GRIT Week turns learning into community impact — and a career

A photo of three board members dressed as Wonder Woman. A birthday that falls on World Cancer Day. A professor she admired who was battling cancer. For MBA student Simran Shahul Shakeel, the decision to work with Wellwood during her second Generating Resilient Integrative Thinkers (GRIT) Week wasn’t strategic; it was deeply personal.

What she didn’t expect was just how far that connection would go. What began as a five-day experiential learning project with the Hamilton-based cancer support organization evolved into a winning presentation, a volunteer opportunity and, ultimately, a full-time role.

“When my team sat down to discuss why we had chosen Wellwood, we discovered we all had personal reasons,” says Shakeel, whose teammates were Kireina Ayodhia, Chenxin (Maggie) Sun, Yimei Zhou and Florence Tanor. “Everyone, including myself, was internally motivated to succeed, and it felt very different from other team projects we had worked on. I think that speaks to the value of working with non-profits and having the opportunity to make an impact for local organizations during the MBA. It’s a grounding experience.”

GRIT meets purpose

Wellwood came to GRIT Week with a clear need: support the launch of a new young adult program. Shakeel and her team were tasked with developing the logistics and an execution plan. Alongside other teams, they also competed for prize funding to support their partner organization.

As her team immersed itself in Wellwood’s project, Shakeel found herself stepping into a leadership role, though she didn’t immediately see it that way.

The pressure and pace for GRIT Week felt familiar. Still, Shakeel says this opportunity stood apart from her first GRIT Week, when students all tackled the same complex business case. Working with a non-profit required a different kind of thinking — one rooted not just in tactics, but in empathy and impact. When their video campaign played on the final day of GRIT Week, Shakeel says it highlighted the significance of their contribution.

“Our video started with my team member, Kireina, speaking about her sister and her experience with cancer,” she says. “When we noticed the way people responded, we knew the video had resonated. At that point, it didn’t matter whether we won or not. It was enough knowing what Wellwood’s work meant to people and that we got to contribute to that.”

From school project to career

Coming into the MBA with a background in physiotherapy and prior work in the non-profit sector, Shakeel says GRIT Week offered her a new lens on how these organizations operate in practice. It gave her a clearer understanding of the constraints they navigate day to day, and how those realities inform decision-making in ways that differ from traditional case-based learning.

The experience, along with exposure to Wellwood’s leadership team — including executive director Jane George, who has led the organization for nearly 30 years — challenged what Shakeel had heard about stability and longevity in the sector. In turn, it helped her see her own future more clearly, as she began to see non-profits as a long-term career path.

Just one month after GRIT Week, in March 2025, Shakeel began volunteering at Wellwood, supporting its social media efforts. A little more than a year later, she has been offered a full-time position that will see her working across marketing, communications and business development when she starts in June.

“On the last day of GRIT, Sarah King [DeGroote’s manager of experiential learning-academic] asked what we felt, and I said the experience was everything I wanted and that I couldn’t believe I had met the executive director of Wellwood,” she says. “To meet someone with nearly 30 years in that role, and to know that I could be like her, was one thing. To now have the opportunity and privilege to work with Jane and her team full-time is a dream come true.”