Prize Thinking

It was a classic entrepreneurial inflection point. In 2019, after spending 15 years working as a front-line counsellor in long-term care facilities, group homes and hospitals, Benn Barrantes (BA ’13) reckoned he could set up his own business and leverage what he’d learned about the inefficient ways of the established social service organizations.

While many entrepreneurs get their start by figuring out how to build a better mousetrap, Barrantes arrived at his aha moment differently: after graduating with a social services diploma from Sheridan College, he’d completed a degree from York in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. That learning experience left him with a very specific habit of mind: he always approached problems philosophically, breaking them down, assessing the mindsets of those he was working with and always looking for ways to simplify complex systems.  

But he’d barely gotten started when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Barrantes had all but drained his bank account and found himself wondering how he’d break into a market where the clients were in full panic mode. 

“I had $130 in my bank account, and I’m like, ‘What do I do? Did I make a mistake? It is the worst time to be doing this?’ In retrospect,” he reflects, “it perhaps was the best time to do it, because all my competitors were pulling back.”

He went paperless as soon as he could, recruited an administrator, and eventually hired a programmer to create an app that would allow his growing roster of employees to electronically share patient notes, schedules and so on. 

Today, Barrantes & Associates is a well-established player in the Greater Toronto Area’s social services sector, with 10 employees and two business divisions – one that offers placement supports for clients with developmental
disabilities and another that provides counselling for clients with behavioural issues.

Last year, he endowed a $100,000 scholarship fund that will award six prizes per year – three to undergraduates, three to graduates – for five years

Barrantes, 37, comes by his profession honestly: he grew up in impoverished conditions, and he has family members with substance use issues. His Sheridan diploma pointed him in the direction of social services, but he credits his
philosophy education with providing the problem-solving and critical thinking skills he needed to get a business off the ground.

Some of the philosophers on the syllabus left a lasting impression – for instance, Bertrand Russell, whose prose, Barrantes says, had a striking clarity.

“Anyone, even a non-philosophically trained person, can pick up his books, and he will guide you seamlessly through a process of understanding the [data] table in front of you.” In designing that app, in fact, Barrantes specifically directed the programmer to strive for this kind of simplicity.

He also cites David Hume, the notoriously dense Scottish philosopher. “When I was reading his books on epistemology, he goes for pages without nearly putting in a period,” Barrantes chuckles. “I was just in awe of how somebody could write that way.”

Learning to make sense of Hume’s gnarly prose gave Barrantes the skills he needed to manage the legal documents that define the firm’s relationships with government agencies and other clients. “I just liked it,” he says of Hume’s writing. “I didn’t know how it was going to be transferable later on.”

Five years after establishing the firm, Barrantes decided to formally acknowledge the role that philosophy education has played in his own career. Last year, he endowed a $100,000 scholarship fund that will award six prizes per year – three to undergraduates, three to graduates – for five years.

The applicants, who need not be philosophy students, have to submit a philosophical essay, and a jury selects the winners. Barrantes isn’t on the jury and has no say in choosing the finalists, but he enjoys reading the submissions and meeting the participants at a ceremony where the winners are announced. He recalls one essay this year by a student in a technical program who took a conventionally accepted idea and, in a Socratic way, systematically challenged all the underlying assumptions. “I love that idea of breaking down whatever is a standard practice,” Barrantes says. “That one stood out to me a lot.”

These days, besides running the company and keeping tabs on the scholarship, Barrantes is working on his master’s in philosophy, and eventually plans to do a PhD. “Philosophy is so important to me,” he says emphatically. “I talk to everybody about it. I love it so much.” ■