30 Aug 2021 Meet the Person of the Year 2021 TIA Finalists
This award celebrates an individual who is a recognized icon in the BC technology ecosystem. Our finalists for person of the year are acknowledged leaders who have demonstrated business success in multiple settings, are mentors and role models to others and who actively engage with the BC Tech community to build a stronger future for our province. Let’s meet our #2021TIAs finalists!
Dr. Carl Hansen
Dr. Carl Hansen is one of Canada’s most accomplished inventors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. The Vancouver-based tech company he co-founded in 2012, AbCellera Biologics, is built on fundamental technologies discovered and developed by Dr. Hansen. He is an author or inventor on more than 180 papers, patents, and abstracts with more than 11,000 citations, including in highly regarded scientific journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Methods, and PNAS. He has also received the Michael Smith Career investigator award and was recently named one of the Top 5 Canadian CEOs who elevate their companies.
Entering his ninth year as CEO of Canada’s fastest-growing biotech company, the former UBC professor leads a team of more than 200 scientists, engineers, data scientists and business professionals in pursuing his mission of fundamentally improving and accelerating drug discovery for all diseases and disorders that impact or threaten health. In early 2020, Dr. Hansen’s mission took on a new urgency, and AbCellera’s technology became more vital than ever. As COVID-19 threatened the health of billions of people and tested the ability of nations to defend against a pandemic, AbCellera partnered with Eli Lilly to discover and deliver a safe and effective antibody therapy with unprecedented speed. As the leader of this crucial endeavour, Dr. Hansen’s perseverance, dedication, and compassion were critical to the project’s success.
Laurie Schultz has been involved in British Columbia’s tech ecosystem for decades. In that time, she has demonstrated incredible leadership, innovation, and resilience, spearheading projects with positive impact that was felt around the world. In her early career she worked for Telus, where she was accountable for launching Calling Line ID: the first commercial release of its kind worldwide, and an overnight success. Most recently and notably, Laurie acted as CEO of Galvanize, the leading provider of award-winning, cloud-based security, risk management, compliance, and audit software for some of the world’s largest organizations.
What could possibly be Laurie Schultz’s crowning achievement came on April 6th, 2021 – nine years after she took over as CEO of the company – when Galvanize was sold for one billion US dollars achieving Unicorn status. This made Galvanize one of just 20 Canadian technology firms to reach this monumental achievement, and the first ever led by a woman. Laurie’s personal mission statement is “to meaningfully and personally impact one million people.” To do that, she tries to be the same person 9 to 5 as she is 5 to 9—which means allowing herself to be vulnerable and relatable.
Hamed Shabhazi is the CEO of WELL Health Technologies Corp. – an omni-channel digital health company whose overarching objective is to empower doctors to provide the best and most advanced care possible while leveraging the latest technology and trends in digital health. Hamed Shabhazi founded WELL Health with the goal to address the lack of digitization and modernization in the Canadian primary healthcare system. This lack of modernization has resulted in frustrations and inefficiencies that plague primary healthcare. Solving this issue has been Hamed Shabhazi’s focus for years.
In 2021, WELL Health owns and operates 20 medical clinics, and is Canada’s third-largest electronic medical records supplier serving over 2,000 medical clinics. WELL Health operates a leading national telehealth service and is a provider of digital health technology solutions. Hamed Shahbazi has supported the digital transformation of the North American healthcare system during a challenging time that has allowed for WELL Health, under Hamed’s leadership, to contribute in tackling the COVID-19 crisis. Thanks to Hamed Shabhazi, WELL Health has continued to innovate, support, and contribute to the healthcare community, and demonstrates no evidence of slowing this progress.
