Spencer Turbitt

About me

I was born/grew up in: Owen Sound, Ontario

I now live in: Toronto, Ontario

I completed my training/education at: I completed an undergraduate Honours Bachelor of Commerce Degree at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa Ontario.

What I do at work

We design, build, and sell software for pharmacies and nursing homes. In my position as the CEO, I am responsible for our overall strategy in each sector of our company. I spend a lot of my time meeting new people in the healthcare industry and attending events that are held for pharmacy owners in order to introduce them to our software.As our company is a new company I have a wide range of activities that I do during the day such as: coming up with new product ideas and designs, answering emails, calling customers, attending events in our industry, and sales calls. We constantly use technology skills and math skills to develop new products. We also are using engineering skills to help design and build hardware to eventually accompany our software products. We use many types of different equipment such as different computers, blue-tooth bar code scanners, servers, and other tools. We are constantly solving new problems such as how to better design our software to save our customers more time and money, and to make their lives easier.

When making stem related decisions we have everyone suggest ideas either in person, over the phone, or in our online portal, and we choose the best ideas then add to them until we are happy with the looks of the outcome. An example of a new feature that we developed after encountering a problem was the need for quick action to be taken when a medication is recalled by Health Canada. Normally the pharmacies are sent a fax from Health Canada with the recall and then they call customers who are taking the recalled medication. We created a stream of information online that searches key words in order to tell pharmacy staff all of their customers who are currently taking the recalled medication or have used it in the past 12 months. This sort of product solution is exactly the type of problems we aim to solve every day.

My career path is

As of this month I will have completed my undergraduate degree, which is an Honours Bachelor of Commerce Degree. In first and second year university I ran a College Pro painting franchise which taught me the skills I needed to lead a team. I have always been interested in innovation and technology but didn’t know what area I wanted to be in. I ended up falling into the healthcare area as there is a big need for advancement in the industry and my grandparents were pharmacists and my uncle is a pharmacist.

I am motivated by

The most rewarding part of my career is the ability for us to create technology that makes both the lives of pharmacists easier as well as all of their customers. The idea of having our products used across all of North America is what gets me most excited at work. I like that we can provide jobs for people while building a team to grow our company. The most interesting aspects of my career is getting to come up with new ideas for products to add to the line of products we already offer. We get to think about what the health care industry needs and then apply math and science to figure out whether or not the ideas are suitable. This career is right for me because I enjoy having new things to work on every week and always coming up with new ideas.

How I affect peoples’ lives

Our software allows pharmacy customers to interact with the pharmacists in a much easier way then they currently do. We allow customers to track their medication online, view medication changes, and get quick responses to their questions from the pharmacy staff without having to come into the pharmacy. Our goal is to make their lives easier because nobody enjoys having to take medication.

Outside of work I

Outside of work my favourite thing to do is to travel and experience new places. I like to travel both inside and outside Canada. I play a lot of sports including skiing, volleyball, squash, and golf. To kick back and relax I enjoy watching television shows.

My advice to others

Working in an innovative STEM career is very rewarding. You get the opportunity to work on new projects and problems that need to be solved every week. Working in a stem field allows you to have your ideas heard, and put into action.