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/1477631
BCBUSINESS.CA SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 BCBUSINESS 65 W I N N E R Hamed Shahbazi F O U N D E R A N D C E O , W E L L H E A L T H T E C H N O L O G I E S C O R P . P eople often think of leadership as an example of power. But Well Health Technologies founder and CEO Hamed Shahbazi says it's all about showing the power of your example: "I've tried to keep my ego in check and create an environment where ideas can thrive. 'Best idea wins' cultures are great, but they're hard to do." Shahbazi has a reputation for industry-leading ideas. After selling his payment-processing fintech startup to PayPal—for which he was named an EY En- trepreneur Of The Year in 2017—Shahbazi redirected his efforts toward starting a digital health technology company in Vancouver. It wasn't exactly a pivot, given that he was taking pre-med courses at UBC before he switched to civil engineering in 1997. He claims to have always been one of those "health hacker type guys" that experimented grandmother would complain about that. The average human being is more aware of cir- cumventing location data and anything else they might want to. Before, if you were doing anything, you were probably sophisticated." When Sainsbury originally left the CEO chair, GeoComply had some 60 employees. Now the company has around 500 across the globe, with plans to expand boosted by a recent in- vestment from New York giants Blackstone Growth and Atairos. As such, Sainsbury's leadership style has had to change. "Being a very strong com- municator—not just in-person when someone is next to you, but across the globe to interna- tional offices—that's important and something I definitely have had to focus on and require support to make sure I do," she admits. Even for someone with a list of accolades as long as hers, it can all come down to a simple yet frustrating concept we all learned a long time ago. "It's sort of like that game of telephone—the message usually changes a bit from the first time you say it until it comes back to you," she says with a smile. "Ironing out kinks like that so that we're all on the same track with the same knowledge is so important."—N.C. F U N F A C T S W H AT O T H E R JOB M IG H T YOU H AV E H A D ? I thought I would have a sock company for quite a long time. NA M E ON E T H I NG P E OP L E WOU L D B E S U R P R I S E D T O L E A R N A B OU T YOU I studied interior design, not engineering or law. HOW WOU L D YOU DE S C R I B E YOU R L E A DE R S H I P ST Y L E ? I strive to be democratic and pace-setting. W H AT BU S I N E S S - P E R S ON D O YOU MO ST A DM I R E ? Signy Arnason, asso- ciate executive direc- tor, Canadian Centre for Child Protection. E N T R P R E N E U R S N E E D A L O T MOR E . . . Creative time. "It felt like the right time to come back in and get my hands dirty and get a little busier in the day-to-day. It's so fulfilling and great to be back working with the team and seeing some progress in relation to the markets that we focus on."