A Brock University student who wants to use big data to improve healthcare quality and efficiencies has won a women in business award.

Leona Yiu, a Goodman School of Business MBA student, received the Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship from the St. Catharines chapter of Zonta International recently.

Zonta is an organization of professionals with the goal of empowering women through their mandate of service and advocacy and the scholarship was established to inspire women in their pursuit of education and careers in business.

“Receiving the Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship really empowers me as a young female business leader and knowing I have the support of the St. Catharines chapter of Zonta International motivates me to reach my full potential in business as I move forward in my career,” Yiu said.

After graduating from the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor of Science in biopharmaceutical sciences, Yiu chose the Goodman MBA program for its business analytics specialization.

With her background in science and with numbers at the forefront, the Ottawa native’s goal is to improve healthcare through big data.

“I choose the Goodman MBA for this unique specialization and I’d like to use business analytics to leverage the data available in the healthcare sector to reduce waiting times, operating costs, improve healthcare quality and efficiencies and forecast opportunities within the field,” Yiu said.

An enthusiastic proponent of the student experience, Yiu has held several volunteer roles at Brock in the past year. She supervised the Co-op Programs Office’s student tax clinic, competed at last year’s DeGroote MBA Case Competition, served as the chief electoral officer for last year’s Graduate Students’ Association election and volunteered as the vice president of marketing and communications of the Goodman Graduate Business Council, the representative student body for graduate students at the business school.

This year she’s adding to her co-curricular experience by working part-time as a marker-grader at Goodman, a strategic enrollment data analyst in Brock’s Finance department and volunteering for the Goodman Graduate Business Council, where she holds the position of president.

Demonstrating Yiu’s varied interests and skills, her many awards include a gold medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition where she had a hand in writing, illustrating and publishing a children’s book called Mr. Cool’s Microscopic Adventures with the aim of promoting synthetic biology awareness for elementary students. She also won the Goodman Graduate Business Council Executive Initiative Award for her contributions to the team which included helping to run Advanced Excel and SAS software training sessions for Goodman students, and the Brock Campus Store’s t-shirt design contest for her “Keep calm and Brock on” design.