Laurel Douglas has held roles in several different countries over the course of her career.
Douglas is the CEO of Women’s Enterprise Centre, a position she has held for the past eleven years. Women’s Enterprise Centre provides business loans, business advisory services, mentoring programs and information support for female business owners throughout British Columbia. As the CEO, Douglas runs the organization, has staff in five different locations across the province and helps the organization stay current and fill gaps in the marketplace.
Douglas has worked in the economic development and social enterprise field, which she views as a ‘helping profession,’ but that hasn’t always been the case. She began her career in finance after university and after earning her MBA on a scholarship in France, she continued to work in Europe for nearly a decade. Between school and work, Douglas spent six years in France, spent almost two years in Germany and finally spent close to two more years working in the United Kingdom. Those years overseas were of tremendous benefit to her, as they taught her to embrace and value diversity as a way to get better outcomes and gave her a global perspective she otherwise wouldn’t have.
“The role I had in France after I finished my MBA, I was in charge of strategic planning for a very large multi-national telecom manufacturer that had factories manufacturing in 22 different countries, and I used to have to go and visit the managing directors of all those divisions,” Douglas explained. “So I definitely developed a lot of experience in inter-cultural relations and trying to find ways to communicate concepts across different cultural backgrounds, and I think those skills have been really useful both in the tech side and with women entrepreneurs.”
Douglas has altered the path of her career several times, the first of which was moving from finance into the tech sector. She spent 16 years in the tech industry, an industry that historically has very few women in it.
“All of those experiences made me realize some of the extra challenges women had, not only as business owners,” she noted. “I think about 36 or 37 percent of small businesses in BC are run by women. Being a woman in business in general has had its challenges over the years, and I wanted to help other women. I’m in a helping profession. The last few roles I had in the tech sector were also in a helping profession, so first I mad the transition from straight business to helping professions, then I made the transition from helping tech companies to helping women. Our organization helps women access capital and resources and encourages them to grow their business.”
Douglas’ career overseas has given her many great experiences to draw from. While in France, she was brought on to be part of a strategic development team to help with the purchase and merger of a French and an American business, which when combined had revenues of $20 billion and over 100,000 employees. While in Germany, Douglas also got to witness firsthand a very famous day on the stock market.
“I was actually working on the trading floor at the time of what they call Black Monday, which was a Monday in October of 1987 when the stock market took a really big tumble, so that was a really interesting thing to witness first hand.”
In addition to the memorable experiences she has already been a part of, Douglas is very excited to be leading the Women’s Enterprise Centre in working on two projects, Catalyst for Growth and Supplier Diversity Canada. Catalyst for Growth is an initiative that is focused on growing the impact of women on BC’s economy by helping grow women in senior leadership roles, the number of women who are entrepreneurs and the number of women in trades in emerging sectors.
Douglas is also involved in additional leadership roles in the province. She serves on several boards, and is also a member of University of British Columbia Okanagan’s External Advisory Committee.
Crowe MacKay’s Women to Watch program is a weekly feature that profiles remarkable women in our community, concluding Oct. 16.
