EW 058 – How To Grow Your Association Membership By Demonstrating Value And Doubling Your Staff – Winning With Bianca Jade Parsons, Executive Director of The Alberta Food Processors Association

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.802)
Bianca, welcome to the show.

Bianca Parsons (00:03.062)
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.292)
Well, we are so lucky to have you. I know when I'm sitting at a black tie event in the back of the room and we see the person who gets brought up to the front of the room to be acknowledged at chamber type events, we know we're talking to the right person, but also you have a deep history in the areas that you're passionate about, along with all the different things you've added up along the way. It's just so exciting to have you here, but there's a lot of people that haven't met you just yet. So if you had to introduce yourself, maybe what would you say?

Bianca Parsons (00:31.49)
Sure, yeah, my name is Bianca Parsons. I'm the executive director of AFPA, so that's Alberta Food Processor Association. We help a lot of producers throughout our province in the food and beverage space. AFPA's been around for over 50 years, so we're a leader in that community. I also have the wonderful opportunity to sit on the board for Food and Beverage Canada, so be able to help part of our national voice.

And at the end of the day, I'm also a small business owner. My husband is a distiller, so we own a distillery down in Calgary. So this is something that not only I try to help people with, but I live and breathe when I come home every night to talk to my husband.

Gordon Sheppard (01:05.442)
Wow, and what an integrated life that you're leading. tell me, food, what's, tell me about this theme running through your life. How'd you get, come by it honestly early on and why is it so important to you now?

Bianca Parsons (01:15.468)
For sure. My grandparents immigrated to Canada on my dad's side and my mom is an immigrant herself. was of Puerto Rican descent, was born in New York and then she came to Canada later on in life. I think if you talk to many people like...

most Canadians were quite the tapestry and usually something that weaves it all together is food. You're very inclined to go through any small town in Alberta and you're most likely going to find a Chinese restaurant or a Greek restaurant or both. And that's because of our immigrants. And we've seen that intertwine into our food processing as well that our new Canadians, it's really becomes their faith. And that's how it was in my family. A great way for my parents to share our culture

was sharing with family and friends our incredible food. And you know, whether it's my mom's incredible rice that she's extremely well known for, making, using pigeon peas to make incredible Puerto Rican rice, or my parents even owned a Greek restaurant at one point. And that's how we shared our faith and our culture and our community.

Gordon Sheppard (02:23.422)
lucky to have, sorry I'm trying to think about places for dinner where I want to be invited now and that rice is making me kind of want to stop here and just come on over and try it. I mean that's just so wonderful what a nice way to have sort of a multi-generational connection that leads to your own upbringing in this area and now being in a significant leadership role to influence you know the opportunities for all things food. I'm gonna say in Alberta because there's all kinds of things that we could talk about that your association

Bianca Parsons (02:29.392)
Hahaha!

Gordon Sheppard (02:50.99)
kind of deals with, but at least me to my first question in the interview, which to if you had to describe your biggest win in the work that you do, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Bianca Parsons (02:58.56)
Honestly, it's been in the last few weeks and that is expanding our team. If anyone runs a non-for-profit, having a small team is usually the answer to success in the aspect that funding causes you to have a small team. you don't, you give it all. You're a non-for-profit and you make sure that everything goes to your members, everything goes to the community. Very little comes back to us as an association. Recently, we had the wonderful opportunity to partner with the Alberta government and Prairies Canada

that's out of the federal government to be able to expand our team by double. So we have four new staff members, two of them just started, two of them are starting in just days and being able to say, you know, now we have a team of eight to really make a difference for Alberta gets me super jazzed. And if I can expand a little bit, we're calling them navigators. So there used to be almost like this one 800 number old school feel to this industry that you could call the Alberta government and you could say, I'm struggling, I'm starting a business or I have a business.

and I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z. That wasn't really their forte and they've adapted and changed. We have an incredible food facility in Leduc that's a processing center that's run by the Alberta government, but that's not, that's where they've pivoted to. So this gives AFPA an opportunity to say, hey, if you're looking at starting in the food and beverage business, or you already are, and you're struggling for wondering what's next, come to our navigators and they'll guide you through the path.

