Professor Blaize Horner Reich to receive Influential Women in Business award

Blaize Horner Reich, the RBC Professor of Technology and Innovation at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, has been chosen as a 2013 recipient of Business in Vancouver’s Influential Women in Business award.

The Influential Women in Business (IWIB) awards are presented to women in BC who are leaders in their industry and the business community at large, who are in charge of corporate entities and not-for-profit organizations and who commit time and resources to mentor other women in business.

An internationally respected researcher and speaker, Reich joined the Beedie School of Business in 1991 after 15 years working as an IT professional and industry consultant in both Canada and Asia.

“Receiving the Influential Women in Business award is a real honour, both for me and for the Beedie School of Business,” says Reich. “My work at the Beedie School enables me to engage with external communities, making my research more relevant and allowing practitioners to learn from it. Mentoring is common practice at Beedie, so by working with women in business and academia I am just carrying on the school’s tradition.”

Reich currently serves on two professional association boards, the CIO Association of Canada and the Information and Communications Technology Sector Council. She is also the national academic lead for the Business Technology Management program, an initiative of the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow’s ICT Skills

Previously she was a director on the advisory board of the Women’s Executive Network Vancouver chapter, and was a founding board director of insurance company Industrial Alliance Pacific Insurance and Financial Services, and BC supermarket chain Thrifty Foods.

The IWIB awards were established in 1999 and have since gone on to honour 75 of BC’s most exceptional businesswomen. Previous recipients include Christine Day, CEO of Lululemon Athletica, and Dr. Nancy McKinstry, former Chair of SFU’s Board of Governors.

Reich will be presented with the award at the Influential Women in Business Awards, to be held on March 6 at the Fairmont Waterfront. For more information about the event, visit www.biv.com/events/biv/iwib.