Celebrating 40 Years

As president of The Beedie Group, Ryan Beedie is building one of the largest and most successful industrial property development companies in Canada. Born and raised in Burnaby BC, he joined the company in 1993 and became president in 2001. Since 1995, Ryan has overseen the construction of more than 13 million square feet of industrial space. Today, The Beedie Group owns and manages more than 7.5 million square feet of industrial space, the largest portfolio of properties in British Columbia.

Ryan holds an undergraduate business degree in accounting and finance from Simon Fraser University and an MBA in real estate from the University of British Columbia.

His passion for The Beedie Group was ignited early on, learning about the family business at the dinner table from his father Keith, who founded the company in 1954. Ryan remembers being immersed in the business from a very young age, driving around with his father as a teenager visiting project sites and learning about industrial real estate development.

Ryan’s interest and hard work has paid off. Under his leadership, the company has become a dominant force in the industrial real estate market. Always focused on the long-term success of the company, Ryan has made calculated risk-taking a hallmark of his leadership style. In 2009, Ryan was declared Ernst & Young’s Pacific Region Entrepreneur of the Year.

Ryan has always believed that everyone has a responsibility to give back to the community in which they live and work. He helped raise more than $750,000 for the Lion’s Gate Hospice and donated $100,000 to the BC Children’s Hospital. An SFU alumnus, he created the Ryan Beedie Annual Community Service Award, a $5,000 bursary granted on the basis academic performance and leadership and/or service at SFU to a Faculty of Business Administration student.

On February 9, 2011, Ryan and his father Keith donated $22 million to Simon Fraser University to establish the Beedie School of Business. The donation is the largest gift that SFU has ever received. It is being used as an endowment for students, professorships and research chairs with the goal to making the Beedie School of Business a global thought leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, Asia Pacific business studies, risk management and sustainability.

Read more about Ryan Beedie and his contribution to SFU.

The late Joseph (Joe) Segal and his wife, Rosalie, are widely recognized in British Columbia, as much for their philanthropy as for their business acumen and entrepreneurial vision that have helped shape BC's business community.

Joe built a merchandising empire that included Zeller's and the Bay. As president of Kingswood Capital, he made his mark in manufacturing, real estate and venture capital funding.

Together, Joe and Rosalie made significant contributions to their religious community, SFU, Vancouver and Canada. These have been recognized with the Order of Canada, the Order of BC and the 2005 Variety Club International Humanitarian Award.

Joe, an SFU chancellor emeritus, championed the university's expansion into downtown Vancouver over the past two decades. He spearheaded the campaign to establish Harbour Centre, playing a leadership role in the creation, development and renovation of the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. And for more than 20 years, Rosalie Segal has quietly assisted dozens of SFU students with special needs.

In 2002, Joe and his family donated the former Bank of Montreal heritage building as the home for the renamed Segal Graduate School of Business. Today, the school is home to SFU's MBA, EMBA, MSc Finance, Management of Technology MBA, PhD and Graduate Diploma in Business Administration programs.

After a long life dedicated to philanthropy, Joe passed away in May 2022. He will be greatly missed but always remembered for his impact on SFU and the many students who have benefited from his generosity.

Read more about Joe Segal and his contribution to SFU.

SFU Beedie alumnus Charles Chang made his name as the founder of plant-based nutrition company Vega. Charles founded Vega in 2001, initially working from his basement and investing his own savings into the business. Over the course of fifteen years, he grew the company into an iconic lifestyle brand employing over 180 people, with sales of more than $100 million per year, and products sold in over 20,000 stores across North America.

After selling Vega in 2015, Charles founded Lyra Growth Partners, a venture growth equity company that aims to help entrepreneurs succeed, cementing his leadership position in B.C.’s burgeoning entrepreneurship community.

In June 2016, he made a $10 million donation to SFU Beedie to establish a new entrepreneurship institute at the school, the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship. The Institute's activities to support entrepreneurship education include the launch of the Charles Chang Innovation Centre, which was officially opened in September 2016 and offers residences for graduate students and state-of-the-art business incubation facilities, located in downtown Vancouver.

The Innovation Centre also houses RADIUS (Radical Ideas, Useful to Society), SFU Beedie’s social innovation lab and venture incubator, and the Invention to Innovation program, SFU Beedie’s graduate certificate in science and technology commercialization.

The gift also funded the launch of the flagship Charles Chang Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship program, supported by the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship. This interdisciplinary program allows undergraduate students from any faculty to add innovation and entrepreneurship training to their education.

Charles’s donation has allowed SFU Beedie to take a leadership role in delivering innovation and entrepreneurship education across the university as a whole.

The Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship is an integral part of SFU Innovates, a university-wide strategy that builds on SFU's dynamic culture and seeks to strengthen the university's commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship. The Charles Chang Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship program is open to all undergraduate students at SFU, and teaches them skills that are increasingly sought after by employers, such as adaptability, creativity and teamwork.

In 2020, alumnus Lance Uggla and his family committed to donating $34.1 million to support 10 exceptional undergraduate students per year to study at SFU. This is the largest gift ever received in the university’s history and the largest gift of its kind ever given to a Canadian university. It established Uggla Family Scholarship for students who may not otherwise be able to afford a university education and address social mobility, equity, diversity and inclusion.

The exceptional commitment from the Uggla family reflects their deep belief in social mobility, equity, diversity and inclusion. Lance Uggla says the impetus for giving back is his family’s belief in the positive return that results when doors are opened for those who have traditionally faced barriers to higher education.

Uggla grew up in Burnaby and nurtured his entrepreneurial spirit while at SFU and, later, at LSE.

He worked in the financial sector in Toronto before moving to London, where, in 2003, he founded Mark-it Partners, a data, analytics and software provider, focused on the financial industry. He grew the company both organically and through acquisition, taking it public in 2014.

In 2016, Uggla jointly led the merger of IHS and Markit, becoming chairman and CEO in 2018. As a leading information company, IHS Markit provides data, insight and software to help its customers within financial services, energy and transportation make more informed decisions, driving their growth, efficiency and performance. The company has more than 15,000 employees in 34 countries globally and embraces an entrepreneurial approach through shared ownership with its employees.

IHS Markit has more than 50,000 business and government customers, including 80 per cent of the Fortune Global 500 and the world’s leading financial institutions.

Uggla was previously Head of Global Markets at CIBC and latterly Head of Europe and Asia and Cohead Credit Trading at TD Securities. Chosen as the Ernst & Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012, Uggla was also recognized with SFU’s Outstanding Alumni Award in 2014.

He is a supporter of numerous charitable causes, primarily those focused on giving children a better start in life including Zamcog, a school in Zambia for street children which his family started, that today have more than 440 students.