Gordon Sheppard (04:23.181)
There's so many steps to getting up and running in any business let alone the food business let alone It's a tough business to get up in no matter which part of it you're in but in the meantime your Association very dedicated to the work that you're doing you're plugging along at a certain number of employees or people that are working in the organization doing your nonprofit Breakeven type thinking but you did something Reputationally you've made an impact. What why would the government at different levels?

have the confidence to fund you to double your staff, like what were you doing right in a sense that allowed you to get that opportunity?

Bianca Parsons (04:58.594)
Cheers.

I think longevity in non-for-profit is important to show that you can handle this over the times. So, you know, we've had now we've been around, like I said before, for over 50 years, showing that, you know, we're not going to just be a shot in the plan if you give us something that we're going to turn it into something that can last a long time, showing that we've also lasted through difficult times. It's no secret that, you know, COVID was really hard on local food and beverage companies and showing that, you know, we guided them, we helped them and we moved on to the next steps.

Another big reason is tariffs have been, tricky and you know I always say to people tariffs aren't something new. I think people, we hear it in media a lot recently so I think the average consumer thinks this is all brand new. We've been going through tariffs whether it be China or the United States for many many years and there are ebbs and flows but showing consistency is I think what gave the government an opportunity to believe in us because we've shown even when it came to tariffs that we were giving our members the correct information in a timely manner holding

their hands, you mentioned the chamber before, the reason I got that reward was because, award, sorry, was because we were able to help a lot of local businesses save millions of dollars in breaking down their tariffs, helping them receive their reciprocal tariffs from Canada back.

if they were inappropriately charged or during the process they got hit in the wrong way and also really making sure they navigate their next future, the future, so that they can understand where can we save money, where is going to be a struggle when it comes to tariffs and how do we 100 % make sure this doesn't hurt our workforce so the company doesn't have to cut down on who they employ and that hurts Albertans the most.

Gordon Sheppard (06:37.921)
Wow. The ability to help, I'm going to say, any small business owner, I'm sure, restaurant, producer, supplier, grower, whatever those things are, by bringing in the sophisticated information that allows them to navigate that more rapidly so they don't have to ramp up and sort of do it themselves. That's invaluable in terms of what you're describing for just, I'm sure, one of the things that your organization is able to do to help people along the way. That's great. So we know the win is that you doubled your staff. That's pretty cool. And you did it by

Bianca Parsons (07:06.334)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (07:07.777)
being around for a long time, getting through difficult times and doing really important work that generates millions in savings, all kinds of awareness and that kind of stuff. Plus, if we got into the policy advocacy that you're doing, I'm sure along the way and all those things, we would get into all the different things that you're doing to be a real player in this industry, again, to benefit Albertans here at the end. Whenever we hear about the win, I always like to jump into what I call the anatomy of the win. So what is the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results behind the win? If the win was to double the workforce behind it,

What's the vision, mission, values, strategically that your organization had? Any of the highlights from those areas that made this win occur?

Bianca Parsons (07:44.576)
Yeah, I think, you know...

