‘Incomparable’ experience
From national union and government leaders to local entrepreneurs and visionaries, Business Day has had them all.
The annual event is led by graduating commerce students at Memorial University, and this year, Business Day marks 60 years.
“There’s definitely some pressure when you’re leading something with such a strong history,” said Kathleen Staubitzer, co-chair of the 2025 Business Day committee. “You want to do it justice. But it’s an exciting challenge. There’s an opportunity to leave a lasting mark, to ensure that Business Day continues to evolve in ways that reflect the needs of the business world and our students.”
Tickets now available
Business Day will be held on March 7 at the Sheraton Hotel Newfoundland. The deadline to purchase tickets is Friday, Feb. 28.
The luncheon keynote speaker is Kim Peddle-Rguem, a commerce Class of 1995 graduate who’s returning to St. John’s from her role as head of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream in the U.S.
Ms. Peddle-Rguem leads a $4-billion portfolio of brands like Häagen-Daz, Drumstick, Skinny Cow and OREO.
Adam Keating (B.Eng.’17), founder and chief executive officer of CoLab Software, is the morning keynote speaker. CoLab is a St. John’s-based tech company that has closed millions in series B funding from venture capitalists and private equity investors.
“Business Day has built a strong reputation as a platform for meaningful dialogue, professional development and connections between students and industry leaders,” said Ms. Staubitzer. “This year, we’re embracing that legacy while looking toward the future.”
Tickets for 2025 Business Day may be purchased here.
To mark 60 years of Business Day, the Gazette is taking a look back at highlights from past organizers.
1994: ‘Full circle moment’
Business Day 1994 focused on the role of small business in supporting economics, inviting local and national entrepreneurs to share their stories.
Speakers included Janet Kelly, then-owner of Auntie Crae’s in St. John’s, and Margot Franssen, founder and then-president of Body Shop Canada.
Marlayne Hardy (B.Comm.(Co-op.)’94) says being the Business Day committee co-chair that year gave her “the confidence and credibility to apply for one of my first jobs.”
From organizing Business Day, she went on to lead conferences and events in the U.K., the Netherlands and the U.S.
The Business Day experience helped form who she is today, she says.
“That real-world, first-hand learning experience is incomparable to anything you can learn in a classroom.”
Ms. Hardy is now director of operations for Solace Power.
“[Students] bring so much fresh enthusiasm, and I always leave energized.”— Marlayne Hardy
Last year, she returned to Business Day as a panellist, sharing the stage with keynote speaker Jacqueline Lee, CEO of PolyUnity; Ogaga Johnson, director of workforce development at econext; and Amada McCallum, president and principal consultant at Ignite Education Inc.
“It really felt like a full circle moment,” she said. “I highly recommend taking any opportunity you get to engage with students. They bring so much fresh enthusiasm, and I always leave energized.”
1999: ‘Something very different’
Business Day capitalized on real-world tensions 26 years ago by inviting Buzz Hargrove, then-national president of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union, and Harvey Smith, then-president of Hibernia, to be back-to-back speakers.
A few months prior, union workers had blockaded the christening of the Hibernia platform, says 1999 Business Day committee co-chair Greg Power (B.Comm.(Co-op.)’99).
The committee selected the speakers intentionally to “spike interest” and to surpass the success of the previous year, he says.
“Business Day gave me . . . an amazing opportunity. I haven’t looked back.”— Greg Power
In 1998, John Cleghorn, then-CEO of RBC, was the keynote speaker. It was Mr. Cleghorn’s first public appearance since announcing RBC’s intent to merge with Bank of Montreal. His presence at Business Day drew national media attention.
“We discussed as a group that if we really wanted to beat the prior year, we had to do something very different,” Mr. Power said.
The committee’s strategy of including the labour movement worked, and Business Day 1999 was the event’s most profitable at that point.
It also jump-started Mr. Power’s career: he hit it off with Mr. Hargrove and was invited to work at CAW in Toronto for the summer.
Twenty-six years later, Mr. Power is now a partner at Hicks Morley, the largest management-side labour and employment boutique law firm in Canada.
“My passion for labour, employment and human resources started at Memorial,” he said. “But Business Day gave me exposure to a national, if not international, figure, who offered me an amazing opportunity. I haven’t looked back.”
2002: Community support
The 37th year of Business Day featured then-federal finance minister, Paul Martin. By then, the legacy of Business Day was clear.
“Once you went to business school, you just went to every Business Day,” said co-chair Katherine Power (B.Comm.(Co-op.)’02).
But it wasn’t just a big event for students. Power said the business community also eagerly anticipated Business Day each year.
“People were either waiting to get the call to attend Business Day or to participate or to sponsor,” she said. “It was really supported by the community.”
Ms. Power thinks the legacy of Business Day goes beyond the business faculty. And for the students who organize such a big event each year, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“It was really important to the university to have that support [and] for people to be able to support Memorial in a different way. It’s really cool to know that we were part of something that continues to be big.”