 AT THE BOARDROOM TABLE WITH IDA GOODREAU
We recently sat down with Ida Goodreau, CEO of LifeLabs and a WLC Advisory Council member and asked her to answer our version of Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire. Ida is the former president and CEO of Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (a role she held for almost seven years) and has been LifeLab’s new CEO for just over six months.
LifeLabs is a made-in-Canada success story, employing more than 3,000 professionally trained staff, who deliver more than 50 million laboratory tests annually to over 10 million patients and nearly 20,000 physician customers. The BC division of LifeLabs was founded by Dr. Don Rix as Metropolitan Biomedical Labs almost 50 years ago. These days, Ida divides her time equally between LifeLab’s offices in Toronto and Burnaby and her two homes—a condo in downtown Toronto and a “get-away-from-it-all” place on Bowen Island. Ida loves this “no packing” lifestyle. She has everything she needs in both places.
We met Ida at LifeLabs’ offices in Burnaby. Everything about the place is light and airy. The boardroom has lots of windows and the view is trees, and more trees! The walls of the building are filled with art that looks personal and very West Coast. Ida tells us that this building has Dr. Rix’s signature all over it. Ida has a cool, calming manner and she looks you straight in the eye, smiling frequently.
WLC: If you could give a key piece of advice to a 16-year old girl (and guarantee that it would “take”) what would it be?
Ida: Believe in yourself and have the confidence to take some chances. I think most of us rarely regret what we did, but may often regret what we didn’t do. But if you haven’t been a bit bold and adventuresome when you are young, it makes it much more difficult to do so when you are, say 40. It’s a little bit like a muscle; if you haven’t exercised it, it is very tough to use. Not impossible, but tough.
WLC: What are you reading right now?
Ida: The Help by Kathryn Stockett (a novel about black maids in white households in Mississippi during the early 1960s) and a book I may have read as an English major. It was time to reread The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (this book won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize — the first one awarded to a woman!)
Ida is enthusiastic about her Kindle for electronic books given to her by her brother-in-law in Seattle. It weighs next to nothing, and as someone who travels a lot, it is a fantastic way to not only read books, but journals and newspapers. Ida has a couple of hundred books on her Kindle, but it can take 1,500.
We talk about this amazing technology and the loss of the touch and feel of opening a book. Ida’s clear-headed logic is “I love books, but I love to read more than I care about the medium. In other words, I now realize I love reading more than I like books.”
WLC: Tea or coffee?
Ida: Tea. My time in New Zealand made that decision for me. At one of my first meetings I had a choice between steaming pots of tea brewing at the back of the room or a teaspoon of instant coffee in the lone coffee cup on the table. I decided the tea looked a lot better and I have been drinking it ever since.
WLC: What was your most rewarding business experience?
Ida: Working for Fletcher Challenge in New Zealand. From 1994 to 1997 I was managing director of Tasman Pulp and Paper which had the largest industrial complex in the country at the time. It was still a somewhat male-dominated industry, so there were quite a few interesting attitudes to women. New Zealand is a beautiful country with wonderful people and it was my first real CEO experience. And, I had only been in the forest sector for 18 months so it was a bit daunting, but also exciting and exhilarating. There was a great sense of I’m doing it!
To read the complete interview and find out which company Ida admires the most, what she would do if she had a year off, and what’s her guilty pleasure click here.
 WHO IS PAYING ATTENTION?
According to Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, partners with The Boston Consulting Group, women currently control 70 percent of household purchases and $20 trillion of consumer spending worldwide. And, in the next few years, they will be responsible for $5 trillion of incremental spending — a bigger opportunity than China and India combined!
This huge business opportunity is not being maximized. In Silverstein and Sayre’s new book, Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World’s Largest, Fastest-Growing Market, they share research from a global survey of 12,000 women in 22 countries. It seems women are not happy with the products and services available to them. They are most dissatisfied with financial services, health care and consumer durables. According to Sayre, companies “are not good at addressing women’s needs for time-saving solutions. They have poor product design and customization for women. Their sales and marketing efforts are clumsy and often insulting to women. They fail to align with women’s values or develop community, they don’t give back to society as well or as much as they could.”
