Photo: Contributed
Okanagan Edge and 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 eighth year the chamber has conducted a “Top 40” showcase. Honourees will be featured throughout the year on Okanagan Edge.
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Candice Loring spent three years working in the financial industry supporting local businesses as an account manager of small business banking at TD Canada Trust. This is where her passion for supporting entrepreneurship began.
Loring is now the director of business development and Indigenous community engagement for Mitacs in partnership with UBC Okanagan. In her role she has supported advancing the innovation ecosystem in the Okanagan. She also sits on the Entrepreneurship at UBC Okanagan advisory board. In her role at Mitacs she has supported hundreds of local organizations through collaborative innovation projects.
Loring is on the Indigenous Advisory Council for the Oceans Supercluster, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council Advisory Committee, and the Women in Leadership Foundation Indigenous Leadership Advisory Circle. She was adopted into the Eagle clan and given the name K’wiloo’km N’kwala, which means she is a resourceful, hard-working educator and N’kwala is after her sixth grandfather Grand Chief N’kwala.
She has moderated the Okanagan Water Forum for the past two years in an effort to create more awareness about water stewardship and ethics. She organized TD Trees Days for three consecutive years, planting more than 1,500 trees and berry bushes in partnership with Westbank First Nations. She also spent years volunteering for the Inn From the Cold shelter, cooking dinner for their clients. She volunteers at UBC Okanagan convocation, welcoming new alumni into the UBC alumni family. She is currently volunteering for the Women in Leadership Foundation as a mentor of women early in their careers looking to learn how to advance.
She has a bachelor of management degree with a minor in psychology from UBC Okanagan. And she is now pursuing an Indigenous business leadership executive master of business administration at SFU’s Beedie School of Business.
In 2021, CanadianSME business magazine named her as one of Canada’s most inspirational female entrepreneurs and business leaders. She was also named as UBC Okanagan woman of the year when she was a student in 2014.
Loring was recognized as one of TD Canada Trust’s top national performers and was part of the TD Champions. She is a Ch’nook Scholar in recognition of being one of western Canada’s top Indigenous business students.
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