british-columbia
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Andrew Hansen and the Business Hiding in Plain Sight
He knew the construction business from the inside. With SitePartners, Andrew Hansen turned that familiarity into a company devoted to helping industrial businesses explain what they do - and why people should care.
James DeGreef and the work beneath the floorboards
A Victoria founder became an investor, then returned to the CEO chair. His approach to running SureSwift Capital owes something to an old house, a new foundation, and the people trusted to hold it up.
Accelerate Okanagan and the art of making a small city invest
In Kelowna, a technology nonprofit teaches both sides of the funding table. Its lesson for other regions: a promising founder is only half the equation.
New Ventures BC asks the C$200 question: who will buy it?
A startup competition with homework, a volunteer network with rules, and a prize that comes after months of scrutiny. New Ventures BC helps founders turn a clever idea into a business someone might actually buy from.
Tobyn Sowden and the value of what’s already there
A childhood bargain became a habit of looking twice. From software acquisitions to a proposed Victoria hotel, Redbrick’s founder keeps finding new uses for existing foundations.
Greater Vancouver Board of Trade: The business of getting things moving
Born after Vancouver’s Great Fire, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade now tackles a different kind of gridlock: trade barriers, slow growth, and the challenge of getting the right people in the room.
Christine Young Makes Insurance Personal, One Relationship at a Time
From a family brokerage in Cloverdale to the C-suite and a national board seat, Christine Young has built a career around a deceptively simple idea: insurance works better when people stay close to one another.
Michelle Cavallo Makes the Technical Feel Human
The Cavallo Technologies CMO built her career around a durable skill: turning complicated work into reasons for people to gather, understand, and care.
James Tweedy Is Building a University Brand People Can Belong To
From independent records to a Christian university, James Tweedy has spent two decades learning the same durable lesson: a brand works when people can hear themselves inside its story.
Jaimie Turkington Built a Career Turning Pet-Food Complexity Into Clarity
Long before revenue entered her title, Turkington learned to make complicated products legible. At Petcurean, that skill became the connective tissue between brand, sales, innovation and purpose.
Michael Dalzell Knows the Product Is Only Half the Story
From steep ski terrain to technical apparel to a century-old foundry, Michael Dalzell has built a career around the same practical question: what makes people want to belong?
Trinity Western’s $125 Million Bet: Keep the Faith, Lose the Walls
Canada’s largest Christian university learned the cost of turning conviction into a gate. Now it is chasing 10,000 learners with online degrees, global partnerships and a divinity-school gift - without sanding away the belief system people come for.
No Fear Counselling Turned the Hardest Part of Therapy Into Its Business
The Burnaby practice did not invent a new kind of therapy. It made the old kind easier to enter - then used a sprawling therapist network, low-cost training pipeline and two mergers to turn access into the product.
The 124-Year-Old Insurer That Turned Farm Risk Into a Modern Niche
Mutual Fire survived Prairie catastrophe losses by narrowing its risk, rewriting farm insurance in plain English, and betting on brokers. The lesson is useful far beyond insurance: specialize hard, make the confusing legible, and digitize the bottleneck without abandoning the human who closes the sale.
The Restoration Company Betting That Less Demolition Is Better Business
Platinum Pro-Claim Restoration makes money cleaning up chaos. Its sharper idea is that the cheapest, fastest and greenest piece of a rebuild may be the thing you never tear out.
Jesse Dougherty
Jesse Dougherty is Vice President of Global Networking and Network Edge Services at Amazon Web Services (AWS), based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He leads AWS's global network backbone including CloudFront, Elemental, and Perimeter Protection services, while also serving as the Vancouver site lead overseeing an office of 1,000+ software engineers. With 20+ years in software engineering and leadership, he previously spent nine years at Microsoft as a Group Program Manager for Exchange Server and Office 365, and held technical leadership roles at Sophos, ActiveState Software, and Mindquake Software. A champion of the Vancouver tech ecosystem, he has been instrumental in Amazon's expansion in Western Canada and serves as a mentor in the BC Tech Association's Dragons 1-on-1 Mentorship program.