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/1222419
F I N A L I S T SHEVY LEVY C O - F O U N D E R + C E O , L A M B D A S O L U T I O N S F I N A L I S T TONI DESROSIERS F O U N D E R + C E O , A B E E G O IN 2015, SEVEN years after founding Abeego, which doubles as the name of the company and its product–reusable beeswax food wrap–Toni Desro- siers thought her fate as a business owner might be sealed. "People were coming around to the idea," recalls Desrosiers, an Alberta native whose only formal education is in holistic nutrition. "I got a loan, hired people, really thought it was going to take off, and it didn't. Ended up having to lay off my entire team, six or seven people; probably the most difficult thing I've had to do." But it wasn't the end. Desrosiers raised some money and rebranded her product by using a different manufacturing technique. Then, most important, the market started shifting for real. Abeego now sells at B.C. retailers from health food shops to lumber stores, and Desro- siers, who oversees 16 employees at the Victoria outfit, feels like she's ready for a bigger step. "I think we've nailed it on the product side, but our larger mission is to keep food alive and help people understand what that actually means–what fresh food is, what alive food is." –N.C. F I N A L I S T BRIANNE MILLER C O - F O U N D E R + C E O , N A D A A MARINE BIOLOGIST BY TRADE, McGill University grad Brianne Miller moved to the West Coast in 2013 to study the effects of shipping noise on the local killer whale population. She soon became obsessed with some of the problems facing the ocean—overfishing, agricultural runoff and so on—and saw that they had a common denominator. "Over time, I learned just how intricately linked the health of our oceans are to our food system," Miller says. "And the interplay between our food system and climate." After years of planning, Miller co-founded Vancouver's Nada, a package-free grocery store that opened in 2018 to much fan- fare and broke even after nine months. When it comes to mak- ing an impact, she sees Nada as more than just a retailer: "We also do a lot of workshops and community education events." Miller isn't sure what the next step is, but she knows she has options. "The plan is definitely to fine-tune what we have for the next year and figure out where we're having the biggest impact and scale through that." —N.C. BORN AND RAISED IN what she calls "the coun- try of innovation," Israel native Shevy Levy came to Canada in 1993 to do a master's and a PhD in science at SFU but never banked on becoming an entrepreneur. She ended up merging the enterpris- ing spirit of her homeland with academia by launch- ing Vancouver-based Lambda Solutions, which helps businesses develop e-learning platforms. Levy was part of a research group at SFU look- ing to improve distance education. In 2002, it brought its findings to businesses around the province, including ICBC, one of Lambda's first clients. The company has since grown to about 50 people, split between Vancouver and Serbia. "LMS [learning management system] has been around for about 20 years," explains Levy, who likens it to a car engine. "Now the question is, which car is better, and how do we make sure you get the best performance? This is where Lambda comes in. What we've done in the last five to seven years is looking for better ways to understand what's under the hood in e-learning." —N.C. 38 BCBUSINESS APRIL 2020