Eamonn McGuinty is a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Commerce in Food and Agricultural Business from the University of Guelph under the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC). While managing his time with school, work and extracurricular activities, he will be starting a Master of Science (MSc) program at the University of Guelph in the fall of 2015. He is currently working full-time as an Intern with Export Development Canada (EDC), Canada’s leading export finance organization, that is helping small and medium-size enterprises export to emerging markets and access international business opportunities. His graduate program will involve scaling-up and evaluating distribution strategies for low-cost agricultural innovations for smallholder farmers in rural and hill-side areas of Nepal.
Eamonn has been involved on and off campus, representing his university at national and international business case-competitions, such as the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) competition in Kansas City, USA, and the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA) in South Africa. Most recently, he was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Guelph implementing a hands-on approach for freshman and sophomore students working with big data in agriculture, as well as teaching important business fundamentals.
He believes that business can be used as a force for good and through the power of entrepreneurship improvements can be made by disrupting our current modes of thinking. He is a big advocate of stepping out of his comfort zone and finding new ways to solve problems and find solutions. Eamonn hopes to work in an international setting. More importantly, he’s excited to be a Kirchner Fellow for 2015-2016 and is committed to shortening the time until every person on the planet has reliable access to healthy food.