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
R U N N E R - U P Selena Woo V I C E P R E S I D E N T O F A D V I S O R Y S E R V I C E S — A S S O C I A T E S A N D O P E R A T I O N S , N I C O L A W E A L T H FOR A LONG TIME, Selena Woo pretended she wasn't Chinese. Even though she was sent to Chinese school every Saturday, she wouldn't practice it, she wouldn't respond to her parents in the language, and when she left home to move to Vancouver with an economics degree from the University of Calgary, she made sure people knew she was Canadian. "I just needed to fit in," she says. Now, Woo wishes she took the opportunity to connect with her roots earlier. The more she met people from different backgrounds, the more she realized that a lot of immigrant families felt that way about their identities. So she started using her achieve- ments to be as visible as possible. With a CFP, CPA and CMA, she stayed in the financial services sector after university and spent years at investment companies like RBC Phillips, Hager and North and Connor, Clark and Lunn before joining Nicola Wealth as VP of advisory services, associates and operations six years ago. "We are the client-facing arm of the business and one of the largest departments of the firm as well," she explains. In addition to hosting Nicola Wealth's LEAD podcast (a platform that celebrates female role models in the community), Woo manages three groups: wealth planning associates, advisory services and insurance services. "I'm probably overseeing a team of 80 people," she adds. Woo is also passionate about teaching financial literacy to youth and volunteers at junior achievement events at nonprofits like YELL Canada and CPABC. "You can't be what you can't see," she says. "In the financial services industry, there still aren't very many Asian women in executive leadership roles, and you do have to bring more diversity to the top." –R.R. E Q U I T Y A N D I N C L U S I O N C H A M P I O N W hen Elaine Alec was young, her mom would always make comments and think out loud. "We'd drive by this whole field of baby's breath and my mom would say something like, 'I bet if you gathered all that baby's breath and went down to Art Knapp or the flower place, you could sell it to them,'" she recalls. Alec is from the Syilx and Secwepemc nations. Her mother, who went to residen- tial school and struggled with alcoholism, passed away when Alec was 19. But she left Alec with lessons that she still thinks about today, like: "If somebody says no to you, you just find another way to navigate," or "I never want you to get stuck in a system of dependency, because if you get stuck there, you're never going to get out." Alec has walked a long road since then. The Penticton na- tive faced racism, bullying and abuse as a child, and struggled to navigate harmful systems and institutions her whole life. And even though she has fond memories of picking cherries with her mom from 4 a.m. to noon (and then making a bee- line for the concession stand), she lived in poverty for a while. "I was always told that I would never amount to any- thing and never make it any- where," she adds. Yet, even after battling alcoholism and addictions, Alec lights up as she talks about her 20-year career as an entrepreneur and consul- tant. She now lives in Kamloops with her husband and three kids and has self-published a book on overcoming trauma and loss. Last year, she stepped back from Alderhill Planning, an Indigenous-owned firm she co- founded in 2008, to grow her consulting business full-time. She delivers training and learn- ing experiences through Naqs- mist's Cultivating Safe Spaces framework to help people understand decolonization and reconciliation. And in decolo- nizing her own business, she TOP: DEB KÜHL; BOTTOM: SIMON ROCHFORT MAY/JUNE 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 31 doesn't own any IP or copyright for it but instead tackles prob- lematic systems from a place of faith and trust. "I do a lot of this work for people who want to shift their policies and their processes to make them more inclusive," she says. "I don't need to con- trol and own everything in order to make money and em- power people." According to Alec, her business made $360,000 in 2022 and is already sitting on $600,000 this year after switching to full-time with seven employees. Through Naqsmist, Alec demonstrates "what it means when matriarchs get into busi- ness and redistribute wealth amongst each other," because she understands how unsafe sys- tems affect talent recruitment and retention. Her voice grows thick recall- ing how, in her role as the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs' Women's Representative, every woman she spoke to in political spaces had been sexually assaulted or raped. "I remember saying, One day, I'm going to build something where women don't have to be afraid." –R.R. W I N N E R Elaine Alec F O U N D E R A N D O W N E R , N A Q S M I S T