When you have a non-for-profit, having an incredible communication with your board is number one. I'm extremely blessed at AFBA. I think when you look at sometimes the anatomy of an organization, you hear that 50 years and you wonder, okay, how long has this been around? How long has she been around? I've only been around for three years. So I'm extremely blessed that our general manager has been with us for many years. I don't want to give away her age, she'd murder me, but she's been around for a long time. And if you can walk into an organization as an executive director

incredible communication with your general manager, it's smooth sailing. And we have an incredible, very open relationship. I just left a two-hour meeting with her this morning, and creating a plan and, you know, calling each other, texting each other, we work remotely, where someone might think, you know, starting something from a remote relationship isn't the easiest process, but creating extru-

very strong professional communication from day one has been our blessing in disguise. So I know how she likes to operate. I know what she needs to be successful. And that was clear and well-defined, I feel, in the first six months, that that has now allowed us to be able to say, OK, how can we expand our team to fill the needs that you need to be successful moving forward? To also be respectful that you've been in this organization for so many years.

this is a testament, her name is Melody Pashko, to testament to Melody that when I first started I was getting emails saying well where's Melody? She's still there right? And I was like yes 100 % she's our general manager and doing a phenomenal job. So I think that speaks to her tone and her professionalism and how who she's created as a reputation for herself in our community. But having a strong team I think allows us to expand our strong team. That it's showing it's successful. Everything in non-for-profit is a little exhausting because there's

Bianca Parsons (09:40.16)
not a lot of time. So now we're giving back time and I think that's the biggest gift that we can give our members is that we're giving them more support because we're giving our staff time.

Gordon Sheppard (09:49.517)
Strategically, we had a strong team in place, which then allowed the foundational aspects to grow the team with knowing what to do with the new members. It's not just like you receive funding and you're like, because I heard that word navigator in there and that's very distinct that really suits what I'm going to guess is that, you know, if we pulled out the vision statement, the mission statement and those things, it would really that I think probably sums up nicely a lot of what you do for the members and the general public.

Bianca Parsons (09:53.474)
Hmm.

Bianca Parsons (10:02.85)
Mm-hmm.

Gordon Sheppard (10:14.527)
and Albertans that you serve along the way. So strategy, we've got some highlights in there, that's great. Anytime we have a strategy, we need a work plan. Well, I'm hearing, funny enough, 50 years in the making, if we had to start the original kind of work plan. But if we back up and say, wait a second, if we're gonna double our staff, there's a moment where there's an idea to do that. And then you gotta go through what? Some grant applications or something to actually make that occur. So if we talk about the doubling of the staff, when was it an idea and how long did that process take to kind of get into action?

Bianca Parsons (10:34.401)
Right.

Bianca Parsons (10:42.518)
Yeah, so this has been a process for two years.

So two years ago we basically said if we want to hit our goal of expanding our membership, which is how a non-for-profit thrives, the best way we can do that is listen to our members and find out what we're missing. And one of the things that we're missing is how do we support you to another level? The reality is when you only have a staff of four people, we have someone that runs mostly our tech program, Melody runs our finances, myself doing more of the policy and advocacy work, and then we have somebody else on our team who does a lot of our events.

That takes up all of our time. So then you're trying to say if someone calls and they're desperately in need to expand their business or they have issues, if they don't fit in one of those buckets, how do we basically support them? So this has been a long process and it was finding out from our members what we were missing by pulling them, speaking to them, and I think it still goes back to that communication piece, that making sure that we're giving them what they want. You spoke about the finances for small business, paying a non-for-profit, being part of a membership.

Sometimes it's something that they look at as maybe this is something I can check off my box and not pay next year for financially not doing well, unless we show them value. And the best way that we can show them value is answering what they're saying their massive needs are. Another part when we speak about the 50 years is as an organization, we've pivoted in our vision. It started off with food safety. Alberta actually, a fun fact for you, has the best food safety in all of Canada, the least amount of food safety recalls. So the food that comes out of here is, in my opinion, the safest.

and the best in the nation. So if we are going to continue to offer food safety as something that was an original pillar, but we also heard from our industry that you need to pivot. It's not just food safety. That pivoted over the years and became workplace health and safety. Okay, how can I, an employer, guarantee that I'm giving my staff the tools that they need to succeed? Not just in the food safety space, but everything else that comes along with it and make sure I'm compliant. Over years and time, that pivoted. We have a program called Made in Alberta that was created by the

Bianca Parsons (12:44.388)
government, how do we pivot and expand Made in Alberta? So Made in Alberta is really showing buy local, how do we support local? So that became one of the pillars. And now the newest pillar is really getting into the advocacy and policy space to really make sure that whether it's trade or something else that our members are feeling protected.

