Radha Curpen appears on the cover of BCBusiness' October 2023 issue. Radha is chair of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade and is featured in a wide-ranging Q&A on leadership and what's next for B.C.'s economy, along with the Board's president and CEO, and incoming chair. Excerpts from the interview are below.
BCB: What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
Radha Curpen: You choose to be reliable and trustworthy. Everything you're going to build is on trust. It's about showing up, being reliable and continuously doing it in every area you say you will. And making sure your actions align with your words.
BCB: What does mentoring mean to you? What helps mentors grow in their roles as leaders?
When you serve somebody, help somebody, it's the most fulfilling feeling . . . That's what mentoring is: a level of caring for that person. And you feel so fulfilled when you do that—then you can go out and conquer the world.
BCB: How do you see the B.C. business landscape shaping up in the near future? Any concerns?
RC: For any kind of regulatory barriers, governments and businesses need to come together to see how we can remove them and dismantle them to allow for the future we want. When we talk about alignment, action and words, that's one where we need some alignment.
We have people who say, "We could invest in Canada but we're not." Governments talk about renewable energy, but what steps have been taken to get to a process that's responsible but is also streamlined to allow these [projects] to happen? That's what we want to discuss.
BCB: In the next year or so, what are some things you want to accomplish in your professional life?
RC: Helping businesses navigate the uncertainty of what we're facing right now and about to face with everything from the energy transition to food scarcity, supply chain issues, environmental and human rights issues. All those complex things where businesses are having to make commitments or take stands. All those things they've never been called upon to do and will be now. And finding innovation in the way we practise law with those things in mind.