Entrepreneur of the Year 2024: How Niilo Edwards is creating pathways to reconciliation at First Nations Major Projects Coalition

THE KICKOFF: Niilo Edwards was born in Alert Bay and raised in Sointula, a fishing village of about 500 people on Malcolm Island on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. That backdrop proved a slight contrast to his first professional work experience as a constituency advisor in Ottawa’s House of Commons.

“I had a lot of luck; people took chances on me,” Edwards remembers. “I don’t know that I was the best student in high school, but I took an interest in politics and wound up working a summer job for the local MLA right out of high school. The local member of parliament said to me that fall, ‘Why don’t you come work for me in Ottawa?’”

Edwards did that while getting a degree in public administration at the University of Ottawa. He eventually became the executive assistant to senator Gerry St. Germain, a position he’d hold for about six and a half years. “He instilled in me an entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of urgency,” Edwards says of St. Germain. “He gave me the ability to look at opportunities and gaps in systems and be able to think about how we would help First Nations fill those gaps and move forward on their own agenda.”

ACTION PLAN: When St. Germain retired, Edwards moved back to B.C. to work with the nonprofit First Nations Financial Management Board. “I was given responsibility for helping figure out how we could further the ability of First Nations to get direct access to capital markets and lower the cost of borrowing so that First Nations could take equity positions in large-scale natural resource and infrastructure projects,” he says.

A few years later, some First Nations got together and decided to form the nonprofit First Nations Major Projects Coalition, which seeks to create pathways to reconciliation by advancing opportunities for First Nations to obtain ownership stakes in major projects that run through their territories. “As I had been involved with our initial leadership in creating the basic governance and operational principles of a new organization, they asked me to serve as interim CEO eight years ago. And I’m still here,” says Edwards with a chuckle.

CLOSING STATEMENT: At its founding, the FNMPC represented 11 communities. Today, it serves over 170 First Nations across Canada and has a team of about 35 employees. It has a project portfolio worth over $45 billion, stretched across some 20 different engagements. “It’s a hell of a lot of financial benefit that’s going back into the bank accounts of First Nations that otherwise would have been left on the table or gone to the banks because of the high cost of borrowing,” says Edwards.

Q+A

What’s an odd job you’ve had?

During high school, I ran my own lawn care company. I had all the contracts with the local town—I’d take care of the town hall and the cemetery and the baseball field.