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Lane Merrifield has been named the 2017 Business Leader by the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce.
The award is the top honour given out through the chamber’s Business Excellence Awards. Merrifield received the 2017 award for his “outstanding contributions to the business community in the Central Okanagan.”
Merrifield is probably best known as the founder of Club Penguin, the online virtual world for kids that Disney bought in 2007 for $350 million.
More recently, Merrifield co-founded FreshGrade, a learning assessment and portfolio tool that creates more efficient ways for parents, students and teachers to engage and update one another on progress at school.
The Business Excellence Awards selection committee said it was “particularly impressed” by the leadership Merrifield demonstrated as he lead the charge to create the newly opened Okanagan Centre for Innovation in downtown Kelowna.
The centre represented a milestone for Merrifield, who had dreamed of creating an entrepreneurial technology community in Kelowna since founding Wheelhouse in 2013. Wheelhouse is an organization that supports early-stage technology companies and entrepreneurs as they develop and grow their businesses.
Along with his work on the Innovation Centre, Merrifield also served on several technology boards, the University of British Columbia’s Board of Governors, and was most recently appointed to the Premier’s Technology Council.
His teams have won dozens of awards including a BAFTA Award and a Webby Award. He was also given an Honorary Fellows Award, several leadership awards, and was listed as one of The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 35 Executives under 35.
The Business Leader award, along with the rest of the Business Excellence Awards, will be handed out Oct. 12 at the annual Business Excellence Awards gala, at the Delta Grand hotel.
A full list of this year’s nominees is available here. Tickets are on sale until Oct. 6, and can be purchased here.
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