Fiona Famulak has a knack for rising to the moment.
Announced last week as the new CEO and president of the BC Chamber of Commerce, the entrepreneur and former Whistler Chamber of Commerce head takes over at a crucial time for the province’s largest business network.
“When the opportunity for the BC Chamber position came up, it came at a pivotal point in its history, leading the industry through and beyond a pandemic,” Famulak told Pique this week. “There’s a lot of opportunity there.”
Leading the Whistler Chamber between 2008 and 2013, Famulak helped usher the resort’s business community through a global financial downturn, the high-water mark of the 2010 Olympic Games, and the post-Olympic lull that followed. She then took over as president of the Vancouver Regional Construction Association at a time when contractors across B.C. “needed to build faster, greener and more productively,” she said.
All that is to say: Famulak is more than up for the Sisyphean task of bringing B.C.’s business sector back from the brink.
“These conversations are going to require courage to challenge the status quo, because we know that the way to do business from a year ago is no longer going to work,” she said. “We need to identify new ways of doing business, and we need to reach out to a variety of parties, perhaps even competitors that we haven’t worked with before, in order to find ways of doing business differently. That’s exciting to me.”
Famulak is the second Whistler Chamber alumnus to assume the top job at the BC Chamber after Val Litwin served in the role from 2016 until stepping down this summer. She said it was Whistler’s strong sense of community and collaboration, particularly during those monumental 2010 Olympics, that she has carried with her since her time here.
“I use the model that was rolled out to deliver the Games often, in terms of assembling the right people at the table, defining roles and responsibilities, and working together on solutions,” she said. “That’s what it’s going to take for us to navigate the pandemic, and I absolutely understand that it’s tough economic times and I think there’s ways in which we can come together, share experiences from across the province that will help our member chambers, boards of trade and their members navigate the pandemic.”
First and foremost, Famulak said the priority will be to assist the chamber’s more than 36,000 member businesses navigate the layers of government support available in the pandemic, and advocating for their expansion, where necessary.
Just days into the job, Famulak said she would leave the more detailed plans for tourism recovery to the Tourism Industry Association of BC, but she acknowledged the chamber has a role to play in advocating for “responsible” domestic travel as COVID-19 vaccinations are rolled out.
“There’s an absence of global travel for obvious reasons, and we live in a beautiful province, so let’s enjoy it,” she said. “Let’s make sure that we’re encouraging everyone to travel responsibly at this time so that we’re helping to shore up businesses in the tourism industry across the province.”
In a release, BC Chamber board chair Aleece Laird said Famulak “not only embodies a spirit of collaboration, which is in the DNA of Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade, but she brings extensive executive leadership experience, understands the power of our network to advocate for business, and has a proven track record for courageous and innovative change.
“With Fiona, we enter an exciting new chapter with sound leadership that will further strengthen our network as we work together to emerge stronger after what has been an incredibly challenging year for so many of our members.”
