BIV is proud to recognize six B.C. leaders as 2021 Influential Women in Business Award recipients.
A Q&A with honouree Valerie Mann follows.
What career highlight are you most proud of?
I thought it was important to look for opportunities to build a practice in industries and markets that our firm did not have a presence in, including tech. I was convinced that our market would change and our economy would become more diversified from where it was over 30 years ago. So I dove in. Over the years, I have gone down that path more than once, and it’s been rewarding to see the team grow and talent flourish, adding a new office location and watching and hopefully encouraging all of those people to thrive.
It was a bit of a journey from a blank sheet of paper. There is always adaptation happening and opportunities in private practice, and I hope to keep encouraging people to take those leaps and push into new areas.
Your toughest professional challenge as a woman in business?
At the beginning of my career, it was the assumption – both expressly said and always under the surface – that because I was a woman, I would never stick it out. That I couldn’t stick it out. It was an unsettling foundation to work from. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have the confidence of a senior partner in the corporate group early on. As a result, I had the opportunity to take on responsibility for M&A transactions early. But that was luck, and it shouldn’t be luck. It also firmly planted the thought that I had to forge my own path.
Today, my focus is on the gap in access to financing for women entrepreneurs, both at start-up and scale-up. And if there is no recovery from the impact of COVID on women in the workforce, it will be worse for everyone in stepping towards recovery.
Greatest advice ever received?
It’s yours. You figure it out. You find the solution. Having that advice early in my legal career was important. Taking responsibility and owning it was both exhilarating and – at the beginning of my legal career – kind of daunting. Makes you grow in a hurry.
What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out?
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Sweat through the things that matter, accept that the things that don’t are never going to be perfect and be wise enough to know the difference. And learn some patience. (OK – that one never happened. It is still on my list of things to tackle.)
What does it take to be a leader in 2021?
A very high EQ [emotional intelligence]. The pandemic has been a challenging time for organizational leaders. For those that did not face an existential threat, there has been an evolution from immediate crisis to structural adaptation. It is more than adapting to the pandemic, it’s recognizing the need for change.
If you’ve been holding your breath for this long, you have to be getting light-headed. You just can’t ‘hold on’ until one day a switch is flipped and everything is back to ‘normal.’ Leaders really need to have the courage to see past the restricted world we live in currently, into a future that makes the most of change. Leaders have to exercise real empathy, flexibility and foster trust. Those aren’t new leadership traits. They are just more important now than they were pre-2020.
What is your best habit?
Perseverance, and the twin sibling of perseverance is a pretty strong work ethic. That has been important for me throughout my career.
A book you would recommend?
I’m reading Think Again by Adam Grant. It fits right in with the discussion of leading through the uncertainty that we are faced with.
One surprising or improbable fact about yourself?
I’m pretty much WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I really like animated movies, like Zootopia, the Toy Story and Shrek series, Chicken Run and Wall-E. Nothing better than hunkering down on a rainy Friday night to watch a good animated movie.
A video of this year's virtual awards gala can be viewed at biv.com/iwib starting March 8.
