The Dragon’s Den is the culminating event of a year-long research project and design of a proposal to address some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First year students in the Munk One program come from many different disciplines: life sciences, social sciences, humanities, computer science, physics, math and commerce. Using these different disciplinary framings, our students identify and research the nature of a specific issue that contributes to an SDG and develop an intervention that can help address it.
Every year we invite a high-level panel of judges that include representatives from the public, private and non-profit sectors, who advise our students and adjudicate from the four proposed intervention pitches. Judges in past years have included:
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Elly Vandenberg - Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Global Office in Canada
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Maxime Matthew - Programs Officer at Fora: Network for Change
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Heather Simpson - Non-profit and Social Enterprise Consultant
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Moussa Blimpo - Senior Economist, Office of the Chief Economist for the Africa Region at the World Bank | Senior Fellow, Munk School
- Rob Fonberg - former Deputy Minister of Defense in the Government of Canada
- Arturo Franco - Senior Vice President, Thought Leadership, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth | Senior Associate, Innovation Policy Lab, Munk School
- Hamoon Ekhtiari - Founder and CEO of FutureFit AI and Audacious Futures
- Julie Gelfand - former Federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada
- Anita McGahan - University Professor | Professor at the Munk School | Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management
- Marva Wisdom - Director, Black Experience Project | Senior Fellow, Munk School