How Blake Pezzarello brought business brains to a healthcare hackathon
By Anders J. Svensson
Experience Ventures fuels accountant’s journey from student to sponsor
For Blake Pezzarello, taking part in the Catalyst Challenge was a chance to move beyond the classroom and apply his skills in a real-world setting.
“I’ve always looked for opportunities to get involved in things that have real impact,” the recently graduated Ontario Tech University accounting student says. “This was a way to work with people outside my field and build something that might actually help.”
The event was a multi-day innovation hackathon hosted by Brilliant Catalyst and supported through Experience Ventures — a program powered by the Hunter Hub of Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary and funded by the Government of Canada. The program’s goal is to enable college and university students to practice entrepreneurial thinking alongside real-world innovators.
“I do them as often as I can,” he says. “They’re a great way to test ideas, meet people, and see how your skills actually apply.”
The hackathon saw students placed in multidisciplinary teams and asked to develop solutions to pressing healthcare problems. They were guided by mentors from across the medical and tech sectors, who answered questions and shaped teams’ ideas based on real-world constraints and feedback.
“We had access to everyone. The CEO of the hospital, the CIO, doctors, nurses, frontline staff,” Pezzarello says. “It was the most mentorship I’ve ever had in one of these challenges.”
His team was composed of students with perspectives from across computer science, biomedical science, and population health disciplines, providing him an opportunity to see how others approach problem-solving.
“I was the only accountant on the team. Everyone else was in science or engineering, and I love that. It’s how you come up with something new.”
When the students were challenged with solving the problem of long ER wait times, Pezzarello’s team brainstormed ways to ease the burden on hospitals by redirecting patients who didn’t need emergency-level treatment. Drawing on the strengths of each team member, they layered in features that would make the experience as efficient as possible.
“We started with AI triage. Helping people figure out if they even needed the ER,” Pezzarello explains. “Then we added things like wait-time estimates and maps, so someone could see where they’d get care the fastest.”
The idea of a triage tool evolved into a broader solution incorporating real-time data from cell towers, GPS mapping, and even ride-share integration. Throughout the process, mentors helped the team ground their ideas in reality. For Pezzarello, that real-world context was key.
“It wasn’t just theoretical. We had doctors, nurses, and CFOs telling us what actually happens, what the bottlenecks are. That helped us build something practical — not just impressive on paper.”
As someone already running an accounting firm with a partner, Pezzarello wasn’t new to team dynamics. But working with students from different fields and presenting to professionals helped to sharpen how he communicates ideas and leads collaboratively.
“If you’re a 10 out of 10 thinker but a 3 out of 10 communicator, you’re capped at a 3. This kind of event helps you break past that.”
At the end of the challenge, Pezzarello’s team was named one of the winners — a recognition that affirmed both the strength of their concept and the quality of their presentation.
As a veteran participant of Experience Ventures events, Pezzarello sees the program as a platform for experimenting with ideas, meeting potential collaborators, and getting feedback from real-world mentors — all without financial or professional risk.
“You get to try something bold without risking your own money. That’s a rare opportunity. And if it works, it can turn into something real.”
Now that he has graduated, Pezzarello plans to stay involved with student innovation. Not as a participant, but as a sponsor. It’s his way of giving back to the community that helped to shape his entrepreneurial mindset.
“These are my people. I’ve already started sponsoring some of these events because I want to keep working with the kind of folks who come out of them.”