Beedie School of Business

Beedie School of Business News

In the wake of the global financial crisis, the need for strong leadership to steer organizations through troubled waters was never greater. Realizing this, Launi Skinner, CEO of one of Canada’s largest credit unions, First West Credit Union, made a conscious decision to develop her own leadership strategy – what she refers to as her “brand of leadership”. Skinner discussed this strategy and more with Bill Good on “The Chief Executives”, as part of an […]

Beedie School of Business News

The spring series of CKNW 980’s “The Chief Executives” continued with Tracy Redies, President and CEO of credit union Coast Capital Savings, discussing her journey from selling shoes to leading of one of the country’s largest credit unions with CKNW host Bill Good in front of a live audience at the Segal Graduate School. The event was part of an ongoing partnership between the Beedie School of Business and prominent Vancouver radio station CKNW News […]

Beedie School of Business News

Will Mitchell didn’t come by his decision to attend business school lightly. As an 18 year old, he was pouring lead slag into a furnace for a living at a lead-zinc smelter in Trail, BC when he decided to heed the call of higher learning – from Simon Fraser University.

Mitchell, whose parents were both teachers, grew up in the scenic West Kootenay communities of Trail and Fruitvale. Geographically, he was hundreds of kilometres from the West Coast and the top of Burnaby Mountain. Psychologically, the distance was even further.

But the lure of SFU was neither dulled nor diminished by distance or geography.

At the time, Simon Fraser University was a young institution with a reputation for flexibility and radicalism. The young Mitchell couldn’t resist the mix – and in a matter of days he had made the transition from the smoke-belching smelter to classes in political science, sociology, anthropology, English and math.

“At SFU,” he says, “you could do very interesting things.”