in si de ha lto n. co m O ak vi lle B ea ve r | T hu rs da y, O ct ob er 22 ,2 02 0 | 22 Meet Our 2020 MNP Future Leaders Above (L-R) Nikky Starrett, Founder, Pomp & Sass; Akeem Gardner, CEO, Atlas 365 Inc.; Mei Chen, CEO, Vision AI Named as the 2020 MNP Future Leaders, three young local entrepreneurs are about to partake in the business opportunity of a lifetime! The recipients of the annual MNP Future Leaders award are Mei Chen, Founder and CEO of Vision AI, Akeem Gardner, CEO of Atlas 365 Inc. and Nikky Starrett, Owner of Pomp & Sass. Chen, Gardner and Starrett will each receive one year of monthly professional mentorship, guidance and advice from an MNP partner, year- long memberships at participating boards of trade/chambers of commerce, a consultation with media experts and profile enhancement strategy, along with the prestige of being recognized as an MNP Future Leader. Last year's MNP Future Leaders included Radwan Al-Nachawati, Founder and CEO of LinkMentalHealth Inc., Emilee Feely, CEO of Feely Music and Arwina Mogul who is the CEO of Beam.gg. With COVID-19 recently turning the world upside down, things looked a little different for this year's award ceremony. MNP adapted, mailing the awards to the 2020 recipients, and honoured them virtually instead of at the standard in-person event. MNP, a leading national accounting, tax and business consulting firm in Canada, has partnered with key local stakeholders including Ryerson University, Sheridan College, University of Toronto Mississauga, City of Brampton, Town of Oakville, Brampton Board of Trade, Mississauga Board of Trade, Oakville Chamber of Commerce and Star Metroland Media, on the program. "As an entrepreneurial firm built for Canadian entrepreneurs, MNP is proud to support our local business communities and young business leaders with this mentorship program," says Jim Molyneux, Regional Managing Partner for MNP in Peel Region. "In partnership with local stakeholders, we created the MNP Future Leaders mentorship program three years ago to help young business leaders as they build their entrepreneurial enterprises and succeed on their own terms. We wanted to provide invaluable mentoring by top-notch professionals to support young entrepreneurs. We are delighted to add this year's three winners to the six previous winners we've been working with." Inspiring and guiding our next generation of business leaders Three Dynamic, Young Entrepreneurs Named as This Year's MNP Future Leaders by LaurieWallace-Lynch, photography supplied byMNP Mei Chen Founder and CEO,Vision AI One patient who lost her sight due to diabetic retinopathy was one person too many for Mei Chen. Chen has a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree from McMaster University and a Master of Applied Sciences from the University of Waterloo. During the last year of her undergrad program, Chen was working as an ophthalmologist research assistant when something happened that changed her life. "We travelled to remote communities, setting up eye screening for patients with diabetes and found that people often had to wait long periods of time or travel great distances for their check-up," explains Chen. "This screening is supposed to be done once a year for people with diabetes, as diabetic retinopathy is the world's greatest cause of blindness, yet it is 97.5 percent treatable if detected early. I experienced an exceedingly difficult phone call when a patient I was following up with told me, 'I lost my sight over Christmas'. I felt that the system had failed her. This is when I recognized the gap in the system and started to seek a solution." Chen and her team developed a revolutionary technology which automates the process of diabetic retinopathy screening by leveraging cutting-edge deep learning techniques in image processing for the early detection of eye disease. "It works by processing the retinal image with our expert-trained algorithm on the cloud, returning a screening prediction along with the percent certainty," explains Chen. "We service optometry equipment manufacturing companies that already have machines distributed in clinical settings with our software product, which is currently undergoing FDA approval."