Our Leader Spotlight | Steve Emslie
Director of Finance & Administration with Beatties Basics
This series is dedicated to introducing and celebrating the ACL+ 2021/22 program participants. Each week, we will focus on one of our leaders, sharing a little bit about them and what motivates them to explore community leadership in Niagara.
Steve Emslie is a lifelong Niagara resident, growing up in North End St. Catharines before moving to Fonthill where he lives now with his Wife and Dog. Steve graduated from Brock University with a Bachelor of Accounting (Honours) degree and went on to attain his CPA designation from the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario
Steve started his career in public accounting, specifically audit and accounting services. After 9 years he made the move to the private sector as Controller at a local Tech Firm, 2 years later moving to his current position of Director of Finance at a company with deep roots in Niagara. Steve plans to stay in Niagara and grow his family while working to give back to this great community.
Why are you personally motivated to explore civic leadership?
I am personally motivated to explore Civic leadership because I have a strong connection to my community as a lifelong resident and I want to see its continued growth into the future. The way to ensure continued growth and prosperity is to support, empower, and engage our community members.
Exploring and supporting my own growth as a community leader will give me the opportunity to help facilitate the engagement of fellow community members to come together in strengthening and
growing our community.
I have spent the early years of my career focused on personal growth and development and am now ready to shift my focus to connecting with and giving back to the community that I call home.
What, in your view, is the most significant issue/opportunity facing our community? Why?
Although there may be more significant issues facing the world, country, or province as a whole, I believe one of the biggest issues and opportunities facing the Niagara region today is engaging the next generation to come together to continue to improve and strengthen our community.
The vast changes in the last 20-30 years in technology and how the world works have contributed to creating a generation that is extremely diverse, strong-willed, knowledgeable, emotional, skilled, and non-traditional. Young and upcoming generations are more in touch with local and global issues than ever before and have strong opinions on all aspects of our world today. For this reason, it has become harder than ever to rally significant support for any given cause or intention, partially because of the sheer number of opportunities for improvement in our Country, let alone our own community. It can be easy to lose sight of our own community when we are constantly made aware of issues and matters from around the Globe.
For past generations, the World was much smaller and local communities naturally received more attention. It is harder now to keep the focus on the small communities however the traits of the upcoming generations that are listed above are part of the strengths that we will need to lean on to ensure the continued care and strengthening of our community. The strength, skills, knowledge and compassion of younger generations must be tapped into and engaged to come together to protect our community. It will be the responsibility of our community leaders to help drive this engagement.
What individual attributes do you hope to develop or expand upon?
I hope to expand upon my ability to connect with people and form meaningful relationships. I hope to make connections with people of various professional and personal backgrounds and build my networking and interpersonal communication skills.
I am naturally a somewhat soft-spoken person so I hope to work at strengthening my own voice and improve my ability to be heard and connected within a group or crowd. As a CPA with an accounting and finance background I tend to have a very numbers-based and rigid approach to thinking and problem solving so I hope to be able to learn from others and expand my critical thinking skills to include other valuable approaches.
Finally, I hope to form a deeper connection with my community and other like-minded individuals within it.
What Is ACL+?
Accelerate Civic Leadership+ is our answer to adapting our flagship Accelerate Civic Leadership (ACL) program for virtual learning.
Designed as a tool to expand the number of individuals who accept leadership roles in business, government, and social organizations to meet future challenges in the region, ACL+ strengthens the bonds within the region. It serves as a retention and engagement tool for our Niagara businesses and non-profits.