Nick Rockel

1. Whom does the BCFed represent, and what is its mission? The BCFed represents nearly half a million workers through more than 50 affiliated unions. Our mission is to advance the rights, protections and safety of all workers in B.C. 2. As B.C.

Before we get to B.C.’s Most Loved Brands, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. Sometimes major events can change the social context of consumer behaviour, with sudden and significant implications. And sometimes those events don’t line up with an editorial calendar that’s planned months in advance. Our seventh annual ranking of B.C.’s most popular brands, presented with research partner Ipsos, is an unfortunate casualty of the COVID-19 crisis. Ipsos conducted its Most Loved Brands survey in January, before the...

Life Story: In her fourth year of an international relations degree at UBC, Ania Wysocka started suffering from panic attacks. For someone who had enjoyed public speaking and always saw herself working for an international organization, life became very different.

Life Story: Everything changed for Braden Parker at age eight, when his family moved from Alberta to California so his father, a teacher, could do a sabbatical at Stanford University. This early brush with Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture left a...

Life Story: The daughter of an entrepreneur, Beijing-born Jennifer Zhang grew up in White Rock after moving to B.C. when she was 10. She had no interest in going into business with her engineer dad, who exports machinery from Europe...

Life Story: As a kid, Aaron Chin would make money by selling hockey cards outside the 7-Eleven near his Richmond home. Although he always wanted to work for the family business, he’s grateful that his father, Organika founder Thomas Chin...

Life Story: Bryden Pelletier always dreamed of being a firefighter. “I just really wanted to help people,” he says. “That was the profession that you were right there in the moment, at the most critical intervention time.” Knowing that he faced...

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted just about everything—and buying or selling a business is no exception. For some insight into where things are headed, we asked Pino Bacinello, founder and president of Pacific M&A and Business Brokers, which has offices...

At 28, Michael Wee has already built a thriving career in Silicon Valley. Wee grew up in Vancouver, where he took programming courses at UBC before earning a BA in computer science at University of California, Berkeley. As an undergrad in...

For Drop Manufacturing, joining the fight against COVID-19 was a natural fit. “What we’re really strong at is engineering through to manufacturing,” says founder and CEO Anders Malpass, whose company is now making face shields for front-line workers. “So understanding how to make a product, take the outcome of that product and then develop the most simplistic way of manufacturing it for the outcome.”

On behalf of the BCBusiness team, I hope that you, your family and your business are staying well during this uncertain time. You might be expecting to see the May issue of BCBusiness arrive in the mail or at the newsstand, so I wanted to give you an update on the...

Weekend evenings remain busy for Romer’s, which has two locations in Vancouver and one in Port Moody. Like many of its peers since the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants to close their dining rooms, the small burger-focused group now relies on takeout and delivery...