How a Conestoga student helped MedInclude shape its communications strategy
Experience Ventures placement inspired creative campaigns and strategic insight
When health-tech startup MedInclude signed on to participate in Experience Ventures, their expectations were simple: they hoped to mentor a student and gain an extra set of hands to support their communications team.
What they didn’t anticipate was the tremendous value the student would bring to their audience, their brand, and their voice.
MedInclude, co-founded by Seun Adetunji and supported by community manager Omotola Sanni, is a startup focused on simplifying healthcare communication. Its goal is to make medical information accessible and culturally relevant — especially for people with limited health literacy trying to navigate complex systems.
“We help translate healthcare communication so people can understand whatever medical information we are passing through,” says Sanni.
The MedInclude team saw the Experience Ventures program as a way to share their values with students and to learn from them in return.
“We’re always looking for opportunities to promote our company’s mission,” Adetunji adds. “The program gave us the chance to connect with new minds and mentor them in their specializations.”
Conestoga College student Megan Crawford-O’Neill joined MedInclude for a month-long placement as a social media marketer.
The placement was arranged in partnership with Experience Ventures — a program powered by the Hunter Hub of Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary and funded by the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative (I-WIL). The program’s goal is to enable college and university students to practice entrepreneurial thinking alongside real-world innovators.
Crawford-O’Neill’s main focus was developing the content calendar for February, a critical month for awareness campaigns that includes World Cancer Day. But her contributions quickly expanded beyond just planning posts.
“She really contributed to our marketing and comms journey,” Sanni says. “You could see the growth. She took feedback and improved over time.”
Crawford-O’Neill immersed herself in the company’s B2B tone and learned how the messaging she was crafting could align with a professional healthcare audience. Her work involved scheduling and writing, but there was room to experiment with visual storytelling and brand-appropriate formats.
“The post for World Cancer Day was very creative,” Sanni notes. “A lot of people liked it for both the message and the delivery.”
Adetunji was struck by Crawford-O’Neill’s ability to think strategically — something organizations don’t necessarily expect from a short-term intern.
“It’s easy to get tunnel-visioned,” Adetunji says. “Megan helped pull us back and see things from a wider lens. We found that very valuable.”
As a founder deeply involved in product and brand, Adetunji appreciates how an outside view can challenge assumptions and re-energize internal conversations.
“It was essentially like hiring a new team member, only with the budget of a startup.”
While Crawford-O’Neill’s feedback and ideas rippled through the company, she received regular one-on-one check-ins with her mentors, where she could reflect on her progress and identify areas for growth.
“She improved her copywriting and brand messaging,” says Sanni. “She also got better and better with her design skills.”
Crawford-O’Neill had expressed an interest in graphic design at the start of her placement, so the team created space for her to explore that. Over time, she also developed confidence in copywriting.
For the MedInclude team, Experience Ventures has been energizing. They’ve already brought in another student to work with their engineering team and are eager to keep collaborating with student talent in future initiatives.
“Entrepreneurial thinking is gold,” Sanni says. “Once you have that mindset, it becomes second nature to identify problems and solve them — to create value for others and yourself.”