Tawatinaw Valley Community Futures general manager Kelly Harris-Martin has been honoured with provincial leadership award.
The Swan-Knight Award is presented to recognize leadership and efforts to foster collaboration within the entire Community Futures organization. She received the award at an Oct. 3 gala, which she said came as a surprise.
“They started off with mentioning the winner had developed the business retention program, so I knew it had to be me because I’m the only one who has done that,” she said. “It was a big shock. I was pretty much floored.”
The business retention program is one of many initiatives Harris-Martin has helped create or adapt to the Tawatinaw Valley office. The program, called ‘Are You Ready for the Realtor?’ helps existing business owners transition out of the business and pass it on.
The goal is to have more existing businesses change hands and stay in the community, rather than simply close with the assets sent to auction.
“There is a conception that when they’re ready to retire they’ll just call the realtor, list the business and wait for the cheque to roll in,” she said. “At the end of the day, it takes on average three years to sell a business and actually exit from that business.”
Another area where the Tawatinaw Valley branch has been collaborating is in staffing — one of the local business analysts also works two days per week at the Stony Plain office. Community Futures is a federal program that relies on federal funding, but there has not been any increase in nearly a decade.
“That’s been a pretty phenomenal success for both offices,” she said. “We’re doing more with less and we’ve had to get a bit creative.”
Harris-Martin also pointed to the success of the Biz Kids program as an example of collaboration and innovation. A similar program existed at the Lakeland Community Futures office, and it was modified and adapted to better fit with Westlock’s needs.
Specifically, she said the Lakeland program was geared to elementary-aged kids, and included some free start-up money. The program in Westlock, which has now expanded to five schools in the area, focuses on junior-high and high-school kids and provides a start-up loan instead of a start-up gift.
“We had to adapt it somewhat for our purposes,” she said. “My feeling from this office and from my board is the kids needed to learn about credit.”
Harris-Martin said while she was pleased to receive the award, she knows the award isn’t hers alone — rather, the board and all of her staff can take credit for their own contributions as well.
She also noted that one of the award’s namesakes, the late Clark Knight, should get some of the credit. When Harris-Martin first took over the general manager position, she needed some help with the in-house software. She called Knight, who was then the general manager in Viking, and he invited her to come to Viking where he helped her learn the software.
“That’s one thing that really struck with me, that we need to keep up the relationships and some of the best training does happen just peer-to-peer and not in such a structured environment,” she said. “Getting the award the first year it was named for Clark was pretty amazing for me.”
For more information about Community Futures in Alberta, visit cfna.albertacf.com.
