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When Ben Quach received his Iron Ring last weekend, it felt like life had offered him a second chance. His journey had come full circle, returning to the very place it paused six years earlier.

“I actually started in electrical engineering back in 2016, but I’m graduating now in industrial engineering with a biomedical certificate,” explains Ben. “I followed the usual path, good grades, including being a Sexton Scholar, co-op placements, and all the standard milestones. Then, during what would have been my graduating year, COVID hit, which was a challenging time for everyone, myself included.”

When that happened, the Iron Ring ceremony was cancelled. Everyone was confined to their homes, and Ben, like so many students, struggled to adapt.

“I was originally living in an apartment, but then I moved back home. I’m one of five brothers in a house that has four bedrooms, right? So, when COVID hit and everybody came back together, it was very, very difficult. When the exam process came around, I just decided to withdraw from the course at the time…It was just too much to handle.”

A New Chapter
 

Stepping away from school opened the door to an unexpected opportunity. His mother, a skilled seamstress, found herself without work as weddings and proms were cancelled. So, Ben and his family turned her skills into a thriving business making masks.

“Some of our neighbours asked us to make masks, and we saw how popular it was, so we made a website and then things blew up very fast. We were able to get into Amazon and talks with Walmart as well as major shipping contracts with Canada Post,” says Ben. “I decided to not go back to school and instead pursue the business to see how far it could go.”

With a warehouse, employees, and an Etsy shop, the company, Janice’s Custom Tailoring and Sales Ltd., went far.

But, running the business wasn’t easy. Long hours, thousands of customer messages, and logistical challenges became Ben’s daily reality.

“Getting through the hundreds of complex yet monotonous messages from customer for complications with their order, shipping, anything at all… that was the most draining part of my day,” he recalls. But the experience taught him lessons that no classroom ever could and sparked a love for business management.

A Return to Engineering
 

By 2023, as the pandemic saw its resolution, demand slowed and the business stabilized, Ben began thinking about what came next.

“There’s this electrical engineering degree that I never finished and that I really wanted to finish,” he says. “But at that point I was about two to three years removed. Do I even have what it takes. So, I thought about doing a trade, or something similar.”

A conversation with a mentor at Dalhousie shifted his perspective. Ben realized that his experience managing operations, improving systems, and scaling a business aligned closely with industrial engineering.

The idea didn’t immediately resonate, but he decided to give it a chance, enrolling in a couple of courses while he was still transitioning the business to his father.

“Everything industrial engineering heralded, looking at performance and how to improve it, no matter the industry, it’s applicable to everything,” he says. “That’s when I decided to pursue it fully.”

Full Circle

This time, the experience felt different.

“The structure of industrial engineering made it so much easier. Everything is organized and open, and you know where every hurdle is going to be. You still have to get through them, but at least you can see them coming,” he explains. “That made it easy for me to step back in where I left off, and now, graduating after all these years, it’s been absolutely seamless.”

The next milestone on his horizon is graduation this May. After that, Ben has big plans.

“My older brother and his wife are moving to Australia. So I think I might try to find work in Australia along with them and apply for a visa,” he says. “I really like working with the environment. The co-op I did in Vietnam was with a green building company. It focused on sustainable building practices, it also involved doing audits for a lot of major companies. So I’d like to go into a field like that which is morally rewarding.”