From school project to non-profit: Business Plan Competition alumni reflect on winning idea

From left: Dante Foschia, Kristy Scarfone, Selina Cascone, Al-amin Ahamed

What began as a school project for a group of Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students continues to be a passion project that they are still working toward a few years after graduation. The students behind “Team TRUSTi,” the winning idea in the 2022 Business Plan Competition, say that passion and friendship have helped motivate them to work through challenges of entrepreneurship and advance their business idea.

“TRUSTi has been a bit of a passion project and tethered to the things that we care about and that we’re already training in. It’s always at the back of my mind,” says Kristy Scarfone (2T4), a member of Team TRUSTi and current MSc student at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy studying harm reduction services in Ontario. “It doesn’t feel like an energy drain to work on this project. It also helps that, as friends, this work keeps us connected even in really busy times.”

The annual Business Plan Competition, hosted by the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy’s Office of Experiential Education, provides PharmD students with the opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial skills by developing an innovative solution to a real-life challenge in pharmacy, conducting market research, and pitching the idea to a panel of judges.

In 2022, Scarfone, Al-amin Ahamed, and Selina Cascone, along with Dante Foschia, developed TRUSTi, a harm reduction tool that helps people who use unregulated drugs access drug testing kits and trusted information about risk through an app. Winning the Business Plan Competition provided the team with $5,000 in start-up funding and a short mentorship with the Health Innovation Hub at U of T.

They say that participating in and winning the Business Plan Competition gave them important tools and the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship.

“That recognition helped us see that, if we put in the work, we could actually take TRUSTi from a school project into a real product that people could benefit from.”

“We worked hard on this project that we believed in, and a lot of people recognized the worth in it as well,” says Cascone (2T4), who has worked in community pharmacy, including methadone dispensing, since graduating. “That recognition helped us see that, if we put in the work, we could actually take TRUSTi from a school project into a real product that people could benefit from.”

The team paused their work on TRUSTi to focus on their studies and prepare for the next steps of their careers, but their interest never went away. In the last year, Scarfone, Ahamed, and Cascone relaunched their efforts to move TRUSTi forward, now as a not-for-profit harm reduction venture. The team says that the time away from the project allowed their ideas to “marinate” while they specialized their skills.

“Over time, we’ve matured into our own interests and found specific aspects of TRUSTi that resonate with us and that we’ve grown into,” says Ahamed (2T4), who earned a master’s degree in public policy at McGill University and is currently completing a residency at a pharmaceutical company. “My master’s degree was a good foundation for the project to help us prepare for regulatory questions. A lot of things – both within the group and in the policy environment – have to come together to be able to move a project like this forward, and it looks like the pieces are starting to align.”

It hasn’t been an easy process. Between making the time to build the business while studying and starting careers, they’ve had to balance the needs of working in both compassion-based and regulatory spaces, and navigate challenges in branding and intellectual property. But their strong belief in TRUSTi’s value in harm reduction have helped push them through the challenges.

In the last year, the current members of Team TRUSTi have participated in the Life Sciences Lean Startup program at Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurship at McGill University and have focused on preparing for accelerator programs and pitch competitions. They hope to raise capital to launch a public-facing website to gain more public visibility, partner with harm reduction organizations and public health agencies to develop prototype kits for distribution, and consult with end users to ensure the product meets their needs.

Centre for Practice Excellence event highlighted recent competition winners

Recently, Scarfone was joined by other recent winners of the Business Plan Competition at an event hosted by the Centre for Practice Excellence. The students and alumni shared their experiences with the competition and how their ideas have advanced since winning.

Saphia Mourad (2T6) and Maneli Jafar-Pisheh (2T6) spoke about Rx Participate, a digital platform that helps pharmacists identify patients who may be eligible for clinical trials. Since winning the 2024 competition, the team has focused on prioritizing feasibility, privacy, and workflow integration into pharmacy practice.

Tim Lee (2T7) represented the 2025 winners from GloveLift, a novel glove dispenser designed to reduce waste and contamination, and inefficiencies in clinical settings. The team is currently working to secure a patent on their design.

Monica Gautam, assistant professor (teaching stream) at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy who has helped to lead the competition for several years, says she hopes the competition gives students new skills in entrepreneurship and the confidence to see themselves as innovators.

“The competition gives them space to think boldly, turn ideas into action, and believe they can make a real difference in patient care. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch alumni carry their ideas forward – refining them, launching ventures, and influencing practice in meaningful ways,” she says.

“Seeing concepts that began as classroom pitches evolve into real-world impact is a powerful reminder of what pharmacy students can achieve when they’re given the space to think entrepreneurially.”

“Seeing concepts that began as classroom pitches evolve into real-world impact is a powerful reminder of what pharmacy students can achieve when they’re given the space to think entrepreneurially.”

This year’s Business Plan Competition is taking place on March 31, and Team TRUSTi encourages students who are participating, and those who are interested in entrepreneurship generally, to be bold, find something they care about to carry them through the challenges, and just get started.

“You can always take a simple idea and make it something more to find that niche area that you care about. In our case, harm reduction, apps, and drug testing strips are not new, but we put them together in an innovative way,” says Cascone.

“It’s most important to have a topic that you genuinely care about because it does drive your ambition.”