Future Forward
Non-profit, 2024-2025
🥇 This project was awarded Provincial Champion at Ontario DECA Provincials 2025!
Career tests tend to test what a user *wants* to like, not what they actually like. Thus:
The Mission
Create a tool that surfaces students' real interests and career goals
Featured Video
Initiatives
Initiative 01
📊 Marketing Club
A hands-on marketing firm serving six organizations. Members rotated through roles like Account Manager, tried each job, and got personalized career results based on surveys. Grew signups 300% to 59 members.
Initiative 02
💰 Financial Literacy Series
Partnered with Markville Finance Club to deliver two financial literacy lessons to 15 students and hosted the University of Waterloo Financial Literacy Competition with 11 participants.
Thanks Holly Zhang for the inspiration.
Initiative 03
🎤 Career Fair
Hosted a virtual career fair with 6 speakers including the CEO of Basel Medical Group, a McKinsey Business Analyst, and a Program Manager at Alstom. Attendees completed surveys tied to the FF Careers AI to receive personalized career reports.
"It was an emotional journey... I feel so much more confident about my future." — Attendee
Initiative 04
📱 FF Careers App
Built an AI-powered career matching app at ffcareers.app. Instead of generic career tests, it prompts reflection questions and curates ranked careers with outlook ratings. Mentored by a former Apple Software Engineer and featured at an Apple × CEC App Showcase.
"Future Forward Careers is a dream come true." — Franca Giglia, Guidance Counselor
Initiative 05
🌐 Branches & Community
Launched a Discord server and grew a 308-member community. Started FF New York and FF California branches with pre-packaged resources, which spun up their own social media and community servers totalling 200 members.
Initiative 06
🏫 Middle School Mentorship
Visited grades 7–8 at three Crowle Public Schools to introduce students to business careers before high school. Each session included a live trading game teaching collaboration, negotiation, and delegation.
"I now know a whole lot more about the business sector and may like to pursue that path." — Student
Initiative 07
🎓 High School Mentorship
Delivered in-class presentations to grades 9–11 covering the FF Five framework, business case studies, and a LinkedIn Masterclass where students practiced networking with real professionals. Posted all recordings to YouTube for those who couldn't attend.
"My students are so unengaged — I want Future Forward in my classes!" — Accounting 11 Teacher
Unfortunately, now that I've graduated, the project is no longer continued and the website has been taken down. However, our project continues to be used for training at Markville DECA.
