Supporting Junior Achievement British Columbia

Pender is a proud supporter of Junior Achievement British Columbia, a not-for-profit organization serving B.C. youth for over 65 years. Junior Achievement delivers hands-on, immersive education in work readiness, financial health, and entrepreneurship to the next generation of Canada’s business leaders.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are in Pender’s DNA. When we founded Pender in 2003, we were a small team of venture capitalists investing in B.C.’s private and small cap technology enterprises. Today, Pender encompasses a much larger investment universe including large cap equity, fixed income and alternatives portfolios, but we retain our strong entrepreneurial spirit. Both through the ethos of our company and more directly through investments made through Pender and  Pender Ventures, our private equity arm, we are passionate about helping the current generation of entrepreneurs.

We hope that by actively participating in Junior Achievement,  Pender can help to nurture entrepreneurism in the youth of British Columbia. Kelly Edmison, the Founder and Chair of Pender participated in Junior Achievement in high school in Victoria over 50 years ago. Kelly believes it was a formative experience for him. He went on to become a lawyer and throughout his years of practice he was always drawn to working with entrepreneurs and enjoyed working with them to grow their companies. Along the way, he invested in many private enterprises and eventually started Pender. He remains passionate about supporting young people who are interested in business and in giving them an opportunity to unlock their inner entrepreneur.

This year many people in the Pender organization have participated in the program, meeting every week with a group of 12 students who have created their own company, organized their leadership, designed and manufactured a product and figured out how to market and sell them, all with their own capital and operating at a profit. It has been trial by fire and many lessons have been learned. It has been great fun for the Pender people to watch it all happen.

Richard Min, CEO of Lumen, the enterprise founded and run under the guidance of Pender people shares his experience here:

“It’s no exaggeration to say that Pender’s Junior Achievement  Company Program is one of the best of its kind for student business enrichment. For the past few months, we’ve learned to collaborate, ideate, and innovate under our incredible mentors at Pender. They helped us engage with industry professionals and experience hands-on entrepreneurship—all in an inclusive and stimulating environment.” (Thanks Richard!)

At Pender, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with Junior Achievement to meet and engage with Canada’s future entrepreneurs.

To learn more, please visit: https://jabc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/JABC-Annual-Report-2021-22.pdf