Nick Rockel

Raised in rural northern California, Vanessa Chase Lockshin looked to her dad, an entrepreneur who had worked in Silicon Valley, as a role model. Chase Lockshin moved to Vancouver in 2006 to study English literature at UBC; after graduation her first job was raising money from alumni.

Life Story: By middle school in his hometown of Campbell River, Brett Giese was working on construction sites with his father, who develops residential lots for sale. Giese went to UVic in 2005 to study business, but he longed to...

Life Story: Harrison Brown is no stranger to concussions. The Toronto native was diagnosed with two while playing rugby, a sport he picked up when his banker father moved the family to Hong Kong in 2000. After representing the Chinese...

Life Story: During his summers while attending university, Igor Trninic led a College Pro painting franchise. Trninic learned the value of hard work early: his mother and father, an auditor and a lawyer, respectively, had to restart after the family...

Laurel Douglas knows how crucial it is for women entrepreneurs to have female role models. “Women start businesses for slightly different reasons than men do,” says the CEO of the Kelowna-based Women’s Enterprise Centre. Although money is important, independence and...

Gerri Sinclair says there was a clear moment when she decided to become a mentor to other women. In 2001, Sinclair sold NCompass Labs Inc., a Vancouver-based web content management software firm she founded and led, to Microsoft Corp. “I...

Want to make friends and influence people? Don’t just stand there—be engaging. The same goes for the frontrunners in our fourth annual ranking of B.C.’s top brands, which sees a few names surge and others take a tumble. In its...

The Vancouver property developer champions beauty and the beasts. Since 1997 the Audain Foundation has given more than $100 million to the visual arts; the Audain Art Museum, home to a permanent collection of nearly 200 B.C. works, opened last...

Walking into one of the 78 London Drugs stores that dot the landscape from Vancouver to Winnipeg can be a jarring experience. Arranged with care on its tall shelves are hundreds of staples you expect from your local drugstore: toothbrushes, cough syrup, shampoo. Turn a corner by the pharmacy, though...

Head of Alternative Investment, RBC Global Asset Management Inc. A hedge fund combining multiple asset classes Finding undervalued assets in the absence of cheap money One-year return, PH&N Absolute Return Fund: 13.86% Hanif Mamdani’s long-term track record speaks for itself. He is lead manager of the PH&N Absolute Return Fund, an $860-million multi-strategy hedge fund...

Chief Investment Officer, PenderFund Capital Management Ltd. Small-cap equity Look for Canadian small-cap value, think long-term One-year return, Pender Small Cap Opportunities Fund: 27.12% Value investor David Barr focuses on bottom-up stock analysis with his $43-million Pender Small Cap Opportunities Fund; his research involves meeting with company management and understanding the economics behind the...

President, CEO and Head of Fixed Income, Leith Wheeler Investment Counsel Ltd. Income-generating investments Shorter-term bonds and stocks with dividend-growth potential One-year return, Leith Wheeler Canadian Equity Fund B: 21.27% Although Jim Gilliland is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead in 2014, he thinks it’s a stock-picker’s market that calls for deep fundamental...