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/950283
52 BCBusiness ApRIL 2018 2002 Premier Gordon Campbell's gov- ernment creates a Crown corporation called Partnerships BC. Its mis- sion: to build infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships, or p3s. Today, the company's legacy in the Lower mainland includes the Canada Line, the upgraded Sea-to-Sky highway and a twinned port mann Bridge. 2006 Dragons' Den hits the airwaves in Canada, giving viewers a ringside seat at business pitches where entre- preneurs hawk everything from cereal to smartphone apps in the hope of sealing investment deals with inves- tors. The longest-serving Dragon, Jim Treliving, co-chair and co-owner of Richmond-headquartered Boston Pizza international inc., won the pacific EOY hospitality/Tourism category in 1999. hard. I didn't realize that the boys' club still existed. But the story for me is not just that the boys' club exists; it's that most of the old boys don't want it. They want to be inclusive; they just don't know how. They are good people, and I've met some of the finest individuals in the development community where I work. There are bad apples, but there are those in every industry. I get strange looks sometimes, and I use my very androgynous name to my advantage. How so? When I get emails that say, "Dear Mr. Wasylyk," I don't correct them until I see them in person. I'm not about to undo their bias over an email, but I certainly will undo it with talent and merit. My CFO is about 20 years older than I am and male, so often people look at him and say, "Mr. Wasylyk," and he'll say, "No, I'm Mr. Klassen. Ms. Wasylyk is right next to me." I've been called everything from his recep- tionist to his assistant. How have things changed for women in business over the past couple of decades? We've made a lot of strides. In the entrepreneur- ial world, females outperform males on revenue and profit, and that's better understood. Women tend to be less risky, they take on lower loans, and ultimately, they're better performers. That's not as celebrated because sometimes they're the tortoise and not the hare. Societally, we are starting to train women to be more courageous. What needs to change now are societal norms. Women still do 85 percent of the workload in the home, regardless of whether they work full-time. With the rising awareness of sexual harass- ment and discrimination in Hollywood, are other boardrooms feeling the #meToo effect? I don't feel like when I walk into the city I get treated differently. The banking industry has probably one of the best track records in terms of getting females on their boards and in their senior executive posi- tions. That said, I did get turned down for my very first loan from a Big Five bank because I wouldn't have my husband at the time co-sign the loan. I said, "The project is 80-percent leased up. How is this not a completely bankable project?" They said, "We just have some discomfort." But we've come a long way. I don't feel like it's the boys smoking cigars, playing golf and telling rude jokes. In fact, I also know a few of my own. • This interview has been edited The Science of Innovation Investing in R&D is just one way that 2016 EOY winner Allen Eaves keeps Stemcell Technologies ahead of the curve m ost people see retirement as an oppor- tunity to step back from the work life and indulge in some leisure time. But Allen Eaves isn't most people. When the founder and former director of the BC Cancer Agency's Terry Fox Laboratory ( TFL) took mandatory retirement, he turned a side project into an innovative international biotechnology company. And he's just getting started. "We're going to hit $1 billion in 12 years, the way we're going," the ebullient hematologist insists. Eaves, 2016's overall EOY winner for the Pacific Region, founded Stemcell Technologies Inc. in 1993, initially as a small supplier to research colleagues of a medium necessary for growing stem cells. Since his 2006 retirement, president and CEO Eaves has grown the business at a blistering pace of 20 percent a year B.C.'s gReAtest hIts CeleBR AT ING 25 y e A R S FROm LEFT: pAUL JOSEph; CBC