Photo: Contributed
Okanagan Edge and the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce are partnering to showcase some of the region’s most exciting entrepreneurs through the “Top 40 Under 40” program.
Sponsored by BDO, the “Top 40 Under 40” recognizes high-achieving professionals in our community and showcases their accomplishments. This marks the sixth year the chamber has conducted a “Top 40” showcase. Honourees will be featured throughout the year on Okanagan Edge.
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When Fiona Patterson was a little girl, old enough to know that mixing baking soda and vinegar could turn a mountain into a volcano, her grandfather pulled her aside in his study one afternoon to showed her cross-section of the brain in a palm-sized petri dish.
Patterson didn’t think much of it at the time, chalked it up to another one of his neurosurgery stories and carried on with her day. Fast forward a decade or so to her acceptance into university to become a psychologist and her grandfather asked her, “Why aren’t you going to medical school?” She couldn’t answer him then, but she could surely answer him now: Patterson is a relationship person. She has come to understand that deep healing comes not necessarily from a prescription or a pill, but from connection and presence and empathy.
Before, during and after graduate school, Patterson worked as a clinician and educator for the health authorities on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver. Longing for greener space and more inspiring work, Patterson and her husband moved to Kelowna. She transitioned into private practice quickly and began establishing her expertise in the field of trauma. Trauma is a big umbrella, but Patterson’s practice largely caters to adults who’ve experienced early childhood attachment wounds and to women who’ve experienced perinatal loss, infertility or mood disorders.
Patterson’s leadership approach is one of empathy, accountability, confidence and organization. She believes people need to feel secure and safe in any kind of relationship in order to thrive. As a leader, Patterson establishes a rapport with others that welcomes ideas, respects choice, honours boundaries and limits, rewards integrity and intrepidness, is inclusive, and celebrates victory.
During her undergraduate and graduate degrees, Patterson volunteered with several organizations. She started out volunteering with crisis lines as a support worker and eventually ended up in a supervisory role. She then transitioned to volunteering with Big Brothers and Big Sisters, where she was a mentor to a 10-year-old girl, and then to Citizens Counselling Centre, where she was trained as a lay counsellor and provided more than five years of service.
Since her move to Kelowna in 2013, Patterson has shared her time with the Rotary Club, acted as a consultant and philanthropist for Mamas for Mamas, MOGA, and the KGH Foundation, and periodically written a column for Castanet. From time to time she will offer pro-bono workshops of a specific nature to local organizations.
Patterson has her master of arts degree in counselling psychology and is currently pursuing her doctor of psychology.
Patterson’s greatest achievements in life are not marked by approval from others or degrees, but by the feeling of fulfillment in the life she has designed for herself, and the sense of safety and security she has engineered in her closest relationships.
External validation is nice, but it’s not nearly as effective or durable as the validation that comes from within.
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