Gordon Sheppard (13:02.038)
How lucky to get a good overview. Thank you for pulling that summary together and articulating that. so there's a couple of things I need to pull threads on there. One is just the buy-in made in Alberta. When we buy in Alberta, is the, just give me the quick, I did this in the pre-interview with you, but what's the quick benefit when we buy in Alberta? Go ahead.

Bianca Parsons (13:13.314)
Mm-hmm.

Bianca Parsons (13:17.94)
Yeah, for sure. So if you go out to the store and you buy a loaf of bread, let's say from Texas, and the next loaf of bread right next to it is from Edmonton.

That loaf of bread here in Alberta, over 70 cents we know will stay locally. And what I mean by that is 70 cents on every dollar. So if that company is a local bakery, then they bring that money to their staff. And then their staff most likely will go out and spend money, whether it be on a school team or a local church. Maybe they go and get their hair cut locally so that money stays and we create that stronger circular community. If we don't have a circular ecosystem for finance,

and that funds are, that same amount of money is going down to the United States or wherever they're buying their bread from. So, you know, I know sometimes maybe the difference of buying local or not is around a dollar, but the...

economic impact you're making is much stronger than that. And then another other side of it is I know my members are incredibly philanthropic. I experience on a day-to-day basis. I have a little guy at home. If he has a sports team or a school that's going out and asking for support, they don't call Texas. They call the local store. They call the local bakery. They call the local butcher. And they say, you mind donating? If you look at your kid's sports team, often it'll say something like, Chimo Perogi or a local company here in Alberta.

someone's knocked on their door and said, can you support us? It doesn't often say Pepsi. So we just want to remind people as much as possible that when you buy local, made in Alberta, it doesn't only make you feel good, but it also can give an opportunity to have that strong circular economy right here in Alberta.

Gordon Sheppard (14:56.47)
Thank you so much again for bringing that up. think it's such a great point. And what's need is in the four pillars that you've described, along with pivoting maybe to a fifth as you deal with AI, do you know what I mean? And the next issue comes forward. Your organization is agile. You are meeting the current needs of what folks need and in an ever growing complexity that we're in, geopolitically and all of the trade issues that are going on. How lucky that you are at this time doubling your workforce to have a major.

Bianca Parsons (15:06.112)
Mmm, for sure.

Gordon Sheppard (15:21.92)
I'm gonna say economic impact and when you get it right, safety, safety for workers, all kinds of things. And then you can hear a growth in there in the future. No doubt that you will continue that mission to go further. Wow, that's interesting. So we've a strategy, heard lots about the strategy. We've got a work plan, this two year timeline backed up by 50 years behind that to get you this sort of this next move to make this next pivot. Anytime we have a win, there's always people involved. And so it's two years ago and you're like, boy, we gotta make this change. How would you describe your attitude through the two years? Easy sailing.

just applied and was check the box and we're done or was it ups and downs how would you describe your attitude in making this growth occur?

Bianca Parsons (15:56.642)
I'm until you get a grant approved. I spent Christmas with our general manager writing our budget for January 1st and we were...

we were going to be burning money like no other come March. And then I think it was January 10th we found out about the Prairies Canada funding and just a few days ago we found out about Alberta government funding. So the reality is a non-for-profit is it's highs and lows. And you know, now we have a plan for the next three years financially and that's protecting us. But you know, our team this morning was working on sponsorship and you know, what is that complete ecosystem and how do you make that complete ecosystem

system works. The scary thing though when you deal in government funding for anyone that deals in the non-for-profit space is that there's a lot of language where people say, you've got this, but until you have a contract signed in front of you, if the signature, it's a terrifying journey while you wait for that signature to come. Also when you're awarded grant funding, you'll hear something like, yeah your project starts April 1 let's say, and you're going to get your funding April 1, but your funding could come for another six months.

