In his role as Chief Operations Officer at TELUS, Tony Geheran guides Customer Technology Excellence (CTE), an organization comprising over 5,000 team members committed to enhancing the lives of Canadians through the transformative impact of technology.
In a recent LinkedIn post, he extended congratulations to the top three teams of the CTE Innovation Challenge— Content Personalizer, Clean Sweep 2.0, and the victorious team, Smart Maintenance.
“Each team’s presentation was filled with a level of passion, collaboration and creativity that inspired me and the rest of our leadership team,” stated Geheran.
The members of the winning team— Areeb Khawaja, Cem Kaspi, Harleen Kaur, Rebecca Couturier, Sam Ledyard, Shadi Mohammadi and Yashpreet Masson— presented a proposal to utilize AI to optimize maintenance scheduling that could improve safety, reduce downtime and costs, streamline manual processes and increase customer satisfaction.
According to Geheran, the CTE Innovation Challenge is designed to foster innovative thinking at TELUS and bring forward groundbreaking ideas to challenge the status quo.
“Let’s continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, creating positive change and inspiring one another to make the future, friendly. I’m excited to see how the CTE Innovation Challenge’s ideas will shape the future of CTE and TELUS,” concluded Geheran.
Each year, the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation and community boards across Canada collaborate to empower youth with the technology they need to succeed, positively impacting around 2 million youths and providing 500 charitable grants across the country.
Previous Innovation Challenges
In 2021, TELUS collaborated with the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary to organize a unique national event, aiming to promote Canadian innovations in various sectors. The TELUS Innovation Challenge invited submissions for projects focusing on energy and the environment, technology and communication, as well as health and medicine. The winning team received a USD 100,000 prize package from TELUS, as well as seed funding to help build their prototype and personalized mentorship to support the development of their go-to-market plan.
Moreover, the TELUS #StandWithOwners program is a contest designed to provide support to Canadian business owners who are making a difference in their communities and using technology to grow and differentiate their business.
In 2023, the Livable Communities for our Youth Innovation Challenge was launched. This USD 1 million funding opportunity will help address some of the most pressing social challenges faced by Canadian youth, including lack of access to mental health support and housing, low academic achievement and barriers to employment.