Rising Stars Gala Event

On Wednesday evening, I attended the 4^th annual Rising Stars Gala event at the Delta Beausejour in Moncton. Approximately 200 professionals and their families from the NB knowledge industry were there to recognize 30 outstanding “Unsung heroes” of our knowledge economy. We awarded 10 of those individuals with a year long mentorship with several key players from New brunswick's knowledge economy.

The extravagant gala offered an opportunity for the finalists and professionals to network with their provincial colleagues and featured two keynote speakers. Heather Tulk of Aliant made many key statements on the importance leadership has in our lives. Heather stated that individuals are the CEO of their lives. She called on the Rising Stars finalist to think of themselves as "You, Inc." and challenged the stars to set a vision for their life and think of the legacy they wanted to leave behind them. It was truly inspiring.

The other speaker of the evening feature Carol Thompson, CEO of Austin, TX based Computerland. Carol is a key player in Austin’s world reknown knowledge economy. Throughout her presentation, Carol highlighted several key points that linked NB’s current knowledge economy to where Austin was before they decided to aggresively push economic development of a knowledge industry for their city. Carol indicated that the Moncton area has several similarities to Austin and that is why the IC2 partnership makes sense for the Moncton area. She used the example of the Rolling Stones, the housing market, Moncton’s beautiful downtown core and our blue collar roots to highlight the similarities between each community. The "can do" attitude demonstrated by Austin’s knowledge sector resembles the resurgence that transformed Moncton into a knowledge industry hub in the 90’s.

Yours truly presented the inaugural "Rising Stars Pioneer" award to Stephen Palmer or Whitehill Technologies for his commitment to mentorship and promotion of NB's knowledge industry talent.

For the fourth year in a row, the nominees were outstanding! Anyone who thinks that we lack brainpower in this province seriously needs to look at the list of nominees from this year. (Click Here).

Congrats to all the winners and especially to EGM and the volunteers for organizing a great event!