Women Want More shares the stories of companies that successfully serve women (as well as those that don’t) and reveals the practices they follow. Check out this PDF on the book, Woman Want More.
 CONGRATS TO WLC MEMBERS
Sandy Gerber, partner, 3 DEGREES WEST Design & Communications:
Sandy has been nominated for a 2009 Savvy Mom Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The award was founded by Savvy Media Inc. and celebrates great ideas and innovative solutions developed by savvy Canadian moms. It is supported by Today’s Parent, Enterprising Mom’s Network and Joe Fresh Style, just to name a few. Five years ago, Sandy left her high-paying executive career with BC Lotteries, put a Crayola ‘In/Out’ sign on her bedroom door and began her own consulting company, 3 Kids Media, which merged with Twist Multimedia to become 3 DEGREES WEST a year later. Find out more about the nomination process.
Karen J. Hall, FSA, FCIA, MA, vice president, Aon Consulting:
Karen has just published her first book titled, Risk Management Strategies for an Aging Workforce. Drawing on her unique background as an actuary and a senior HR leader, her book takes a hard-hitting look at how the aging workforce will dramatically – and inescapably – impact organizations, reaching deep into its pockets and requiring a fundamental review of operations. She also provides a practical look at how to identify and manage those risks. It is currently available on amazon.com.
 SEPTEMBER IS A HAPPENING MONTH
We are a city that seems to be taking it in our stride. It must be our Olympic-ness, but there’s a huge exciting story happening this month! We’ve got an amazing number of incredible guests coming to town this month … the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, Mia Farrow. The list goes on and on. The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education is hosting the Vancouver Peace Summit from September 26 to September 29.
And, during this time, the first WE DAY celebration is also taking place. If you’ve read this newsletter you know about Craig and Marc Kielburger and their organizations Free the Children and Me to We. In conjunction with the Dalai Lama’s visit, thousands of B.C. school kids will be at GM Place on September 29 to get inspired and hear the Dalai Lama’s message. Check out the speakers and entertainers who will be at We Day.
 WORKING AROUND THE WORLD
If you have ever thought of working in another country, Catalyst released some interesting research earlier this year that shows the percentage of women in management positions around the world. For example, if you have always fancied working in Barbados, women hold 43.4% of the management positions. If you would like to go further south, check out New Zealand (39.6%) or Australia (37.1%). The lowest score goes to Japan (9.2%) and the highest to the Philippines (57.1%). Canada came in at 37%. See Women in Management, Global Comparison from Catalyst.
 LIVEMOCHA
If working in France is on your list, or you want to brush up on your high school French, here’s an innovative concept. Live Mocha, a Seattle-based online language company launched just 20 months ago, now has over three million members and courses in 22 languages. What makes it unique is that people learn languages through the use of an online community of native speakers of different languages who give you feedback to help you improve, along with interactive online lessons and Web 2.0 technology. The courses are offered at a variety of skill levels and they even have Travel Crash Courses, so you can master those key phrases you need for your trip. And, the best part—it’s free!
And, if you are wondering why they named it LiveMocha, it was because they imagined their members studying the languages in a cafe environment. Perhaps the coffee name helped convince a venture capital firm founded by Howard Schultz (think Starbucks) to invest $6 million in LiveMocha last January.
 THANKS FOR SHARING
If you were one of the 200 folks who completed the WLC Survey…THANK YOU! We plan to share some of your brilliant ideas and suggestions in our next newsletter. That’s also when we will let you know the name of the lucky winner of the new BlackBerry Pearl. And, even though the contest is closed, the survey is still open. To complete it, just go to WLC Survey.
YOUR FEEDBACK
We would love to hear from you. Send your comments, ideas for this newsletter, for speakers, for content to: info@wlcircle.com
| 
September 29, 2009 
