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/1471305
JULY/AUGUST 2022 BCBUSINESS 49 BCBUSINESS.CA 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 E L L A L A U R E H I P O L I T O AGE: 29 Senior associate + EDI committee member, Boyden Executive Search LIFE STORY: Ella Laure Hipolito was all set to pursue a career in medicine, much to the approval of her father and mother, who had dreamed of becoming a doctor and a nurse after immigrating to Vancouver from the Philippines via France. Then, as a pre-med student at UBC, Hipolito joined a volunteer trip to the operat- ing room. Everyone else was thrilled to be there, she recalls. "And I was looking at the clock to figure out what time dinner would be." But Hipolito loved her part- time job in student recruitment and admissions at the univer- sity, where she worked in the same role for UBC Sauder School of Business after completing a BA in 2015. Recruited for an administra- tive position by an executive search firm, she saw nepotism and other problems. "It became clear to me that executive search follows a system that upholds some barriers because of the way it was created." Hipolito moved to the Vancouver office of global firm Boyden Execu- tive Search in 2019. While inter- viewing for the role, she explained that her motivation was to help put more women and people of colour in leadership roles, by making executive search more equitable and inclusive and ensuring that there are diverse candidate pools. With the team, Hipolito started a Vancouver anti-racism and equity, diversity and inclu- sion ( EDI) working group that revisited the search process from start to finish. She also led the creation of a national EDI committee that shares its best practices with Boyden offices across the country. "All of our practices get shared internationally as well, because we're also part of a world corporation," says Hipolito, the first Boyden associate to sit on a committee or practice group. BOTTOM LINE : Hipolito has worked on more than 50 searches over the past three years to help place leaders in education, the public sector, nonprofits, health authorities and roles related to EDI. Equity-deserving candidates account for 72 percent of her place- ments, versus a national average of 29 percent for the industry. Partly thanks to those contributions, 51 percent of people that Boyden's Vancouver office placed in the last year were from equity-deserving groups, including 38 percent women and 20 percent BIPOC candidates. During the next three years, Hipolito plans to help B.C. universi- ties and colleges make their dean groups and senior executive teams as diverse as the communities those institutions serve. "It's a pretty low bar, so [I'm] trying to increase that bar at a number of levels." –N.R. J O S H U A Y I M & J O Y C E Y I M AGES: 28 + 29 Owners, Teaspoons & Co. LIFE STORY: Joshua and Joyce Yim's bubble tea obsession started young. The siblings were under 10 when their parents would bring them to local boba shops around Vancouver. After awhile, they didn't want to ask their folks for bubble tea money anymore, so they started selling random items on Craigslist and eBay and eventually got jobs at a bubble tea shop. "It was a dream come true," laughs Joyce. "Worked with friends and family, had bubble tea whenever we wanted." That place eventually closed down and the gang had to, in Joshua's words, "disband and do our own thing," even as the idea of owning their own shop remained in their minds. A few years ago, Joyce stumbled upon a store in downtown Vancouver and the pair made it a reality. With a little help from family and friends ("we had some handy Joyce Yim and Joshua Yim people to help with renovations," says Joshua), Teaspoons & Co. was born. BOTTOM LINE : The Yims have worked to make their company stand out, not just in terms of taste, but also in how it does business. After the pandemic forced the store to close, the duo started making DIY bubble tea kits that became so popular they're now in over 50 brick- and-mortar stores in North America. And, last year, Teaspoons introduced plastic-free, fully compostable cups that went viral on TikTok. –N.C. Ella Laure Hipolito