Facilitation business started by students flourishes and gives back

What began as a small venture by two Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) students to assist arbitrators with their virtual courtrooms during the pandemic has rapidly evolved into a comprehensive audio-visual and event management company.

First Class Conferencing Facilitation (external link, opens in new window)  (referred to as FCCF or First Class Facilitation for short) is a full stack virtual and hybrid event management company that primarily serves and works in the legal industry. It was created by Ted Rogers School Business Technology Management (BTM) student Maddy Hearne and Computer Science student Mckenzie Day in 2020 when many lines of work were forced to pivot and move online due to the Covid pandemic. 

“We were never trying to start a business,” admits Hearne. “We always say it was the right time and place, and after that we worked very hard to grow our company.”

Hearne’s mother is a labour law arbitrator in Ontario, and when her work moved to virtual, she needed help to efficiently and effectively adapt to an online platform. Hearne offered to manage all the technology so her mother could focus on being an arbitrator. She and Day tried it once, and it worked very well. After that, her mother told other arbitrators about it, and within a matter of days, the TMU students had numerous arbitrators in the labour law industry wanting their help. 

From there, the pair continued to scale and grow the company into what it is today. In their second year of business, they focused on investing and preparing for a post-Covid environment. This included integrating hybrid and in-person services, which truly helped them step up and elevate their company. 

Business success

FCCF now has a team of 20 people, made up entirely of students and recent graduates. The company has over 100 clients, which includes businesses and institutions from various sectors, such as administrative law, labour law, international business and education. Their services encompass interpretation, audio-visual, event support, audio/video editing and website development.

The company works for the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal, and manages all of their hearings and live streams. They built the Tribunal a fully customized registration and backend database. FCCF does similar work with the Discipline Committee of the College of Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists of Ontario, and also routinely works for the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board, the Office of the Chief Coroner, the Society of Ontario Adjudicators and Regulators, and several independent arbitrators and mediators across Canada.

In addition, FCCF has facilitated events for KPMG, The National Academy of Arbitrators, Ministry of Labour Immigration Training and Skills Development, College of Alberta Psychologists, Association of Canadian Psychology Regulatory Organizations and a number of other organizations. 

Hearne and Day attribute much of their success to their clients and supporters along with their amazing team.

Learnings and support from school

Hearne points out that many of the BTM program’s classes at the Ted Rogers School have been instrumental in helping her and Day grow their business. “The Accounting, Business Law, HR, Introduction to Programming and IT Infrastructure courses have been the most helpful,” she says. “These courses provided me with the knowledge to effectively manage our team, allowing us to build a strong foundation that maintains an efficient and professional structure to our company.”

“With what I’ve learned from programming, I’ve been able to work on building out an e-learning, module-based onboarding system that helps us streamline our new-hires onboarding process,” she adds. 

Data security is another topic covered in some of her classes that she found very useful. “Understanding the cybersecurity threats that are out there and ways to avoid or prevent threats is crucial to business operations,” says Hearne. “Since most of our clients are in the legal sector, security is incredibly important.”

In addition, she is appreciative of the support she has received at the school while building her company. “The student services provided by the Ted Rogers School are more helpful than I could have imagined,” she explains. “Their team has been very supportive in assisting with my part-time studies so that I can also have the flexibility to run FCCF.”

Giving back

Corporate social responsibility is something that is important to FCCF. “We strongly believe corporations, big and small, should be giving back to our communities every chance they get,” Hearne says.  

The company created an initiative in 2021 called Empowered by Devices (external link, opens in new window) , which collects devices and refurbishes them for those who don’t have access. They have collected nearly 200 devices from this initiative, totalling a value of roughly $50,000 in donations for different causes.

During the first year of this initiative, FCCF partnered with the Afghan Women’s Organization to collect devices for new Afghan refugees in Canada. In 2023, they partnered and donated devices to Victim Services of Renfrew County for survivors in crisis. Hearne said they met this group at the first hybrid inquest they ran for Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner.