Entrepreneur of the Year 2024: Annie Korver is using Fernie-based Rise Consulting to advance Truth and Reconciliation efforts across Canada

THE KICKOFF: While completing an MBA at the University of Calgary, Annie Korver was also working at Calgary Economic Development, learning about the intersection between energy development and the rights and titles of Indigenous Peoples.

“I knew about my own Indigenous ancestry, but I’d never explored it from an economics perspective,” says Korver, who is a citizen of the Métis Nation within Alberta. She dug into the research, and when she presented her final project, a lawyer from the Trans Mountain Expansion Project said, “This is amazing, Annie. Could you apply it on a project? Can we bring you on as a part-time consultant?”

“And I just emailed it to him,” Korver says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Here you go! You use it…’ And really, that was the spark.”

ACTION PLAN: In 2013, Korver launched Rise Consulting to advance the principles of truth and reconciliation in Canada. Rise supports economic reconciliation by helping businesses build and nurture relationships with Indigenous communities. It steps in to help decolonize policies, for instance, or to assist an organization in creating a truth and reconciliation action plan.

Calgary-based Imperial Oil was one of Rise’s earliest clients. Korver remembers meeting an executive from the company at a community in Maskwacis, about two hours away from the company’s base. At the time, Imperial Oil was moving through the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business’s Partnership Accreditation in Indigenous Relations program.

“Once he got onto the land and had conversations with the elected chief and council, with citizens of the Nation, he saw it,” says Korver. “His eyes welled up, and he just embraced me, and he’s like, ‘I understand now. I didn’t get it, you know?’”

“And it’s not wrong for somebody to show up in a business suit and tie in corporate Calgary and Imperial Oil and drive a Porsche—no shade. But when you’re in that community and you see the houses, the infrastructure, the water, or the lack of water, you realize, ‘I could share something. I could make space. I could do something about this, because the organization I’m working with is benefiting from the land.’ In the case of an oil company, yes, but all companies are the same.”

CLOSING STATEMENT: Fernie-based Rise Consulting is a B-Corp certified organization that donates one-third of its annual profits to Indigenous Peoples, organizations and communities. It has donated over $380,000 in the past three years and has supported more than 80 clients since 2016.

Q+A

Describe your dream employee in three words:

Kind, honest, courageous.

What’s your most-used app?

Trailforks.