Business in Vancouver has announced five recipients for this year's Influential Women in Business awards.
The five honourees for 2022 are recognized leaders in their respective fields and contribute their time and expertise to the broader British Columbian business community through board work, as advisors and mentors, and through donations of time and resources. They will be celebrated at an in-person event March 8 at the Terminal City Club, which will be livestreamed at biv.com.
"This year's award recipients were selected from a group of highly accomplished nominees,” said Hayley Woodin, BIV’s executive editor and one of the competition’s judges. “Our judges felt strongly that these five influential women deserved recognition not only for their remarkable professional successes, but for their contributions to community, and their support of other women in business."
The recipients, in alphabetical order:
Christine Bergeron is CEO of Vancity, Canada's largest community based credit union. She also chairs the board of InBC Investment Corp. and the board of the Women’s Enterprise Centre. She is a board member of Aviso Wealth and is on the Board of Governors for the BC Business Council. She represents North America on the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s Banking Board.
Jennifer Twiner McCarron is CEO of Thunderbird Entertainment, a global multiplatform entertainment company, parent firm of Atomic Cartoons and Great Pacific Media. She is an award-winning producer and has been the CEO of Thunderbird Entertainment Group since 2018. Having joined Atomic Cartoons as the Head of Production in 2011, she was promoted to its chief executive in 2016, and under her leadership the studio grew from 25 artists to more than 1,200 today. Thunderbird (parent company of Atomic Cartoons and Great Pacic Media) is now recognized as a creating award-winning scripted, unscripted and animated programming for the world’s leading digital platforms, as well as Canadian and International broadcasters.
Elizabeth Model, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, is the CEO of the Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association and a major influence on the city’s growth. She has an extensive, 35-year business career that includes a role as general manager of a large land development firm, the owner and operator of a Vernon hotel, and as the CEO for 12 years of the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce.
Shahrzad Rafati is founder and CEO of Broadband TV Corp., better known as BBTV, the digital media and technology company that drives monetization for content creators with more than 600 million monthly viewers on its platforms. She is the vice chair of Invest in Canada and a board member of Bjarke Ingels Group. BBTV is the largest TSX-listed firm with a sole female founder and CEO at the helm.
Aisha Yang is the Co-Founder and Sales and Marketing Director of Herbaland, Canada’s largest vitamin gummies company, with sales of more than 70 million bottles of 30 different products and a market of more than 40 countries. She is an active member of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce’s Women in Leadership and a board director of the Help Change My City Organization, targeting marginalized youth and single mothers.
