Ashley Garib

I have over 30 years of direct hands on experience building my own real estate development business, learning extensively about financial systems, governance and leadership over the years. As one of 4 children of new immigrants to Canada, the cost of post-secondary education was prohibitive so I focused on gaining real world experience. I’m a lifelong learner, always identifying new opportunities and skills to pursue. In real estate, I started as a broker at Royal LePage and then Colliers and used this opportunity to learn more about the financial aspect of commercial real estate developments, launching my own business based on this knowledge and experience. I truly believe that practical experience is equivalent if not more important than having extensive academic experience. These are the sort of artificial barriers that perpetuate inequities and prevent us from achieving true diversity, equity and inclusion. My deep understanding of financial systems and structures has been driven by my natural curiosity and desire to learn.

I bring over 30 years of real estate development experience across the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Sunshine Coast, and Vancouver Island. My experience spans developing commercial sites in growing communities, collaborating with BC Housing on modular housing, and working with First Nations on projects emphasizing Reconciliation and climate resiliency. Finance is core to success in the business, which has provided me with years of experience working closely with financial institutions. My focus on commercial developments has provided me with deep knowledge of financial structures, as well as experience negotiating with national tenants and small businesses, while collaborating closely with city councils and provincial authorities. My work with shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation in particular is relevant to finance, leadership and governance, as I worked closely with Chief and Council to advise on a material expansion of their real estate assets and transformation of their operations. In this role I gained experience in senior leadership roles focused on financial and risk management. I advised on the adoption of the equivalent of an Official Community Plan to guide developments and implemented systems to prioritize and streamline the expansion. This ensured that development was undertaken in a comprehensive manner, with frameworks ensuring that appropriate delegation systems existed to execute on these projects. My extensive professional experience in real estate development, financial systems and governance will be beneficial to Vancity as a Board Member.

I am deeply involved in the local community, through a combination of volunteer roles, community service and through my development business. I have always prioritized giving back, coaching a variety of youth sports over 30 years. This included establishing the Collingwood School volleyball program, where I volunteered for 25 years. Other sports organizations and groups I have coached and supported in the past 3 years include, Carisbrooke Elementary School, Lynn Valley Little League and North Vancouver Flag Football League. I regularly donate my time to support organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, Greater Vancouver Charity Invitational, Golf for Good, The First Tee and the Children’s Wish Foundation. In 2021, I co- founded Canada’s largest indoor bike park in North Vancouver, where I continue to serve as a Board Director. I am involved in directly implementing and supporting Reconciliation through my work with First Nations, including shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation and more recently, Lytton First Nation through The Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council Economic Task Force, which is leading the efforts to rebuild following the devastating wildfires in 2021.

No

Vancity’s business is heavily dependent on real estate, with residential mortgages and real estate backed commercial lending being key profit drivers. I believe that direct experience in the real estate industry is a key gap in the Board’s skillset. I understand the complexities and challenges of financing in real estate development, including how to overcome barriers to increasing green infrastructure such as electric vehicle charging and how to incentivize the development of affordable housing. My direct hands-on experience, combined with my extensive governance-level background in implementing broad community plans through a Reconciliation lens, gives me a unique skill set directly aligned with both Vancity’s core business and impact focus areas.

Vancity is a vital community institution that represents a better way to bank. When seeking financing for my real estate development projects, I always offer these deals to Vancity first because of my belief in the company. Seeing the company’s financial challenges this past year has motivated me to offer my expertise to help Vancity succeed. I see this as the most effective and impactful way to give back to the community, using my knowledge of land development, financial systems, regulatory frameworks, Reconciliation, and senior leadership to strengthen Vancity’s Board. Vancity’s profitability is heavily dependent on real estate backed lending concentrated in BC. This is a key area of expertise needed on Vancity’s Board, which is diverse in some aspects but appears fairly heavily weighted to academics and individuals with environmental expertise based on Vancity’s disclosures. These skills are very much needed but this should be balanced to ensure that the board is able to provide relevant informed guidance on all aspects of Vancity’s business. Having personally witnessed Vancity exit the highly profitable land development and construction financing space, missing out on opportunities with existing members who easily obtained financing from Vancity’s competitors, cemented my desire to run for the Board. We need to ensure that the Board has the expertise to guide management in issues related to the real estate sector as this is where Vancity has a material impact and can really drive positive change.

By ensuring that Vancity is focused on business basics. Vancity’s ambitious climate commitments, Reconciliation values and impact targets are admirable but will only be achieved through offering products and services to our membership that address their needs and incentivize non-members to join. How do we take the slogans on Vancity branches and substantiate them? Right now, in my opinion, it seems that Vancity mostly offers what other financial institutions do but with more compromises on technology performance and financial expertise. From my review, the company appears to lack innovative affordable housing programs outside of the Vancity Community Foundation and while there are climate related lending offerings, they don’t appear very different than what is offered by Vancity’s competitors and seem more related to branding than innovative decarbonization financing initiatives. I will make sure Vancity’s management is held accountable for financial performance and the execution of innovative financing options for our membership. If we focus on the core business, this will enable us to concentrate on developing solutions that benefit our membership and actually move us towards these aspirational goals.

My leadership style is direct, inclusive and focused on getting things done. I am very supportive of Vancity’s grand ambitions to change the world through finance but in my opinion, this will only happen through developing innovative products and services for our membership. The Vancity Board plays a vital role in holding senior management accountable for tangible results. I am always respectful but I do believe that leadership is about challenging people to do better, achieve more, and recognize when mistakes have been made so that we can learn and improve. Leadership isn’t only about inspiring others and designing strategic plans, it is the ability to execute and implement these plans that makes a true leader. I bring this approach to everything I do, whether it is my real estate business or coaching youth sports, I am focused on tangible results and holding people accountable for outcomes within their area of expertise. This is how we will elevate Vancity and ensure that we are actually able to realize our ambitious mission.

By engaging with our membership. Only 6% of members actually voted in the 2024 Vancity Board elections, which indicates to me that it is likely unclear to many key stakeholders what the diverse needs of our membership are. I believe that active engagement with the membership can help address this. There seems to be a lot of assumptions about our membership wanting Vancity to focus on climate action and charitable work but there is little to back this up from my research. Based on my experience, I’ve heard directly from many members that they fundamentally want Vancity to be a good financial institution first, with frequent concerns about app functionality, limited products, and receiving confusing guidance on processes. Many members are with Vancity because they care about their local community and want their financial institution to create positive change, but they don’t want to compromise on the financial services they receive. While we definitely need to take action on environmental issues, widening economic inequality and Reconciliation, we will only be able to do this and help our membership if we listen to them and work on becoming a great financial institution first. This is an approach that I believe is most likely to best represent the diverse needs of our membership as focusing on getting the core business right will have the biggest positive impact on our diverse membership base.