BCBusiness

March/April 2022 – The Business of Good

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.

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MARCH/APRIL 2022 BCBUSINESS 33 RYAN OLIVERIUS with several Indigenous filmmakers on vari- ous productions; for example, Dr. Savannah employed about half a dozen. GPM runs a twinning program for aspiring series pro- ducers, too, Way explains. "We'll literally build it into the budget and make sure that we're putting the money into it so somebody gets a mentor along the way." Meanwhile, female members of the leadership team include Dana Johl, vice- president of production, Lindsay Mac- Adam, senior VP, content and business development; and Wendy McKernan, vice- president, programming and partnerships. Of GPM's roughly 300 employees, 45 percent identify as female and 28 percent as BIPOC. GPM, which regularly hosts in-house diversity and inclusion workshops and joins industry panels on the topic, now has nine shows in play after doubling its production volume in 2021. The company has always focused on diverse characters, but times have changed for the better lately, Way observes. "There's many more platforms for it to get out there," he says of GPM's work. "So we're able to shift the needle because there's more opportunities." R U N N E R - U P Alderhill Planning When Elaine Alec, Chris Derickson and Jessie Hemphill launched Alderhill Planning in 2016, the tagline for their three-person business was "Indigenous planning by Indigenous planners." That would change. "As we started to grow, we started having these conversations, bringing in different people," recalls Alec, whose community planning firm is also our Indigenous Prosperity winner (p.36). The idea behind opening things up: "This person isn't Indigenous, but they can contribute in a really meaningful way, based on their gifts and their experience." At a strategic planning session, a team member said that the company's tagline made them uncomfortable, Alec explains. "They felt like we weren't being totally honest because they thought maybe our clients were expecting an Indigenous face to pop up in a meeting." So Alderhill adopted a new, more inclusive slogan: "an Indigenous-owned planning firm of diverse facilitators, planners, artists and systems thinkers." Today, the company's 11 employ- ees and its team of 12 to 20 sub- contractors include Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from a variety of age groups who identify across the gender spectrum, Alec says. But for Alderhill, diversity and inclusion go beyond race, age and gender. Rather than use job descrip- tions, Alec notes, the company assigns people to parts of projects that play to their strengths. That approach prompts ques- tions about how everyone can best contribute to the work. "Are you an action thinker?" Alec asks. "Are you an innovative person, a systems thinker who needs a lot of time to process and contribute? Or are you a storyteller?" Alderhill, which has a four-day workweek that sees staff devote 65 percent of their time to billable hours and 35 percent to well-being, also does a mental health check-in every Monday. "We adjust schedules and tasks for people for that week based on where they're at for capacity, based on how they're able to contribute, based on life circumstances," Alec says. • GO OD THEBUSINESSOF 2 0 2 2 DIVERSE SKILLS Alderhill, which does planning for Indigenous commmunities, assigns members of its team to parts of projects that play to their strengths TELEVISION COVERAGE TV series created by Great Pacific Media include (clockwise from left) the long-running rescue drama Highway Thru Hell, whose female producer is Nicole Tomlinson; Gut Job, a new home ren- ovation show starring ex-BC Lion Sebastian Clovis; and Queen of the Oil Patch, featuring two-spirit Indigenous entrepreneur Massey Whiteknife

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