Locally owned. Professionally run.

Some of you already know me from around Prince George. If you do not, this is the short version.

I am good at working out what is actually wrong. Asking the uncomfortable question that turns out to be the useful one. Finding the bottleneck. Then working backwards from what you are trying to accomplish to the thing that will get you there.

WorkBC, and the pattern that came out of it

I spent several years at WorkBC. I became a Job Developer, which meant learning the wage subsidy process quickly — and what I found was a procedure that created a lot of unnecessary back and forth with employers.

So I streamlined it. Our office became the highest performing in the province for wage subsidies. I was then asked to rewrite the procedure, and I led a working group of Job Developers from across British Columbia on delivering the service better. I was named Wage Subsidy Champion of BC.

None of that was really about paperwork. It was about knowing a system well enough to walk somebody through it — the employer who assumes the funding is not worth the trouble, the candidate who does not know a door is open.

That is the pattern behind everything here. I see a process that is not working. I figure out why. I simplify it. Then I build something better.

I still do that work directly: wage subsidy applications, the Employer Training Grant, recruitment, and training plans for businesses that need them. That side of things lives on the corporate page.

Why there is a photo booth

I was at my desk trying to come up with swag for another business. After years in employment services — conferences, trade shows, career fairs, every kind of event — I had seen every promotional item there is. Most of it ends up in a drawer and then in the garbage.

Then I noticed a photo strip sitting on my desk. It was from an event I had gone to with a coworker years earlier. I had kept it that whole time. It had the organization’s branding on it, their website, and the memory of the day.

I could barely remember any of the other businesses from those events. I remembered that one.

That is a large part of why I bought the booth. Be memorable, and give people something they actually keep.

Organizing things, and the people who come with them

I have served on boards of directors, and I volunteer across Prince George — PG for Ukraine, the Phoenix Society, the Take Back the Night march committee, the Prince George Humane Society, and the Red Warrior Spirit Drummers, as a member, volunteer and ally. Raven’s Occasions is a proud sponsor of PG Pride Week.

I have coordinated job fairs, employer and business events, and events on disability employment and employer education, including work with organizations such as the Disability Alliance of BC. I hold a Certificate in Project Management Fundamentals from the College of New Caledonia.

Animals have been the constant. I have decades behind me in dog showing and dog training, including training service dogs when I lived in the United States — work that mattered to me deeply then and still does. I volunteered with the Colorado War Dog Memorial while I was there.

That world is also where I learned events. Working with kennel clubs in the States — Terry-All Kennel Club, Arapahoe Kennel Club, and the Great Dane clubs of Greater Denver and Houston — I was show chair for large shows: thousands of entries, a venue, a volunteer roster and a schedule that could not slip. Running an event well is the same job every time: plan it thoroughly enough that on the day you are free to handle whatever actually happens. That is what I bring to a booking, and it is why clients tend to stop worrying about the logistics once we have talked. The scale changes — a birthday party in a back yard, an event filling a stadium — but the job does not.

That is part of why the Prince George Humane Society is on that list. It is a real pillar of this community, and I think we should all be doing what we can to support their work.

Distance is not the problem people think it is

I want to work with smaller communities, remote communities and First Nations communities, and I mean that practically rather than as a line on a website. If you are outside Prince George, tell me where you are and we will work it out. Give me a two-way radio and I am on my way.

None of that is separate from the business. This is a small city, and the people who show up for it tend to know each other. Showing up is most of the job.

I am the proud mother of five, all adults now, and I built this business on terms that fit the life I have — deliberately, and with the same standards I brought to everything before it. If you have met me around Prince George, you already know how I work. If you have not, that is the short version.