Originally from Toronto, Maxson Choe is a third-year Bachelor of Commerce Co-op student majoring in Entrepreneurship. Maxson’s interest in entrepreneurship began in high school, when they founded a student club and later ran social media pages that garnered 100 million views, getting an early taste of building something from nothing and watching it grow.

Maxson completed their first co-op in winter 2026 with rcs Construction as a Marketing Coordinator. During the first few weeks of their work term, they noticed how much time was being spent on repetitive work. Maxson built AI tools to fix these problems and showed them to their colleagues, who used them to successfully work more efficiently. “By the end, I was effectively the internal AI Consultant, finding workflow gaps across departments, building automations, and training people to run them.”

Maxson networked their way into their co-op without a job posting. While golfing with their parents, they met the CEO of rcs Construction, and the conversation eventually turned into an opportunity. When they brought the opportunity to MCS, their advice was to go all in. “That push mattered more than it sounds, because chasing a self-developed role felt like a risk at the time.”

The first tool Maxson built at rcs was a Lead Discovery tool, which scans construction news and tender postings every morning and provides the business development team with a ready-made list. Previously, this required manually scanning multiple websites. They also built a commercial property search tool that allows the team to filter and explore commercial properties in seconds. The tool is still used daily, months after their work term ended. They estimate that it will save the team between $33,000 and $51,000 a year. Despite this success, Maxson faced challenges along the way. “The biggest challenge was being 20 and asking experienced people to change how they work. A tool nobody opens is worthless, so the challenge was never the technology; it was earning enough trust that people would actually change their routine. The answer turned out to be starting small, delivering something fast, and letting the results do the talking.”

Another major milestone for Maxson this year was founding Inference Consulting. “I realized the problems I was fixing at rcs exist in almost every operations-heavy business in the Maritimes, and almost nobody is fixing them. I registered Inference Consulting, and rcs became my first client.” Their co-op provided them with a portfolio of real tools inside a real company, a first client relationship, and the confidence to find a problem, scope it, and ship a solution that people rely on. “Without the co-op, there is no Inference.”

Today, Maxson balances running Inference Consulting with being a full-time student. Their mornings are focused on the business, including outreach, client calls, and follow-ups, while afternoons and evenings are split between building client projects and school. “It’s a lot, but the two feed each other. Class concepts show up in client work the same week I learn them.”

For students who may be on the fence about work-integrated learning, Maxson believes the experience is about much more than simply completing the job. “If a student reading this is on the fence about co-op: the job description you’re hired for is a starting point, not a ceiling. Look for the work nobody has time to fix, fix it, and everything changes from there.”