Our Founder and CEO, Joseph Turay, made it to the top 15 finalists of the 2026 Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship by Queen’s University, the Dunin-Deshpande Innovation Centre at Queen’s University, and the Mastercard Foundation. Since January this year, he has been learning and unlearning, meeting and sharing experiences with new people and fellows, and receiving feedback from experts from all around the world during the fellowship.
From being selected as one of the 1,000 fellows in January to being among the 285 and 85 fellows by March and May, Joseph will now compete with 14 other fellows in the fellowship’s final pitch competition, which will take place on 27th August 2026, both online and in person in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Each fellow will pitch their venture for five minutes and respond to questions for about seven minutes.
It has been an exciting eight months for Joseph while participating in the fellowship. His greatest highlight has been the bi-weekly 3-2-1 update, which allows the fellows to pitch their ventures for three minutes, respond to questions for two minutes, and receive constructive feedback from their mentors and fellows. This approach enables our CEO to constantly refine our innovation and prepare for future scaling.
Making it to the top 15 finalists is a significant achievement for Joseph and the Route 360 Solutions Initiative team. Our team wishes our Founder all the very best as he continues representing us on the international stage. We are very proud of this achievement.