With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1173482
PORTRAIT: ADAM BLASBERG 14 BCBUSINESS OCTOBER 2019 F or Geoff Chutter, being an entrepre- neur means a lifetime of learning. "Along the way you have to make some tough decisions," says the founder, president and CEO of Richmond-headquartered WhiteWater West Industries, this year's EY Entrepreneur Of The Year winner for the Pacific Region. "One of the toughest in this world is, what kind of entrepreneur are you going to be? Are you somebody who believes in the principle of win-win, or more of a bullying, aggressive, winner-take-all approach?" Each year when we team up with Ernst & Young to present the EOY winners and runners- up, the result is a win-win for all concerned. Cheers to everyone who made it to the finals, a big achievement in itself. And as always, thank you to Pacific Region program director Lui Petrollini, his team and the judges for giving us great stories to tell, starting on page 27. It's encouraging to see such a diverse group for this 26th edition, including female winners in three of the nine competitive categories. We're also glad that EOY brought back its special citation for social entrepreneur. The 2019 honouree is David Katz, founder and CEO of the Plastic Bank. Katz's Vancouver-based company helps the world tackle one of its most urgent problems by let- ting people in several developing countries exchange salvaged plastic, which gets upcycled, for credits to buy everything from medical insurance to household necessities. If trillions of kilograms of plastic waste are a plague on the planet, cli- mate change and its accompanying chaos and destruction pose even big- ger challenges. Green Party of Can- ada Leader Elizabeth May, who calls B.C. home, has put forward a plan to shrink the nation's greenhouse gas emissions to 60 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and to zero by 2050. Sounds ambitious, right? In "Down to Earth" (p.54), managing editor Felicity Stone takes a close look at May and Mission: Possible, which the Saanich–Gulf Islands MP is pitching in advance of this month's election. Given its pledge to curb fossil fuel production and trans- port, the plan won't win any prizes from the oil and gas industry. But May, who rightly blasts Parliament for having "idiot debates" rather than treating the climate crisis like the emergency it is, insists that Canada can reap economic rewards while swiftly reducing GHG emissions. Whether or not the Greens offer a better way forward than the other parties, now it's up to voters to choose a winner. Nick Rockel, Editor-in-Chief bcb@canadawide.com / @BCBusiness ( editor's desk ) Our leadership issue sizes up art-loving developer Ian Gillespie and his plans for Vancouver I N NOV E M B E R Winning Ways C ON T R I B U T OR S "I love hearing from so many great business leaders and learning from their successes," says Vancouver writer Dee Hon, who profiled several Entrepreneur Of The Year winners and finalists (p.27). "They've all taken such varied approaches and have come out on top." Pacific Region winner Geoff Chutter was of particular interest. "If there's a good waterpark around, I definitely try to check it out," Hon remarks. When Albert Law photographed Genus Capital Management co- founder and CEO Wayne Wachell ("Morning Racket," p.63) at Vancouver's Jericho Tennis Club, he tried a few action shots but went with portraits in the end. Besides working for advertising and magazine clients, Law takes documentary photos for the military and police. His style for that is more spontaneous because he can't pose the subjects, he notes.