Vancouver is a beautiful place to live and the ability to enjoy the west coast lifestyle is an important factor in many people’s job satisfaction. Recognizing this, the city’s best employers often shape their workplace culture accordingly, offering flexibility and unique benefits to attract the city’s top talent. However, given the hot local housing market and challenging economy, both employers and employees will undoubtedly need to make trade-offs in the years ahead. What are the key workplace trends that individuals should be aware of? How is the culture of the modern workplace changing? Where do opportunities exist and what challenges lie ahead?
This event took place on March 21, 2016
Moderator
Gloria Macarenko – CBC News Host (B.C. Almanac; Our Vancouver; CBC Radio One’s The Story from Here)
Panelists
Shelina Esmail, BA’93 – Partner at PFM Executive Search
Prem Gill – CEO, Creative BC
Chris Hatton – Chief Operating Officer, HSBC Bank Canada
Matt O’Grady – Editor in Chief, BC Business
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Panelist Biographies
Gloria Macarenko
Long time CBC News host Gloria Macarenko takes the host seat on B.C. Almanac connecting British Columbians through conversation. She also hosts The Story from Here, a national Radio One show that brings Canadians the most lively and intriguing interviews from across the country. Gloria is also on CBC Television, hosting Our Vancouver, a current affairs television show.
Previously, Macarenko hosted the award-winning newscast CBC News Vancouver at 5 & 6. She has twice been nominated for the Gemini Awards in the category of “Best News Anchor” in Canada.
Gloria Macarenko herself is an award-winning journalist and senior leader on the news team. In her many years with CBC, she has been awarded a Jack Webster Award for “Best News Reporting”, multiple RTNDA Awards and a Leo award for “Best Anchor in a News Program” with former co-host Ian Hanomansing. Gloria has guest hosted on The National and CBC News Now. From her extensive coverage of the Sochi Olympics, as much a news story as a sports story considering the numerous human rights issues that dominated the Games, to profound interviews with local families affected by the Right-to-Die legal challenge, and families who looked to the courts for justice after losing loved ones to a drunk-driving accident, Macarenko has the ability to touch the heart of audiences no matter how challenging the story.
Macarenko’s relationship with British Columbia goes far beyond the newsroom. You can see her volunteering and hosting for organizations such as Arts Umbrella, Dr. Peter Centre, RCH Hospital Foundation, BC Cancer Foundation, the Gordon Smith Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Canada, the Prince Rupert Foundation and the International Women’s Forum.
Born and raised in Prince Rupert, her travels take her around B.C. When not in the host chair, or on the road, she can be found enjoying a good book or sampling the spectacular culinary adventures Vancouver is known for.
Shelina Esmail, BA’93
Shelina is a partner at PFM Executive Search. She joined the firm in 1998 as research director and became an associate partner in 2008. Before joining PFM, Shelina was a senior research and marketing analyst for Colliers International in Vancouver and California. Her professional experience and depth of business knowledge provides a rich foundation for leading senior executives to some of Canada’s most successful organizations.
Shelina is a dedicated community volunteer who lends her time to Junior Achievement of BC, the Tri-Mentoring Program at UBC, and the judging panel for the BC Health Care Awards run by the Health Employers Association of BC. She has also helped Canuck Place, the Aga Khan Foundation and the Ismaili Community. She currently sits on the alumni UBC Board of Directors.
Prem Gill
Prem Gill is a longtime broadcaster and content strategist, born and raised in North Burnaby by her immigrant parents, she took the reins of Creative BC in late September at a critical time in the creative sector’s history. For B.C.’s film and TV industry, the recent decline of the Canadian dollar has resulted in one of the busiest filming years on record and Creative BC is the provincial agency that oversees film and television production in B.C. from development funding to shoot locations.
Prem brings over 20 years of experience in the industry with a diverse background in film and television broadcasting, communications and media, and digital technology. Prem will use her varied experience to lead the Creative BC team in positioning BC as a global leader in the creative industries.
Prem’s commitment to the creative economy in BC can be seen through her work as Director of Production & Original Programming with TELUS and previous experience in the broadcast industry with CityTV and CHUM. Prem is also Vice-Chair of the board of directors for the National Screen Institute and an advisory position with Women in View.
Chris Hatton
Chris Hatton was appointed Chief Operating Officer for HSBC Bank Canada in July 2015.
Mr. Hatton joined HSBC in 1996, and has held senior management roles across the bank in both the UK and the US. Previous roles include: Regional Chief Operating Officer, North American Commercial Banking, HSBC Bank USA, NA; Chief of Staff, Global Commercial Banking, HSBC Holdings plc; Senior Manager, Commercial Banking Europe, HSBC Bank plc; and Manager Development, Commercial Banking, HSBC Bank plc.
