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I’m a lifelong resident of this place – I’ve watched Kelowna grow from a city of 75,000 to where it is now, closing in on 100k beyond that. My family moved to Westbank before I’d hit Kindergarten, and I’ve lived on one side of the lake or the other ever since. Attending school here, working jobs all over here, building a life here.
My roots are in kitchens, in packing houses, on orchards. I owe a lot to those experiences in local hospitality & agriculture, and the folks who grow, pick, process, and prepare our food are the hardest working people I’ve been fortunate to know. It’s the honest labour that keeps this city running.
In the modern day, I’m lucky to have a career as an independent video game developer. Over the past 16 years, I’ve partnered with Canadian and international outfits of all sizes, from bedroom coders to billion dollar companies. In the course of doing business, I’ve taken on clients whose projects were on track to fail – unrealistic timelines, shifting priorities, spiraling scope – and delivered. I’ve solved technical and logistical problems that at face value looked legitimately impossible, in large part by knowing what questions to ask and being agile enough to learn new competencies on the fly. In this industry, the ability to stay motivated under intense pressure paired with the willingness to do whatever it takes to see a project through to the end is everything.
Before video games, I worked for the BC Ministry of Finance, developing and supporting a tool that served municipalities across the province in efficiently managing business licenses. This tool provided bylaw officers with a secure, user-friendly resource for use in the field with their license-related queries. Initial development came in well under-budget, and this provided for the first time a central, searchable, up-to-date database of license holder information for use by cities and towns across BC. In this small way, I’ve had a hand in making municipal governments (Kelowna’s included!) run more effectively.
After graduating with a co-conferred degree in Business Admin from Okanagan College and UBC Okanagan, I returned to my alma mater to develop and run a wide range of arts & technology day camps for children aged 6-12. I remain involved with OC’s Animation program to this day; Okanagan College’s Animation diploma is a great example of the sort of innovative and highly employable skillsets we’re equipping our students with here in Kelowna, and graduates can take that specialty down so many different avenues, my wheelhouse of video game development being one of them.
As owner and operator of a video game studio, I recognize the importance of constantly innovating and I see enormous potential in Kelowna. We can become the place for interactive digital media production in this province – not only to diversify our economy to better weather the storm when tourism dips, but our young people are graduating with world class educations in arts & technology without options to apply their skills locally. We can work to change that and prevent the brain drain our community is likely to experience otherwise.
As someone who’s spent seasons immersed in fruit, I want to see us revitalize our farming and food production here for greater resiliency in the face of destabilizing trade relations and an increasingly unpredictable climate. Our wine industry is the crown jewel of Kelowna tourism and it’s under threat, not just from droughts and wildfire smoke but also from erratic tariffing by our largest trading partner. It would be irresponsible not to do more to strengthen our agricultural sector against these dangers, and to better shore up our community’s food security.
And as a lifelong resident who’s matured along with our city, my economic vision for Kelowna is one of homegrown, innovative, and sustainable industry fuelled by the world-class talent and spirit of the Okanagan’s people. My goal is to bring lasting economic prosperity to Kelowna, to ensure that this city’s youth are free to pursue careers in the world’s most exciting industries, and to work for all of us here in Kelowna in achieving a safe, affordable, and livable community in which to pursue our lives and livelihoods.
I look forward to earning your vote over the course of this municipal election.