Polytech students place top three at the LaunchPoint Pitch Competition

By Lethbridge Herald on March 31, 2026.

Herald photo by Alejandra pulido-guzman Gavin Warmink, Kiana Jans and Patricia Wannamaker place in the top three of the 2026 LaunchPoint Pitch Competition.

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman

Lethbridge Herald

Lethbridge Polytechnic students placed in the top three at the 2026 LaunchPoint Pitch Competition held earlier this month, where they had the opportunity to connect with leaders in the community and showcase their proposals.

First year Criminal Justice student – Policing student Patricia Wannamaker, placed second with her pitch “Park My Pet,” the idea of providing supervised pop-up kennel stations that offer dog owners a safe alternative to leaving their pets in vehicles alone. 

“If they’re going to an event that doesn’t allow animals or a shopping plaza or something like that, we’re trying to move animals out of cars,” said Wannamaker. 

She said she was inspired by something similar offered at Canada’s Wonderland, where they offered a sort of daycare for pets, while people were in the park. 

“In 2017 I had the idea, got some information, got some quotes, got some supplies. But didn’t have the breakthrough, so I put it away until I got here,” said Wannamaker. 

She said Launchpoint enabled her to dream bigger than she ever thought she could, and said she hopes to see the pilot program take off in Lethbridge and eventually Canada wide, and even possibly across the United States. 

“We’d like to start as a tent with kennels in it. They would book in their animal, they would take them and put them into this kennel, we would figure out what time they’re going to be, and they would give us the information so that we could contact them,” said 

She said she is also looking at a paging system in case pet owners need to be contacted if needed. 

“Their pet is supervised, we give them water, supervision, and shade. They’re not locked in the cars,” said Wannamaker. “Unfortunately, they are found in cars too often. Every summer, you hear about it.” 

Lethbridge Polytechnic first-year Business Administration – Accounting student Gavin Warmink, placed third along with University of Lethbridge first-year Biology student Kiana Jans for their “Southpaws Rescue” pitch, a centralized adoption platform that helps prospective pet owners and resource organizations connect by consolidating adoption listings in southern Alberta into one platform. 

“South Park Rescue is basically a centralized website, and it stemmed from my passion for starting a business. And she’s passionate about becoming a vet,” said Warmink. 

He said they both love volunteering at the Lethbridge and District Humane Society and are passionate about animals. 

“From our time there, we’ve begun to see how busy the owner of the Humane Society is, and we wanted to help alleviate some of that pressure that the shelter receives,” said Warmink. 

Jans added they wanted to show everyone interested in adopting a pet what kind of animals were available, and how to get them out of the shelters. 

“We have partnered with the Lethbridge & District Humane Society already and somebody from the Launchpoint competition also approached us and helped us create the prototype for our website, which was fantastic,” said Jans. 

Warmink explained that they have not taken any pictures or videos themselves yet, as they used existing pictures from the shelter’s website to create their prototype website. 

“We’re building a foundation, building up our website first, building those connections with our local shelters before we begin doing that,” said 

He added that they want to take some videos to add to their website to showcase the animals’ personalities, as they are better captured in video than through pictures. 

LaunchPoint is a collaboration between the Lethbridge Polytechnic, the University of Lethbridge, Community Futures Lethbridge Region, BIPOC Foundation and Catapult Startups, and sponsored by the Regional Innovation Network of Southern Alberta.