Matt O’Grady
Matt is an award-winning communications professional who has held senior leadership positions at both regional and national media companies. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of BCBusiness twice, between 2008 and 2011 and since January of 2014. He has also worked for The Globe and Mail in both Toronto and Vancouver, mostly recently running their west coast operations as British Columbia Bureau Chief. Matt has deep ties within the Vancouver media community, having served as an editor at Vancouver magazine and Western Living, worked as an online editor for CBC British Columbia, and taught non-fiction writing and editing courses at Langara College and Capilano University. Clients inside and outside publishing regularly call upon Matt’s communications expertise as a speechwriter, media advisor, consultant and competition judge. Matt is a graduate of the Queen’s School of Business Bachelor of Commerce program and SFU’s Master of Publishing program.
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Dan Burritt is the host and producer of CBC Vancouver News. Burritt joined CBC British Columbia in 2012, covering local stories in the Surrey and Vancouver bureaus.
Valerie Casselton is the Associate Editor, Integrated Projects for PNG, with responsibilities for both The Vancouver Sun and The Province. She is responsible for special series, publications and projects that promote audience engagement on all of the four platforms on which the newsrooms publish, both online and in-paper.
Farhan Mohamed is the Editor-in-Chief and a partner of Vancity Buzz, holding a BBA from CapU. He was brought on during Vancity Buzz’s grassroots stage, controlling day-to-day operations of the company and creating content. For most of his life, Farhan has volunteered and taken leadership roles with a number of different organizations that contribute to society on both a local and global scale. He has a strong passion for building relationships and creating communities through the use of technology. Before joining Vancity Buzz in 2012, Farhan got a taste of media by working at The Vancouver Sun & Province. Since then, his passion has been to change the way people consume news, harnessing the expanse of Vancity Buzz’s unfulfilled potential and turning the site into the dynamic, informative, multifaceted digital news source it has become. Today, Farhan leads the Editorial arm of Vancity Buzz, which has skyrocketed readership by over 15 times since he began, along with Calgary Buzz, the company’s 2015 expansion.
Paul Watson is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of two books, including the best-selling memoir Where War Lives. He spent most of more than a quarter century in journalism as a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Toronto Star. Paul resigned as The Star’s multi-media Arctic Correspondent after the newspaper tried to kill a story detailing how the Conservative government used the search for Sir John Franklin’s missing 19th century ships to push a political agenda. He is currently writing Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition to be published by McClelland & Stewart in Canada and W.W. Norton internationally. Paul is also the subject of an award-winning two-man play, The Body of an American, staged at New York’s Cherry Lane Theater from February 10 to March 20.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Woodward has joined the UBC Graduate School of Journalism for the academic year 2015-2016. Woodward brings to the school more than three decades of experience as an editor and reporter for major metropolitan daily newspapers in the U.S., with a track record in pioneering new approaches to journalism. He comes to the University of British Columbia from Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, where he taught journalism, transmedia, communication ethics, and media and culture for two years.
Andrew Chang joined CBC News Vancouver as host in the summer of 2014, shortly after returning from Sochi as part of CBC’s broadcast team. He has also spent time in the host chair for other network shows such as CBC Radio One’s The Current, CBC News’ The National and CBC News Now.
Shayne Ramsay was recently listed in Vancouver Magazine’s 50 most powerful people in Vancouver; the magazine stated “When you’re CEO of the provincial agency responsible for creating social housing in one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets, you’re in the thick of one of the thorniest public-policy issues in the province.”
Bob Rennie is founder of Rennie Marketing Systems, whose recognized leadership for envisioning new and innovative strategies in development risk management and marketing real estate has led to landmark projects such as restructuring the Olympic Village and Woodward’s – in Canada’s poorest postal code. Also known for having built a world renowned collection of contemporary art, Bob chairs the North American Acquisitions Committee at Tate Modern, is a member of the Tate International Council, serves as trustee for the Art Institute of Chicago and is the recipient of the Queen’s Diamond and Golden Jubilee awards, the Order of BC and a doctorate from Emily Carr University. He renovated and restored Wing Sang, the oldest structure in Chinatown, to include a privately funded museum space with regular exhibitions of works from Rennie Collection. All exhibitions are open to the public with free admission two days a week.
Having started her career in television working for an MMA fight show and other various creative agencies as an editor, Lisa von Sturmer realized that she wanted to spend her life doing something positive that had a tangible impact on the community. In 2010, she quit her successful editing career, founded Growing City and never looked back.