UBC Sauder alum and Clio co-founder wins 2025 alumni UBC Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship

Earning a UBC Sauder MBA just wasn't enough for Rian Gauvreau (MBA '11). While pursuing his master's degree, this serial start-up founder was simultaneously growing his cloud-based legal practice platform, Clio. Today, that business is valued at more than $5 billion and used in 90-plus countries by some 150,000 legal professionals. No surprise that alumni UBC honoured Gauvreau recently with the 2025 Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship.  

The alumni UBC Achievement Awards, presented annually, celebrate members of the UBC community who exemplify the university’s vision of building an exceptional UBC and a better world. Each year, nine outstanding alumni are recognized for their leadership, service, and impact across diverse fields. This year, Rian Gauvreau became the first UBC Sauder graduate to receive this honour in the Entrepreneurship award category.

Gauvreau’s company Clio, co-founded with Jack Newton in 2008, not only established a groundbreaking platform, but earned a reputation for progressive workplace culture. Gauvreau has also built his own reputation as a philanthropist and community leader. He credits the UBC MBA as a gateway to a global network that helped shape that journey.

Clio Gives is a prime example, an initiative allocating $20 million in software and volunteer support for global pro-bono legal work. The program donates one per cent of profits, one per cent of product and one per cent of employee time annually. Clio has also given back to UBC Sauder, most recently with a $3-million gift to UBC Sauder’s Powerhouse Project, the new building that will be opening on the UBC Vancouver campus in summer 2027.

Gauvreau left his operations role at Clio in 2019, but remains a board member. He later co-founded Aeon Health, a technology company focused on revolutionizing health care through AI-powered solutions. Innovation and an entrepreneurial approach are a constant.
 

'Building boldly’ with a network of peers and mentors 

Gauvreau credits UBC Sauder as “foundational” to his start-up journey, both educationally and in developing an essential business network. “The MBA gave me the tools to think strategically in uncertain environments,” he says. “But more importantly, it gave me a network of peers and mentors who believed in building boldly. That combination of mindset and community gave me the confidence to tackle something that, at the time, seemed improbable: moving the legal profession to the cloud.”

“Improbable” is not a word in Gauvreau’s usual vocabulary, says his Clio co-founder, Jack Newton. He recalls this persistence as key to getting their startup off the ground during the global recession in 2008.

“One of the most crucial traits for any entrepreneur is tenacity. Rianʼs scrappiness and endless optimism saw us fundraise from friends and family until we eventually landed our first angel investor,” Newton recalls.

Gauvreau says he is honoured by the recognition from the alumni UBC Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship, not least because it is a powerful reminder of all he gained from the ecosystems accessed at UBC Sauder.

“Entrepreneurship is never a solo act—it’s built on trust, collaboration and shared belief in what’s possible,” he says. "This recognition reinforces the importance of those relationships and the impact they’ve had on my journey.”

To express his gratitude, Gauvreau has personally supported education through UBC Sauder: signing the Founder’s Pledge and serving on the Powerhouse Project fundraising committee, in addition to making a personal contribution to the campaign. He is motivated by his view of education as a great equalizer, and the recognition that his own career path was bolstered by the opportunities he was able to access at UBC.

“Giving back—through time, mentorship or financial contribution—isn’t charity to me, but reinvestment,” says Gauvreau.

“The most meaningful return I can make is helping create environments where students feel empowered to take risks, innovate and pursue ambitious goals.”

An entrepreneurial take on giving back 

Not surprisingly, Gauvreau brings his entrepreneurial drive to philanthropy as he looks for creative ways to give back.

“Entrepreneurs are wired to see constraints as opportunities and to re-imagine what’s possible,” he says. “In philanthropy, that means looking beyond writing a cheque and asking, ‘How can resources, advocacy or creativity unlock outsized impact?’”

He follows the same lesson gleaned from Clio: that people are more likely to follow when you create a logical pathway. Gauvreau admits the challenge of getting people to see opportunities in that new way is especially attractive to entrepreneurs: “I do think many of us are drawn to societal challenges because problem-solving is what energizes us.”

UBC Sauder’s Dean Darren Dahl has also observed this pull as one of Gauvreau’s strengths. He says: “Like many entrepreneurs, Rian is driven by the desire to solve societal problems. His entrepreneurial success, community involvement, and philanthropic efforts continue to make a profound impact locally and globally.”

With Clio’s recent gift to name the premier event space on the Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) floor within the Powerhouse Project, Gauvreau says he aims to empower students to experiment without fear, just as he’s done: “At Clio, we saw how innovation flourishes when you minimize bureaucracy and empower people with agency. If the I&E centre and programming can give students the tools, mentorship and community to do that, it will pay dividends for decades.”

Supporting the entrepreneurial community is nothing new for Gauvreau, however. He has mentored several start-ups and speaks regularly at technology and entrepreneurship conferences.

Says George Psiharis, who met Gauvreau in the MBA program and was one of Clio’s first hires: “Working alongside Rian for over a decade, I saw firsthand how his creativity, resilience and empathy helped shape Clio into one of Canada’s most admired technology companies—and inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs.”
 

The next challenge and some parting advice 

Today, Gauvreau continues to move fast and shake up the status quo in his own career. Founding Aeon Health has proven a challenge he sees as a parallel opportunity to do for health care what Clio did for the legal field.

“It’s daunting, but that’s what excites me: the chance to elevate patient agency and create systems that make proactive, long-term care possible,” he says. “Just as in law, success will hinge on safeguarding onboarding, ensuring fidelity in data migration and helping people build trust in the process.”

Daunting is no less than Gauvreau would wish for current students, of course, though tempered with planning and support. “Recognize that success isn’t about endless hustle—it’s about sustainable pace,” he says. “You’ll do your best work in focused, high-intensity blocks, balanced with rest.”

Gauvreau advises others to build the same type of network he first embraced at UBC Sauder; the one he then created at his own companies. “Surround yourself with smart people, give them agency and practice humility,” he says.

For any new venture, he says, just start:

“Don’t wait for perfect timing. Start small, start scrappy but start. Industries change when someone is willing to challenge assumptions and persist over the long haul.”