on truck, there is no question there are 1000 boxes on the truck. There is no proof required…and then we have trust between the shipper and the transporter. This negates the bill of lading. Because of that, we can automate payment. We can automate transfer responsibility. Half of our industry (with blockchain) can be automated. That’s where blockchain will have a fundamental shift.”

He added that the trust between driver and employer will also improve.

“Driver behavior won’t be questioned because it will all be recorded,” he said. “There is no dispute whether an action occurred or not.”
Brajkovich agreed, calling blockchain an API manager on steroids. He said the greatest advantage blockchain will offer transportation is quality, speed, and efficiency.

And while many may be panicking saying blockchain could eminate jobs like dispatchers or other administration roles within trucking, Barjkovich says this is not the case.

“Those people that handle paperwork today in trucking, they can be repurposed to do more efficient things,” he said.

He said that banks are the leaders in blockchain right now because they “are leaders together and understand that these paradigm shifts happen quickly.”

Right now only 1% of the supply chain industry is using blockchain.

“The industry needs to come together. If we can’t come up with a singular composed strategy, it’s going to be difficult to implement blockchain,” Southey said.

Loewen said to those in trucking who don’t know where to get started when it comes to trucking, should research groups you can join that are looking into blockchain now.

“There are all these business incubators,” she added. “There are lots of tiny companies looking for problems to solve. As individuals, go meet with these people. Give them problems to solve. They will likely solve them for you, for free. There’s some out of Ryerson University and some from Waterloo University. Canada is leading-edge with this stuff..you could go from a five truck trucking company to the next Walmart of trucking if you wanted to dream that big.”