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/1498118
30 BCBUSINESS.CA MAY/JUNE 2023 R U N N E R - U P Megan Lohmann D E P U T Y E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R , C O M M U N I T Y E N E R G Y A S S O C I A T I O N EARLY IN HER career, Megan Lohmann started an organization called LASOE (Let's All Save Our Environment) in the small Ontario town she grew up in. LASOE would host bake sales and raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. Lohmann was president. She was also eight years old. "It's just been a core theme throughout my life," says Lohmann about feeling compelled to protect the environment. "I feel very strongly about creating the maximum impact from collaborations and partnerships when tackling big issues like climate change." Lohmann came out to B.C. with her now-husband and com- pleted a master's of science at Royal Roads University before joining the Vancouver-based Community Energy Association, where she works remotely from her home in Fernie. The as- sociation has around 40 employees, with an eye toward getting to 50 by the end of the year. Among many other initiatives, the CEA is working on elec- trifying the Kootenays through a partnership with Accelerate Kootenays. "I love a challenge that doesn't have a defined pathway," Lohmann says. "I'm comfortable with uncertainty, and a multi-year initiative that's going to require some problem solv- ing." Lohmann and her team raised $2 million for the initiative and have helped some 600 vehicles become registered in the region. At the end of the interview, I ask Lohmann how she unwinds. "I don't know if I'm capable of that," she laughs. "My husband would think the idea of me unwinding is funny." –N.C. I t's hard to pin down Amanda Shatzko. You realize you're about halfway through scrolling down her LinkedIn profile and all the jobs still say "- Present." Shatzko was born and raised in the Okanagan, where she grew up doing dance and gymnastics. Eventually, she went to Emily Carr University. From there, she was recruited to work professionally as an acrobat. She also did a stint as a BC Lions cheerleader. Through the arts and cul- ture sector, she was recruited to join boards and to consult. "I think I brought a different perspective to decision-making tables for local governments and things like that," she says. "The lens that I look through is what kind of collaborations can be created amongst people." Currently (take a deep breath and see if you can hold it all the way through), she's a PhD student (political science and government) and senator at UBC; president of Impact Tool- box, which provides training, collaboration opportunities and ideas incubation programs to social change leaders; a board member of both the Okanagan Regional Library and the Mu- nicipal Finance Authority of British Columbia; vice chair and director of the Regional District of North Okanagan and vice- president of the BC Alliance for Arts and Culture. Oh, and she's an internationally collected visual artist. "It comes down to my curi- osity and what it looks like to take something from one indus- try and blend it into another," she says. "Sometimes, really successful innovations can come out of that." It's gotten to the point where Shatzko is such a known mover and shaker that she was asked to join the Regional Dis- trict by her community. In that role, she's working on building a new cultural centre in the region, which voted to approve C H A N G E M A K E R a $28-million-dollar loan in a referendum. "It's interesting because it's having a different voice at the table than they're used to having there," she says. "It was mainly older males involved. Communities are made up of different people, and we all experience every- thing we share in society in different ways. So how do we make sure those different points of view are heard and considered? I often try to ask the question, Okay, so the deci- sion for this policy was made 20 years ago, it might have been the right decision then, but is it still applicable now?" Asked what she would like to accomplish in the next sev- eral years to add onto one of the province's most diverse re- sumes, and Shatzko thinks for a bit before saying what feels like an inevitability now that it's been spoken into existence. "The Senate of Canada is interesting to me," she says. "The idea that decisions are being made within Canada with a sober second thought, or somebody looking at laws and policy and stuff like that from different lenses, that's of inter- est to me." –N.C. W I N N E R Amanda Shatzko V I C E C H A I R A N D D I R E C T O R , R E G I O N A L D I S T R I C T O F N O R T H O K A N A G A N