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/1510895
E dmonton-born Deborah Best first skied Grouse Mountain in 1992, just after moving to North Vancou- ver with a psychology degree from the University of Manitoba. She remembers how her friend, a local, skied the Cut in three minutes, then waited as Best snowplowed down in 20. "She said she didn't want to ski with me because I was too slow," Best says wryly. "Last year I took her again... and she's like, Wow, what happened to you?" Three decades in B.C. is what happened: in addition to climbing up the HR depart- ments of multiple financial institutions and investment companies in Vancouver, Best has spent much of her time in B.C. on a literal mountain. Then, while shopping at MEC in 2017, she decided to respond to a Grouse Mountain ad calling for ski patrollers. "That's perfect," she thought when she saw the ad, because she previously had first-aid certification from be- ing a Girl Guide leader for 15 years, and she was already going out of her way regularly to help strangers on the slopes. "My friends always expect me W E E K E N D WA R R IOR WARRIOR SPOTLIGHT North Vancouver-based credit union BlueShore Financial offers personal and business banking and wealth management as well as insurance and commercial lending solu- tions. It's been operating for almost 90 years and has grown to a team of 390 across 12 locations in B.C. Chief HR officer Deborah Best manages a team of 16. With $6.9 billion assets under administration, the financial institution re- ported $19 million in profit for the 2022 financial year. Peak Performance BlueShore Financial's Deborah Best keeps an eye out for danger on Grouse Mountain by Rushmila Rahman O FF T H E C LO C K ( quality time ) PAUL HENDERSON NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 73 to stop two, three, four times to help other people, and they end up waiting for me," says Best. "I remember times that I've hurt myself skiing and I think about how helpful it would be to have someone stop, so I'm just naturally drawn to help anybody who seems like they need a hand." Best now serves as one of four team captains on Grouse Mountain's voluntary First Aid Ski Patrol team, which supplements paid patrollers in eight-hour shifts on the weekends. Every other Sunday, Best hits the slopes in her red jacket, armed with a radio and a backpack full of medical supplies, to help however she can: implementing safety measures, giving people rides up the mountain, shovelling POLE POSITION Deborah Best scours Grouse Mountain's slopes with a keen eye and helping hands