Board of Trade awards will honour five women
Five extraordinary people are being celebrated this week by the Vancouver Board of Trade for their work as champions for women in leadership roles.
The board’s Women’s Leadership Circle hosts the Wendy McDonald Diversity Awards, in their fourth year, to recognize the value of gender and diversity in leadership, in honour of the board’s first female chair. This year’s winners will receive awards for their achievements at a ceremony Wednesday in Vancouver.
“These awards are an opportunity to shine a spotlight on those who are really championing diversity in their workplace and really helping women to achieve the leadership positions that they are seeking,” said Bridgitte Anderson, chair of the Women’s Leadership Circle.
“Each of these recipients have gone out of their way in their professional lives — and in their personal lives, too — to be a champion of diversity, whether that means in some quiet ways or in more obvious ways,” she added.
Kory Wilson, executive director of Indigenous Initiatives & Partnerships at the B.C. Institute of Technology, is this year’s “diversity champion.” She is recognized for her work with the City of Vancouver — including co-authoring First Peoples: A Guide for Newcomers — and chairing the National Indigenous Education Committee for Colleges and Institutes Canada.
Joan Sheehan, vice-president of sales and marketing at Stemcell Technologies, is the “outstanding mentor.” She built the biotech firm’s sales organization from three employees in Vancouver to 200 globally, mentoring many women into leadership positions so that they now comprise threequarters of those roles.
Careesa Liu, a biomedical engineer, is among “women to watch” for her groundbreaking research to advance medical technologies for improving disease diagnostics
(These awards) shine a spotlight on those who are really championing diversity in their workplace and really helping women.
and therapeutics, as well as her current research on brain function. She is co-founder of the Surrey Collaborative Outreach and Research Experience, which trains high-school and post-secondary students in medical technologies.
Jill Earthy, chief growth officer at FrontFundr, is the “community catalyst.” She co-created We for She, an event that champions equality in leadership, and co-founded The Raise Collective, which helps female entrepreneurs. Earthy is also co-founder of the WEB Alliance, a collective of women’s business networks collaborating for change.
Carolyn Cross, CEO of Ondine Biomedical, is recognized for her “entrepreneurial innovation.” Her firm’s photo-disinfection technology has treated more than 300,000 people across the globe while its non-antibiotic nasal-decolonization tech has helped reduce surgical-site infections at Vancouver General and UBC hospitals. Cross was recognized with a Meritorious Service Cross by the governor general of Canada for developing novel light-based therapies to treat and prevent infections.
In addition to serving as the first female chair of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Wendy McDonald served more than 60 years as a leader in her international industrial distribution company, B.C. Bearing Engineers Ltd.