GRO Conference '09
Coping and Capitalizing: Universities in Challenging Times
June 16–19, 2009 | Vancouver, BC
Presenters
Don Avison
Avison is president of the Research Universities’ Council of B.C. (formerly the University Presidents’ Council of B.C.) which represents the interests of BC’s four public research-intensive universities. A lawyer, he joined the council in 1999 after serving the B.C. government as deputy minister of education, deputy minister of crown corporations and deputy minister of health.
Avison has also been deputy minister of justice for the government of the Northwest Territories and, earlier, was a litigation counsel for the federal justice department and director-general of the federal Aboriginal Justice Initiative. He argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. He is a former student of three BC post-secondary institutions: Thompson Rivers University, Simon Fraser University (BA) and the University of British Columbia (law).
Mark Betteridge
Betteridge is the Executive Director and CEO of Discovery Parks Trust in Vancouver. He re-organized the company to create more than 1.5 million sq. ft. of privately financed developments in high tech/life science parks. It is the largest landlord to biotech firms in British Columbia and has, as beneficiaries, four major post secondary institutions.
As the first President of the University of British Columbia Real Estate Corporation from 1988 to 1996, Betteridge structured and ran the company to make a profit of $81 million for the owner, the University of British Columbia. This project entailed all land development and approvals for more than 900 condominium housing units as well as the design, private financing and construction of 253 affordable faculty housing units on campus.
As President and CEO of MBA Inc., Betteridge completed the business planning and City approvals for a 650,000 sq. ft. privately financed medical technology park for Vancouver General Hospital. The underlying business case for this project was to assist in the commercialization of health technology for public benefit. Betteridge also served as Assistant City Manager for the City of Surrey.
Betteridge has BSc in Geography and Economics from Trent University and an MA in Regional Planning from the University of Waterloo.
Larry Blain
Blain has been CEO of Partnerships BC since January 2003. It’s a company, wholly owned by the B.C. government, that is responsible for bringing together ministries, agencies and the private sector to develop projects through public-private partnerships (P3s). Its projects include highways and hospitals.
Prior to joining Partnerships BC, Blain was an investment banker with Pemberton Securities, which was acquired by RBC Dominion Securities and became RBC Capital Markets. For 20 years, he was responsible for coverage of major corporations and governments in Western Canada, specializing in public finance, utilities and infrastructure finance. Before that, Blain was an economist with the Bank of Canada and director of central borrowing with the B.C. ministry of finance. He has a PhD in economics from the University of B.C.
Matthew Carter
Carter is president of the Great Northern Way Campus Trust, and thus responsible for developing the Great Northern Way Campus tract of 20 acres on the False Creek Flats in Vancouver. (Great Northern Way is a post-secondary educational institution, a partnership of Simon Fraser University, the University of B.C., the B.C. Institute of Technology, and the new Emily Carr University.)
Carter was previously vice-president at UBC Properties Trust, a real estate development company owned by the University of B.C. He helped the development of a new community at UBC’s West Point Grey campus, including a shopping centre, school, community centre and homes for residents, seniors, students and faculty.
Before joining UBC Properties in 2002, Carter worked with Citigroup in England in various real-estate financing roles.
Phil Dreaver
Dreaver is a Group Director with Plenary Group and has extensive experience completing P3 infrastructure projects. He was a founding director and established Plenary Group in Canada in 2005. He has expertise leading bidding consortia, negotiating and contracting with government sponsors under a variety of risk allocation approaches, structuring contractual frameworks with consortium partners and developing effective financing solutions.
Dreaver played a key role in the contractual negotiations and financing of numerous P3 infrastructure projects, including Bridgepoint Hospital, Niagara Hospital, North Bay Regional Health Centre, Archives of Ontario, MGCS New Data Centre, Abbotsford Hospital and Cancer Centre, Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre and Anthony Henday Southeast Drive.
From 1999, until forming Plenary Group in Canada in 2005, Dreaver worked as a Director in the Infrastructure Capital group of ABN AMRO Bank in Sydney, Toronto and Vancouver. Prior to that, he worked in Andersen Consulting’s business strategy division.
Gordon Harris
As president and CEO of SFU Community Trust, Harris oversees the continued development of UniverCity, an award-winning sustainable urban community adjacent to SFU’s Burnaby Mountain campus. Earlier, Harris was for 20 years a Vancouver-based professional urban planner, providing consulting services to international clients.