How as a non-for-profit do you fund this without causing massive havoc to an industry that's already overburdened by saying, we don't want to be broke. We don't want to turn the lights off. But how can we keep this functioning? We've done some things in our ecosystem over the years. no longer have a brick and mortar. Everyone works remotely. We go to our members in person. These are some challenges that we've discovered that end up giving us a better financial bottom line. But it's keeping

the lights on literally while you're waiting for that next funding that gets a little bit terrifying.

Gordon Sheppard (17:46.444)
Yeah, interesting. And I mean, you're just dealing with a cashflow reality that any organization kind of deals with. Also trying to anticipate that, know, read the tea leaves as you try and get those next three years set up. I do a lot of work in my own work consulting wise with a lot of nonprofit boards. I've been in those rooms where it's like, what's this going to look like? How are we going to get these gaps covered? What is it? What are we going to do? You folks are navigating it along with the nail biting that goes along the way. There's other people involved in this win as well. You talked a lot about your general manager. Congratulations. How nice to have someone who really

upholds the organization throughout that time and the continuity and what they're doing. And I don't mean to get into the whole thing, whole whiteboard of stakeholders, any other people that we need to mention? mean, Prairies Can is mentioned there, of course, the Alberta government supporting as well. Are there people that we need to highlight in getting a win to occur when we double the staff?

Bianca Parsons (18:31.042)
Yeah, so last year our board has been very respectfully run for many years by a gentleman named Eric Hack and he passed on the chair seat to another gentleman. you know, Andrew's now come on as our board chair. He's part of Sunrise Bakery, an incredible co-packing facility. your listeners don't know what co-packing is, it allows for a major company or a small company to use the capacity of a local business to make their product. So it allows for you to come in,

They give you the recipe. They do some work for Dairy Queen. They do work for other companies. So this allows them to make that product locally. And it helps our ecosystem. We have a co-packing portal called AB Food Connect. So if you do have any companies that are listening, if you have the capacity to take on another product, maybe you only use your machines from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and you're thinking, you know what, no one's running this from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. They can go on there, see what machinery is available and maybe

make a contract with local companies. Maybe you have a recipe and you want to see it in a big retailer, this is a way we can get it there faster without you dedicating your time to equipment. If it's not my board chairs, I would say...

Food and Beverage Canada has been an incredible relationship for us. Joining their board, having a voice, they don't have a representation from Saskatchewan, so it's myself and a gentleman named Michael from Manitoba that represent the Prairies. And giving Alberta an opportunity to have a voice in Ottawa I think is extremely important. Christina Farrell is their CEO and this gives us a chance to basically say, know what, for so long, it's a long age story,

Alberta kind of feels like I joke that I feel like the little kid in the corner saying pay attention to me pay attention to me but we've also seen such massive growth out of Alberta in food and beverage we were about a 12 billion dollar industry ten years ago now depending on what you consider food and beverage which

Bianca Parsons (20:32.546)
the devil's in the details, but for definition, do you consider a grower, a food processor, or a food producer? But if you consider everybody in the ecosystem, we're a $28 billion industry for our DGP. You know, we are growing, we are growing fast, and we are making massive contributions here in Alberta and across Canada, so having that voice, strengthening our voice really matters to me.

Gordon Sheppard (20:54.155)
So you're building, again, we build on the reputation. We get the nod to double the staff. Well, why? Well, it's because we're actually building reputation with so many key players. And again, we could go on and on about all the other people that are contributing to this as well in a $28 billion industry that you folks are a major contributor towards. Well, that's really interesting. So we've got the strategy, the work plan. There's people involved. Operationally, if we are going to operationalize

doubling the staff, we've got to get some stuff kind of ready. Any operational highlights to, I'm going to say onboarding or setting things up, policies, like anything that you need to do to sort of make sure that occurs well.

