“It’s all about people.” That is how Michele Matthews sees her job – managing people in order to move forward a vision. It all harkens back to her marketing days, which took her to all sorts of different roles in her small organization as time went along. After all, in small start-ups, sometimes you have to do a job that you weren’t hired for – this fed into her curiosity and led to her career taking off in the human resources sector, as COO of AG Care and a board member at the Chartered Professionals in Human Resources (CPHR) of British Columbia & Yukon.

Brian Scudamore is a serial entrepreneur. He is best known for being the brains behind 1-800-GOT-JUNK, a national trash collection company in Canada. But he sees his role as more than a CEO; he grows the business culture of his companies. To him, business is always fun – as long as he pays attention to work-life balance, which allows him to be more present at work.

How do you get First Nations, government, and the energy industry together? That is something that Chris Sankey knows the answer to, because it is what he does. He loves solving problems that nobody else wants to touch and that drives his mission – aiming for a Canada with economic opportunities without racism.

Jennifer Reynolds is chief executive officer of the Women Corporate Directors Foundation (WCD).