He is a frequent presenter at international conferences and is a regular guest lecturer at the UBC and SFU. He is a contributing editor of the Ontario Planning Journal and a senior associate with the Canadian Urban Institute, where he chairs its annual national urban issues conference. He is also chair of the Planning Institute of B.C.’s professional practices review committee.
He has won awards from the Canadian Institute of Planners, the Planning Institute of B.C., and the Alberta Association of Planners.
Greg Lyle
Lyle is the founder and Managing Director of Innovative Research Group Inc., a national public opinion research and strategy firm with offices in Toronto and Vancouver. Innovative Research Group provides critical information needed to assess and overcome public affairs and corporate communications challenges, identify and evaluate potential solutions, and monitor success.
As a former Principal Secretary, Lyle has built a career at the intersection of public policy, communications and public opinion. His polls have been highlighted in media across the country and he has been featured in many media outlets including Global TV, The National Post and various CanWest Newspapers, the Globe and Mail, Time Magazine and Report on Business TV's Squeeze Play.
Evi Mustel
As president and principal of Mustel Research Group Ltd., Mustel has more than 30 years experience in social and marketing research. She has worked with governments, crown corporations, commissions, developers, public relations and advertising firms, management consultants, planners, professional and not-for-profit organizations.
Mustel's experience includes retail research, new product development, land-use, and municipal planning and visioning issues. She is a Certified Market Research Professional (CMRP) and has a BA in sociology from McMaster University. She is a director of the Vancouver Board of Trade, a director of the YMCA of Greater Vancouver, and chair of the YMCA’s communications committee. She has served on the executive of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) an organization of which her company is a certified Gold Seal member.
Philip Steenkamp
Steenkamp became president and CEO, B.C. Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Secretariat, in January 2009. He earlier held senior positions with the B.C. and Ontario governments. In B.C., these included deputy minister of aboriginal affairs, of the B.C. Treaty Negotiations Office, of strategic policy and social development in the Office of the Premier, and of advanced education. He then served in Ontario for two years as deputy minister of training, colleges and universities, and deputy minister of education.
Steenkamp returned to BC in 2008 as deputy minister of tourism, culture and the arts. He has a BA from the University of Natal in South Africa, and an MA and PhD in African history from Queen’s. He has taught at Queen’s and the University of Victoria.
David W. Strangway
As a geophysicist and chief of NASA’s geophysics branch in the early 1970s, Strangway designed lunar experiments for Apollo astronauts. Then he became a vice-president at the University of Toronto, his alma mater, and chair of geology. In 1983, he became the university’s president. In 1985 he became president of the University of B.C. There, among other things, he established the UBC Real Estate Corp. to generate university revenue.
In 1998, Strangway became president and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, funding national research pro¬grams and helping the loss of Canadian researchers to other countries.
In 2004, he founded Quest University Canada, a private non-profit liberal arts and sciences university in Squamish BC, which opened in 2007. He is currently Quest’s president and chancellor emeritus.
Robbin Tourangeau
Robbin Tourangeau is currently the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Council of Ontario Universities (COU). As part of her portfolio at COU, she oversees initiatives related to accessibility and disability on campus, Aboriginal students and federal advocacy. She also works with the Ontario Council on University Research on issues related to the research portfolio.
Over the last ten years, Tourangeau has worked as a policy advisor on social, urban and community issues to a number of non-governmental organizations and government departments. Most recently, she worked as the Director of Policy in the Office for Disability Issues. She has also served as Vice-President, Public Policy and Government Relations, at Imagine Canada, as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister, and as a Senior Policy Analyst responsible for social and municipal/Aboriginal policy at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. She began her career in Ottawa as a federal Parliamentary Intern.
Tourangeau holds a Bachelor of Arts degree (High Distinction) in History and French Literature from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts in History from Queen’s University.
Claire Trépanier
Trépanier is acting director of the Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs/Bureau des affaires francophones et francophiles (OFFA/BAFF) at Simon Fraser University. OFFA’s mission is to develop, coordinate and promote post-secondary programs and courses taught in French in two SFU faculties (Education, and Arts and Social Sciences) to meet the post-secondary education needs of Francophone and Francophile communities in B.C. OFFA also organizes activities to promote the value of French on and off campus.
Trépanier is responsible for SFU’s program in public administration and community services, also known as the French Cohort Program, which is offered primarily in French. Trépanier, originally from SFU’s department of French, became acting director of OFFA/BAFF on May 1, 2008. She has a BA and MA from Laval University.