Bianca Parsons (21:30.71)
The tricky part in...

Navigators is that I would say actually the the hiring was an interesting process because you need to find People that are going to be the champions that have the right knowledge We know that knowledge is constantly changing in our space from food safety to workplace health and safety like I mentioned before You know the workplace health and safety act even changed in Alberta over the last few years of making sure That the information that we're passing on is a hundred percent correct So we don't misguide anyone that is one of the main challenges and one of the main reasons why we wanted to expect

was because we know the internet is a beautiful place, but we also know it can be a scary place. So we were seeing some of our members go online and say, don't worry, I got that course online for $5. And I'm like, what? What did you buy? So, know, HACCP, for example, allows you to have the right food safety to go to someone like Sobe's and sell your product in another province. If you're receiving a HACCP plan, which is basically a safety plan for your company,

online from someone that's never stepped into your facility and is giving you wrong advice and doesn't know how we operate in Canada or Alberta, you've been scammed, unfortunately. So it's making sure that our people were the correct people that they were going to be passing on the proper information and truly navigating and guiding people to success. So I would say that was one of the key ones for me was making sure I have a board member that says ACEs in their places and I love that saying. I have people on my staff that when they were hired,

They weren't doing the job they're doing now, but we found their ace and now they're in their place. So we've moved them to the perfect spots and now bringing on these new aces to be in those places is what has me excited.

Gordon Sheppard (23:13.963)
Aces in their places, along with the right tools, along with fundamentally, I'm reaching back to your values. Do you know what I mean? Get that thing of getting it right, being the true north in your industry at a time when the internet can bump the truth around a little bit. But being that true north, and again, you can see why you're leveling up and really providing value. Member-based organizations are faced with these same dilemmas. So I'm glad to hear about pivot, provide value, listen, get it right, but we can already hear massive benefits to membership.

along the way here. So strategy, work plan, people, operations, finally there's results, quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative results are for new people coming in, you know, in these roles that you're talking about. You've received some funding for those things. Any other sort of quantitative highlights that you'd to point out in terms of, that are important for this win?

Bianca Parsons (23:54.764)
first round.

Bianca Parsons (23:58.272)
Yeah, so our membership started off when I started, usually bounces around 300, 350 members. A hundred of those are usually what we call associate members. So they're not actually producing or processing food or beverage, but they maybe are a box company. That's a local box company that says, you know, I have a product that I think will really benefit your members. I want to be part of your ecosystem. When we started Made in Alberta, we've probably had about two or we were just trying to figure out what's the crossover. There's so many, as I said before, non-for-profits.

in this space that I didn't want to make it more complicated. Let's say if you are a local beer company and then all of a sudden you start distilling, are you part of the local craft brewer association? Okay, now you're part of the local craft distillers association. Maybe now you have a tourism operation, you join the tourism society. Maybe you're growing vegetables for your operation or you're growing some seed or some botanicals. Are you gonna join the growers? And then are you gonna join Made in Alberta? And just got so complicated, the space, and just too expensive. So what we said,

was there's a mini fee you can pay to be part of Made in Alberta. So that broadened our ecosystem. So from going from about 300 members at that stage, now between the two, we have over 700 companies that we're able to offer. And then as we continue to grow, our plan is to hit over 1,000 members between the two plans, which we're on target for. I think we have a few that cross over now, but we have 600 in Made in Alberta, 300 in AFPA,

When we take away the crossover, think in the next two years, we can hit 900 members between the two. So to go from 300 members to 900 members is our growth and our financial stability in between grants. So that's where we see it.

