Markham recognizes young business leaders through Top 40 Under 40 awards
By David Yin, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
The Markham Board of Trade (MBT) celebrated dozens of exceptional young professionals with its 2025 Top 40 Under 40 awards, recognizing their achievements across a wide range of industries over the past year.
Now in its second year, the awards ceremony took place at York University’s Markham Campus on July 24. Each winner received a commemorative plaque during the formal presentation.
The organization chose a handful of winners for each of its 10 categories, representing different sectors of Markham: Tech, green, finance, healthcare, education, arts and media, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, and social impact.
Chris Collucci, CEO of MBT, said that young business owners tend to juggle many tasks at once, such as business strategy, research and development, marketing, sales, and finances, with a limited amount of time.
“Everybody who has made it through a success in business or life has likely had help from somebody or a community,” he said.
These are all the winners of Markham’s Top 40 Under 40 for 2025: Alessandra Belcastro, Adam Nicolaou, Madhur Kanumuri, Willem Zhang, Annie Tharani, Andrew Chan, Prashant Karam, Chris Yu, Kendell Wood, Maya Nathani, Umar Hayat Khan, Matthew Nguyen, Ezza Zahoor-Malik, Naomi Ha, Karen Rezk, Hasty Kiamehr, Enzo Jia, Yashin Dipak Shah, Michelle Nguyen, Andrew Hopper, Alice To, Gregory Calleri, Amandipp Singh, Laney Lui, Sandy Hsu, Jordan Thomas, Dilesha Stelmach, Iqra Awan-Malik, Jeremy Waud, Baljit Sierra, Dr. Sayyeda Mavani, Felicia Fischhoff, Shusmita Sharma-Tiwari, Mark Cai, Hamed Bozorgi, Imtiaz Mohammed Khan, Tanya Leung, Carson Fong, Kerry Tam, Keith Pears, and Ganan Iyathurai.
Award recipients expressed pride in being recognized.
“Young entrepreneurs are the future,” Belcastro said. “They’re going to help build generations and generational wealth, and also make changes to so many things that are happening in the world.”
“Explore the networking opportunities in the community,” Nicolaou said. “Markham is quite a tight-knit community with lots of opportunity for connections and learning.”
“Sometimes there are setbacks,” Kanumuri said. “But learn from those setbacks and make sure that you don’t repeat them, and you will move forward.”
The MBT is accepting nominations for next year’s Top 40 Under 40.
For more information, head to https://top40under40awards.com/.
Photo: Chris Collucci, CEO of the Markham Board of Trade, delivers his opening speech as he hosts Markham’s Top 40 Under 40 award ceremony for 2025. (David Yin photo)