BCBusiness

48 BCBUSINESS APRIL 2019 40s, at the prime of their careers, parents with young children." The Jewish Federation's core mission is philanthropy and social services, but it's also been asked to support the Israeli tech business community. It helped create the popular Vancouver Israeli Tech Club ( VITEC) networking forum, which launched in 2013 and takes place three to four times a year. VITEC is organized by Eran Elizur and Ronen Tanne, Vancouver-based entrepre- neurs who are citizens of both Canada and Israel. Each gathering, held at different downtown venues and featuring presenta- tions from guest speakers, usually attracts up to 150 participants, including entrepre- neurs, tech professionals, bankers, lawyers, venture capitalists, government o‡cials, scientists and academics. The meetings are open to all and conducted in English. "The idea is to bring together peo- ple with a common interest in business and technolo‰y that has connections to Israel," says Elizur, 56, who came to Vancouver in 2000. Tanne, 53, arrived three years later. Both have raised families in Vancouver. With no immediate plans to return to Israel, they are helping the city grow as a technolo‰y hub. Separately, a group of Israeli women, mostly wives of recently arrived Israeli expats, has launched Women Empower- ment (WE). Yael Mayer started WE in early 2018 with her friends, Yael Paez and Regina Lvovski, to cater to the professional aspi- rations of young Israeli women who had moved to Vancouver with their husbands and children. While the men took higher and better-paying positions, their wives had to cut short promising careers in Israel. The three, married with young chil- dren, met through Facebook and realized there was already a critical mass of talented Israeli women in Vancouver seeking to build careers or businesses. "The average age of the 400 women in our group is 36.7," says Mayer, who earned a PhD in clinical psy- cholo‰y in Israel and has started a counsel- ling practice in Vancouver. "Most of them have second degrees, mostly a master's." Lawyer Bernard Pinsky, a former presi- dent of the region's Jewish Federation, sees the new Israeli arrivals as underlining Van- couver's appeal as a destination for global talent. "That is very healthy for an economy that wants to innovate," he says. "You get people coming here from di™erent parts of the world, and they start collaborating." For now, their impact on the province's tech business culture has yet to be felt. But the room for growth is enormous, judging from the less than $390 million the B.C. tech sector raised from venture capital and angel investors in 2017, according to the 2018 British Columbia technolo‰y report card published by the BC Tech Association and KPMG. That total has been falling steadily since 2014, when it surged to $860 million. There's a parallel with B.C.'s push to build a lique£ed natural gas industry from scratch. For years, e™orts to attract capital drew a blank amid widespread skepticism. But improving market conditions and the right regulatory framework ¤inally trig- gered a Royal Dutch Shell–led consortium to announce last fall that it would invest $40 billion in an LNG export project in Kitimat. Hopes are high that the B.C.-Israel eco- nomic landscape is at the same stage as the Negev Desert before its partial transforma- tion into farmland. n Bev LeBlanc REALTOR® 403.332.0377 Sawback Ridge Development Property North Side of Coleman, Alberta ONLINE TIMED AUCTION APRIL 10 - MAY 1, 2019 38 ACRES READY TO BE DEVELOPED! 1.866.345.3414 wRequired studies and more already complete wSubdivision plans approved and residen al zoning in place wGreat opportunity to develop in a community with an cipated growth wReady for 116 to 125 single & mul -family residences wVisit www.propertybyauc on.ca for more informa on wAddi onal details available to registered bidders upon request REGISTER TO BID AT WWW.PROPERTYBYAUCTION.CA MLS®

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