Biography

As a recent winner of BC Business Top 30 Under 30, Dana's entrepreneurial journey started when he set a goal to graduate from the University of Victoria without student debt or parental support. While attending university full time, he worked as an outside sales representative for a variety of B2B/B2C sales & marketing and HR providers. Recognized for his performance, he was quickly promoted into management positions, giving him a view of growing organizations. 

With many job offers at graduation, he soon realized that this was the exception and not the rule for “Generation Jobless” – a generation suffering from highest graduate underemployment, widest skills gap, and highest employee turnover rates in history. He learned firsthand how difficult it is for students who lack real-world experience today to transition from education into a relevant, meaningful career upon graduation. He looked back at his education and at all of the projects students completed and realized that while most of them ended up in a recycling bin, many had industry merit that could benefit local companies while helping students build their experience and skills.

He combined his interests in social entrepreneurship, education technology, and HR to set himself on a path to improve the education and recruitment systems so that future generations could more easily transition to successful career paths while companies easily find the talent they need to fuel their future growth and success. Combining talents with a few of his peers at graduation, he launched Riipen, an online educational platform that enables schools to provide meaningful project-based experiential learning at scale. 

Born and raised in Vancouver, BC, catch me down at the beach or up top the highest mountains surrounding our beautiful city. I am an avid snowboarder, surfer, world traveler and most recently, aspiring champion spike ball player!