Last night in Calgary, University of Manitoba student Brett Sheffield won the Student Entrepreneur National Competition, winning $10,000 and a spot in the global competition in New York.

Sheffield is owner of Sheffield Farms, a farm near Pilot Mound he expanded from 160 acres to 1,700 acres, and Stay Fit Health Club. The 26-year-old claimed his most recent entrepreneurial victory, besting 750 students and academic advisors from 50 Canadian universities, at the Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship’s (ACE) annual national exposition. Earlier this year he won ACE’s Central Canada regional competition.

His next stop will be the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards in New York in November.

Sheffield is a student in the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Science and he still attends class full-time, while running his grain farm and the Stay Fit Health Club in Pilot Mound, Mb. The health club was going to close and he didn’t want the community to lose it, so he bought it and brought it into the black.

For the past 25 years ACE Expositions have brought together industry, educational and student leaders from across Canada, around the shared cause of building a better country. Industry leaders evaluate students’ business plans on the economic opportunity they create for the students and their communities.

For more information contact Crystal Jorgenson, Communications Specialist, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Science, University of Manitoba, 204-474-9435 (c_jorgenson@umanitoba.ca).