This press release was originally published by Calgary Herald. Click here to view the original press release.
If good things really do happen to good people, it’s no surprise that Boyden’s Calgary office earned a more than 40 per cent increase in gross revenue in 2021 over the previous year.
The local partners of the executive recruitment firm have long been supportive of several organizations that have benefited greatly from their involvement.
A good example is Bow Valley College. At the recent Premier’s Scholarship Luncheon, Boyden managing partner Kevin Gregor was applauded for his role as co-chair of the event — he has been a committee member since being part of the founding group that organized the first luncheon 25 years ago.
Boyden partners helped the college raise more than $175,000 at this year’s luncheon by matching donations up to a total of $20,000.
Gregor has also served the college as a founding member of its board of governors and as past-chair of its Improving Lives Campaign.
His many other board involvements include chair of Alberta Blue Cross and its foundation, Calgary Chamber of Commerce, Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation and the Peter Lougheed Hospital Development Council.
Boyden is a global organization with 75 offices around the world. Calgary partner Robert Travis has taken the lead role in a campaign to help the people of Ukraine.
He was made aware of a Boyden office in Spain that was hosting a family from its office in Kyiv, another in England that is hosting two female members of its staff, and the Polish office helping a refugee find a destination. Travis persuaded his other partners here to donate one month’s operating costs to keep the Kyiv office in business, and that led to him becoming the global quarterback to establish a US$200,000 fund to support and rebuild the office in Ukraine.
Morgan Campbell, the third Calgary partner, currently serves as vice-chair of Ronald McDonald House of Southern Alberta, and as a director of the Canadian Petroleum Hall of Fame.
Earlier this year, Boyden opened an office in Saskatoon — leading it is another committed volunteer, Dan Brown, past-chair of the United Way of Saskatoon and Area.
For years Boyden has been noted for holding its annual Guinness and Green party at the Calgary Petroleum Club as a thank you to clients and friends, and used to raise thousands of dollars for a variety of Calgary charities.
The pandemic put the party on hold for the past two years and it was too late to organize one this St. Patrick’s Day after restrictions were lifted, but it will be back in 2023, and later this month the partners will reorganize the event to introduce and promote The Wilder Institute to their guests.
The Wilder Institute is the rebranded Calgary Zoo Foundation that oversees the zoo’s conservation portfolio, which includes community conservation and conservation translocation/reproduction programs to save many endangered species.
Boyden’s executive search team was responsible for the recruitment of Rick Bennett, the zoo’s new COO, as well as CFO Theresa Roessel, and earlier Stephan Ross as its chief development officer.
Holding its event at the zoo and bringing attention to the wonderful programs it has led in critical wildlife conservation is a means of thanking the zoo for trusting them with its search needs.
The relationships built by the partners and staff at Boyden through caring for our community is certainly shown in the quality of the searches they have been awarded and completed.
Academia has always been one of Boyden’s strengths. Besides the long relationship with Bow Valley College, the team is currently assisting Mount Royal University to find its new provost and vice-president academic, has worked closely with the University of Calgary on senior appointments and has helped build an advisory board for the Werklund School of Agriculture Technology at Olds College.
Earlier this year, Boyden helped bring Tony Weeks to Calgary to become the new president and CEO of The Brenda Strafford Foundation from a similar role at York Care Centre in New Brunswick.
Gregor says he is constantly impressed with the talent he gets to meet in the company’s search for executives — including Darshpreet Bhatti, the CEO of the Green Line LRT project — and proud to bring so many of them to this city.
David Parker appears regularly in the Herald. Read his columns online at calgaryherald.com/business. He can be reached at 403-830-4622 or by email at info@davidparker.ca.
