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/1388249
F E L I C I A C H A N , B A H A R M O U S S A V I + M I K H A E L A T O R I O AGES: 23 Co-founders The C.O.D.E. Initiative LIFE STORY: Bahar Moussavi was talking with a male cohort after a coding class at UBC when her colleague said that she didn't look like she'd be in computer science. "It was a really weird thing, because at that time people would tell me that tech isn't diverse and you have to fight to get your voice heard, and I'd say, No I have female classmates, we're fine," Moussavi says. "And then this happened, and it was the first taste of those little micro-aggressions." Moussavi, who was classmates with Felicia Chan and Mikhaela Torio at the time, talked to them about other underrepresented popula- tions in tech. One of those was the neurodiverse community–people with autism, attention deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, among other conditions. The trio started the C.O.D.E. (Create Opportunities and Define Education) Initiative, which holds one- on-one computer programming work- shops for neurodiverse youth. Besides help from a few co-op student teach- ers, the company has mostly relied on the support of volunteers across the country to expand from its Vancouver base to Alberta and Ontario. Each founder has their own department–Moussavi handles research and development, Chan spearheads marketing, and Torio oversees the grants and sponsorship side of things–while also working full-time. "We're definitely hopeful that we can reach a point where we can transition to full-time on this," Torio says. BOTTOM LINE : The C.O.D.E. Initiative has worked with about 400 neurodiverse students and some 600 students overall, both online and (pre- COVID) in-person. The organiza- tion is also partnering with the BC Tech Association on a project that will see it work with 15 of the prov- ince's bigger tech players, including AbCellera Biologics, SAP Canada and Amazon.com. –N.C. B R E N T N E L S O N + M I K E O U E L L E T T E AGES: 28 Owner + COO/Owner + CEO Custom Cubes LIFE STORY: Friends since they were kids in Surrey, Brent Nelson and Mike Ouellette had always planned to invest in real estate so they could become developers in their early 30s. But one Friday night over beers in 2018, they found a quicker route. Red Seal carpenter Nelson, then an assistant superintendent for a general contractor, and Ouellette, who was working at a logistics business, bought a used shipping container office on Craigslist. Moving the unit to Nelson's backyard in Cloverdale, they refur- bished and sold it. Over the following year, the pair craned in several more contain- ers, often working until 2 a.m. on weeknights to refine their craft. As sales grew, they set up shop in a small industrial space and started hiring. Custom Cubes now makes everything from construction offices to storage spaces to workshops. "We don't even necessarily see ourselves in the container business," Ouellette says. "We see ourselves in the mobile structure business." Their website gives clients the option to choose a standard design or request a custom job. For example, a farmer in a small community asked for a mobile meat processing unit. If it makes sense, the company will turn such a project into a new product category, Ouellette explains. BOTTOM LINE : Custom Cubes, which recently moved from Surrey to a new Delta headquarters with a 10,000-square-foot production facil- ity, has 18 staff. As of June, it had 16 projects in the works and 65 presold. Custom Cubes also sells more than 100 unmodified containers a month. Nelson and Ouellette, who just bought a similar business in Edmonton, plan to establish hubs nationwide and branch out into timber structures. Among their other goals: owning the land for each location, including a much larger HQ in the Surrey-Delta area. "Our aspirations for building and development haven't changed," Nelson says. "Now we're just building that base and a foundation so we can succeed in that area as well." –N.R. Brent Nelson Mike Ouellette Mikhaela Torio (left), Bahar Moussavi and Felicia Chan JULY/AUGUST 2021 BCBUSINESS 69 BCBUSINESS.CA 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y