About Me! 👋
Hey! I’m Peyton, a 16y/o who is super passionate about making an impact on the world 🌎. A little bit about me, I am an Innovator at TKS, very interested in business and entrepreneurship (in fact, I have even founded two start-ups) and I’m a triple threat. 🎭💃🎶
These past two months have been so amazing — from presenting to the CEO of Walmart Canada along with 400+ C-Suite executives, to the TKS Moonshot Challenge, and even receiving an award from my school board! 🤩
The Knowledge Society 🚀
Can't believe I am in the final stretch of TKS! For those of you who are not familiar with this program, let me fill you in. TKS is a 10-month long human accelerator designed to train teenagers to solve the world's biggest problems through training in emerging technologies and mindsets. 🦄
For the month of April, myself along with TKS Innovators Siyana, Pari, Caroline, and Teerka collaborated for the Moonshots Challenge. Essentially, a moonshot is a ground-breaking idea which forces you to think 10x to create a solution using emerging technologies to solve a huge world problem. 🌎
In this challenge we were tasked to create a company, along with a website, video, one pager, article, and a presentation. After many weeks of ideation, we came up with Biota, where we are treating depression through targeting the gut microbiome through a three-step process. After presentation day, our team walked away with the Best Overall Award, and we could not be happier!
Presenting the Store of 2030 to Walmart 🌟
In April, the TKS Global Consulting Challenge finalists were announced, and I’m proud to say my team was included. As a result, we were given the opportunity to share our ideas to Walmart’s new innovation team, Blue Labs as well as 400+ executives, including the Walmart Canada CEO, Horacio Barbeito! I, along with six other Gen Z Innovators got to share our vision for the Store of 2030 and some other key insights.
Huge thank you to The Knowledge Society for this opportunity and to Dan Jacob & Ian Lockhart for helping bring this to life! Many thanks to the Walmart team for listening to the voices of our generation and for being so welcoming.
Click here to see a LinkedIn post about the presentation from Walmart Canada & click here to read my post about the experience!
Receiving the Innovative Exemplary Practice Award
These past two months have truly been rewarding, to say the least. A few weeks ago, my school’s superintendent and trustee presented my friend, Martina Weisenblum and I with the Innovative Exemplary Practice Award recognizing our initiative, the Grade 9 Social Club as well as $750 to help grow it. 🏆
Our club's mission over the past two years has been to provide Grade 9s with the opportunity to meet and build connections with peers in their grade. It is such a heartwarming club to run and if you’re interested in running one at your own school be sure to email me at peytonverhoeven@yahoo.com.
Playing Ultimate Frisbee 🥏🏃♀️
Another activity I participated in over the past few months has been my school's Ultimate Frisbee team. This was my first year on the team, so I spent a lot of time getting a feel for the game as well as learning strategy. We ended up making it to the semi-finals but unfortunately lost. Regardless, I had fun stepping out of my comfort zone and am looking forward to our next season!
What to expect in June: 🤷🏼♀️
• TKS Showcase at Microsoft DICE
• Attending North Americas largest technology conference, Collision from June 20-23rd (Should be a 17th fun birthday🥳)
• Running an initiative for my non-profit, Project Be Kind 🎁
• End of the school year + exams
Well, that is it for me, I hope you have had a great past two months and here's to an even better June! See you then :)
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn ➔ https://www.linkedin.com/in/peyton-verhoeven-661a53185
Follow me on Medium ➔ https://medium.com/@peytonverhoeven