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Greg Veinott has never officially worked for the city of Halifax or the community of Beaver Bank, where he grew up. Yet through his education, employment and volunteer activities, Veinott constantly works to benefit his community.

Veinott is poised to graduate from the Bachelor of Management program with a major in sustainable resources and the environment. He enrolled in Management partly out of a desire to stay in the Halifax area, and partly because the program appealed to him strongly. “The Management program kind of separated itself from Commerce and a lot of other business degrees because of the breadth of the program,” he explains. Over the last four years, Veinott has been on the Dean’s list consistently, and has won numerous scholarships.

Veinott has also been active outside the classroom, especially on the 7 Speaker Series, which brings business, community and public figures to speak in the Faculty of Management. For the last year, he has been the series’ chair. “The last couple of years I’ve been going to the events,” explains Veinott. “There was a great opportunity for me to bring in really inspirational people to talk to students, but also for me to connect with people locally and across the country.” He recalls the positive impact of speakers like Wendy Bennison, COO of Roots Canada, and Gregg Curwin, CEO of TruLeaf, a local company that works on indoor vertical farming. Curwin’s speech appealed to Veinott’s interests in sustainability and food. “That was a really interesting talk,” he recalls. “It gave a lot of information about where we’re going with food security.” As chair of the series, Veinott hosted speakers who were engaging and educational, doing everything from deciding on speakers to contacting them to arranging for flights to marketing the series. Marianne Hagen, alumni officer for the Faculty of Management, helped with booking rooms and other logistics.

 “Community involvement and the sustainability space is something I’m interested in,” says Veinott, who puts this interest into practice. In his community of Sackville–Beaver Bank, Veinott has been a Scout leader for several years. He was also on the Board of Directors for the Cobequid Radio Society, helping to start up a radio station in the Sackville–Bedford area. Although he lives in Halifax now, Veinott still has strong ties to the Sackville–Beaver Bank community.

Having finished his degree, Veinott is now working for TruLeaf, a testament to how the 7 Speaker Series inspired him. He is considering doing a master’s degree eventually, but for now wants to put some of his learning into practice. “I’ve been thinking of the School for Resource and Environmental Studies for graduate school,” he says. “I feel like I want to stay here.” While many Nova Scotia university graduates want to explore the rest of Canada, Veinott, unsurprisingly, prefers to continue giving back to Halifax. “I want to stay here,” he says, “and see if I can have an impact and see what I can change.”