APEGA
duty within our professions to educate people on the public safety and public value aspects of our work. Engineers and geoscientists tend to quietly go about their work and get things done. You’d be hard pressed to find out who even worked on a particular project. Their legacy, and APEGA’s legacy, is public safety. Major failures are not common in Alberta, and that’s largely because of the work APEGA does to make sure competent, qualified, and ethical people practise the professions. I think globalization will remain huge, but I don’t profess to know where the next century will take us (laughing) . I mean, look: who would have imagined, even 10 years ago, where the world is today? When I graduated from university, the Internet as we know it did not exist. Google didn’t exist as a com- pany until 1998. Facebook came along in 2004. Barriers are coming down. We’ve never been so interconnected as a world community. Solutions to problems on one side of the world do not necessarily reside there. What we do as APEGA absolutely is connected. Not just to the other provinces and territories of this country, but to the rest of the world as well. So yes, that is something worth celebrating. Let’s jump over to who you are and what defines you as a person and leader. To start with, tell read- ers a bit about your leadership style. ND In a word, collaborative. As president, it’s my job to coordinate and facilitate Council to ensure that we all have a broad understanding of the issues and access to the information we need to make good decisions. Our centennial is a chance to showcase the enormous contributions our members make every day. It’s an acknowledgement and celebration of success. It’s spreading awareness of our roles, and maybe it’s a way to influence the public conversation. I think there’s a duty within our professions to educate people on the public safety and public value aspects of our work.
What should APEGA be sharing with Alberta and the world to mark 2020, the association’s centennial year? ND We’re uniquely positioned to tell our story, because our successes are out there, in the real world. Albertans can actually see, experience, and touch many of our members’ legacies. Every piece of infrastructure we see and use, every public building, the technology we reach out to each other with, the neighbourhoods we live in, the advancement of oil and gas, the advancement of renewable energy—these are testaments to what our members have accomplished and what they will continue to accomplish. Our centennial is a chance to showcase the enor- mous contributions our members make every day. It’s an acknowledgement and celebration of success. It’s spreading awareness of our roles, and maybe it’s a way to influence the public conversation. I think there’s a
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