Nicole Hanbury is working towards her Master’s in Public Policy at SFU. Through her program, she worked on a project on social enterprises and youth facing barriers in the Downtown Eastside. Coming from an undergraduate degree in economics, and being funnelled down a very theory and math intensive academic path within it, this project very much disillusioned her to the power of traditional economics theory and introduced her to field of social innovation as a more promising way to find alternative solutions to poverty and unemployment. She is working with Buy Social Canada to develop a value proposition and scoring system for social procurement, specifically for large new development proposals within cities.  In her spare time, she can usually be found cooking and baking, thinking about cleaning her kitchen, and telling her dog how cute he is.