Gordon Sheppard (25:39.455)
Well, that's wonderful. And meeting people where they're at. Do you know what I mean? This thing of full memberships, and I can tell you having dealt with a lot of different associations as well, that thing of we're just going to bang it out the way we've been banging it out for the last 30, 40, 50 years, people don't want that anymore. And especially newer people coming into your ecosystems. So to be adaptable makes a ton of sense in terms of what you're doing. And it allows you to, again, to focus on what you're good at in your space and provide real benefits for the members that you're.

bringing on board. Well, that's just great to hear on the quantitative side. Qualitatively, how does it feel to get this win?

Bianca Parsons (26:09.109)
Okay.

Bianca Parsons (26:12.994)
amazing. know, I am and I guess one piece that I haven't brought up thus far is I come from a very supportive family. I come from on my husband's side and my side entrepreneurs. People that truly believe in creating space and creating work for others and you know they didn't always have the best ride or the best journey to get there. Whether it was coming in as an immigrant and trying to figure out your own journey or your parents coming in as immigrants. My in-laws are entrepreneurs, my mother-in-law

in the health business, she owns a nursing home, my father-in-law was in the construction business, and they basically have created space for others to work, but also followed their own passions and journey. I'm married to an entrepreneur, you know, and I saw a meme the other day and it said, you know you're married to an entrepreneur when they look like they're in a toxic relationship sometimes because they're on their phone like this on a weekend or in the middle of nowhere, you know, though that I see that in my husband, I also know that we're passing on to our child being able to watch their

father create business to grow a sector that he sees a lot of promise for. Whiskey in Alberta, it's kind of a new industry in some aspects. been a few companies that have been along for while, but we're seeing that growth. We're seeing the Alberta Whiskey Act being passed this year. So just like champagne, we're going to be able to have a product that is just from Alberta. When we say Alberta Whiskey can only come from Alberta and what that will mean for our community.

I think for me the wins feel great personally. It feels great when I have a member call me and say, you know what, I got back some of that money I spent in tariffs and now I don't have to let anyone go. That feels phenomenal and that makes me all feel fuzzy. But it also on a personal level, seeing growth and seeing expansion when I've been so inspired by those who do it around me, it feels good.

Gordon Sheppard (28:05.354)
That's really, you can hear it authentically. It's real for you. Cause again, it's impacting your whole life. It's your family, the people that you serve, the province that you serve. Now the Canada that you serve in terms of serving up at that level, it's at all those levels. Well, how lucky to get through this and really speak with a wonderful leader who's, you know, in the middle of all these things that are happening and along with getting those great people on your team. Whenever I chat with leaders like yourself, I always like to say, you know, if you had a few sentences.

to give to another leader on the way out here. What are some of those things that you like to pass along besides aces in places, which is a good one. I'm going to steal that one for a t-shirt now. But what sort of a few sentences do you like to pass along for other leaders?

Bianca Parsons (28:46.683)
I am probably the queen of pivot. Personally, I started off, we talked about this offline before, but I started off in musical theater. I pivoted and worked in broadcasting, but...

I always tell people that it doesn't always matter for me. I don't have a long list of education. I don't have a master's degree. I don't have any of those things. My husband, though, has two master's degrees and it's served him extremely well. So I think pivot. If you go to university and you don't think that is your right thing to do, pivot. If you are in a career path and you have another passion that's striking a need, pivot. So I think not afraid to pivot. You know, I was in broadcasting for years and loved it. Worked in the video production space.

and absolutely loved it, but had this calling and was so inspired by Made in Alberta and the work that was happening in our province that I wanted to be part of it and I wanted to help other companies succeed in that space. So I think it's okay to pivot.

Gordon Sheppard (29:44.106)
It's okay to pivot, that permission is great for so many people that are thinking entrepreneurially or leaders that may be feeling stuck and can get inspired by you. Well, we could talk on and on and on, but I wanna say thank you so much for being on the show.

Bianca Parsons (29:57.334)
Thank you for having me. It was a wonderful chance to talk to you. Maybe I'll go think of some more t-shirts.