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/1254353
20 BCBUSINESS JUNE 2020 JESSICA LUONGO: PAUL DUCHART K A T H E R I N E B A C K M A N AGE: 29 Co-founder, Nora's Non-Dairy LIFE STORY: The brainchild that would become Nora's Non-Dairy Ice Cream was hatched on a family trip to Vancouver Island. Katherine Backman had spent years following in the footsteps of her psychologist mother (by majoring in psychology at McGill University) and her car dealership–owning father (working at lots in her hometown of Halifax and in Vancouver, where she moved in 2013). But she'd never found those pursuits, or anything else, particularly compelling. In 2016, that all changed. "I became vegan, and it was the first time in my life I felt super passionate about something," Backman says. While on vacation the summer of that same year, she found herself eating a "dry, crumbly dessert" while the rest of the table was enjoying ice cream. "Everyone was making fun of me, looking over at my bowl with pity." So she, her partner, Tyler Both- well, and their cat, Nora, set out to make cashew-based ice cream. They bought an ice cream machine and started recipe testing. It took eight months to get four flavours down, but they eventually debuted at a BC Food Processors trade show almost a year after that trip to Vancouver Island. BOTTOM LINE : The crowds that Backman and Bothwell attracted at the trade show weren't a fluke. The pair have managed to get Nora's into some 250 retailers in B.C. and Alberta, including Whole Foods Mar- ket, Nesters Market and SPUD.ca, and have sold more than 100,000 pints of their ice cream. –N.C. J E S S I C A L U O N G O AGE: 28 Co-founder and director, AmoVino Distributors LIFE STORY: Some coincidences follow you around for much of your life. Like when you grow up in North Vancouver during the 2010s with a grandfather who runs a wine business called Burrows, Luongo & Associates and a dad who operates a sporting goods store. No, Jessica Luongo has no immediate family members who starred for the Vancouver Canucks. She did, however, follow her own family legacy by becoming (to the best of her knowledge) the youngest wine agent in B.C. history when she and a former schoolmate, fellow wine afi- cionado Marisa Varas, founded wine wholesaler and importer AmoVino Distributors in 2015. "Growing up I never wanted to own my own business–I looked at my family and said, OK, this is a lot," Luongo remembers with a laugh. "But it was a really good learning experi- ence; I think innovation and creation is the only way really successful businesses survive." While the older Luongo's wine biz was built on the Italian variety, Amo- Vino's tagline is "niche and natural," says its co-founder. "Everything as a minimum standard is organic, and we choose to work with family compa- nies, because quality can be better managed when doing small lots." BOTTOM LINE : AmoVino employs five people and represents some of B.C.'s biggest industry brands, including Kelowna's Summer- hill Pyramid Winery, which it signed in early 2019. "After that, things started exploding," Luongo says. "In January, we took over Summerhill, and proceeded to sign seven new producers–five wineries, a distillery and a cidery–in seven months." Huge win for Luongo. –N.C. A R M A N M O T T A G H I AGE: 27 Co-founder + CEO, Lambda Science LIFE STORY: Six years ago, when Arman Mottaghi immigrated with his parents from Iran, he had few thoughts about becoming an entre- preneur or going into the construction industry. Today, he's co-founder and CEO of Lambda Science, a two-year- old Vancouver startup that uses artifi- cial intelligence to help homebuilders create cost- and energy-efficient building designs. Mottaghi started this rapid jour- ney after enrolling in BCIT's master's program in building engineering and science in 2015. Tech-savvy enough for computer science, he was already teaching himself software skills and wanted a degree that would teach him something else. He saw that building codes were moving toward system- atic, performance-based assessments of energy efficiency. Most builders are still just looking at individual construction materials like windows and insulation, rather than at how well those parts work together. Lambda's software-as-a-service product, StepWin, deploys AI to model the bigger picture in seconds—far quicker and cheaper than trial by error. "It's also going to show you, 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y Jessica Luongo Katherine Backman Arman Mottaghi 30 Under 30 continued after Invest in BC