Winnipeg woman puts First Nations first

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The president of a Winnipeg company has won the 1999 Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Elaine Cowan, president of the Anokiiwin Training Institute, which provides Aboriginal training, recruitment and employment retention services, accepted the award in Calgary at the Telus Convention Centre Nov. 4.

"Elaine is doing a wonderful job in her training company," said Barbara Caldwell, chairwoman of the national awards selection committee. "She is a dynamic person, who is doing so much for the Aboriginal people."

"We are a 100 per-cent owned and operated training and employment agency," said Cowan. "It is a training agency and a recruitment firm. It is open to all Aboriginal people, First Nations, Inuit and Métis," she said. The agency places people who have a background in managerial positions as corporate executive officers or in administration.

The 1999 Canadian Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award was initiated by the University of Toronto's Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in 1992, when major corporations looked for entrepreneurial women to sit on boards and committees.

"That was the main reason in the beginning," said Caldwell. "Today the numbers of women who are entrepreneurs has exploded over the years, bigger than anybody has ever dreamed."

The training agency Cowan founded started out with a 250 square foot office. It now occupies a three-storey building that the agency owns and there is a second office in Thompson, Man.

Incorporated in 1995, the institute employs more than 20 full-time staff and more than 30 contract instructors.

Cowan's vision and philosophy on training is geared towards what is best suited to the Aboriginal community.

"Aboriginal people who are in senior positions become the decision-makers. This makes it easier for all Aboriginal people to benefit in jobs," said Cowan.

"When it comes to employment, I've always worked on economic development or in human resource development with the government. In my view, I found that corporate systems were very frustrating to Aboriginal people," she said.

Another angle that Cowan looked at seriously as she was setting up the business was the whole issue of employee job retention.

"When we looked at the research we did on Aboriginal people and employment, and the statistics for the Aboriginal people who were employed, we found that more Aboriginal people were leaving the workforce than the ones who were staying," said Cowan.

"We started to ask questions as to why this was happening and looked at the processes that Aboriginal people went through before being hired in private or public sectors," she said.

"We found that there was all kinds of ways out there that Aboriginal people were affected on the job. We found that in jobs there was a need for an Aboriginal employment assistance program. A place that Aboriginal staff members can bring out their issues, such as with a committee or a team," said Cowan. "We found that if a person is placed on a job where they are not suited they may not perform as well. Non-Aboriginal staff members start looking at them and may start to believe that they were hired in the corporation just because they were Aboriginal," said Cowan.

The agency also sits down with private- or public-sector corporations and works through an Aboriginal strategy with them, such as cross-cultural training and on-site coaching.

"In our agency we pay close attention to the individual as a person before we place them in jobs. By our testing assessments we usually can tell whether that person is best matched for the job. We do not want to put the wrong person in the wrong job," said Cowan. "We offer continuous support to the employees from the time they get on the job," she said.

Cowan, who has a university management background, worked with the Manitoba government for nearly 20 years. She belongs to the Peguis Nation in Manitoba. She was raised in a small northern Manitoba community.

Upon graduating from high school she tarted out as a secretary and eventually moved up to management positions and then on to policy-making positions. She built an extensive network of acquaintances and colleagues.

Cowan's good will and sense of humour have enabled her to overcome numerous obstacles. The challenges she confronts daily include the sense of despair and hopelessness she sees when Aboriginal people experience failure in mainstream society's education and training institutes.

"This agency is a reality of a vision I had some time ago on how private corporations and public sectors should be hiring Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people should be working in senior-level positions such as management or in administration," said Cowan.

Manitoba's Aboriginal population is estimated to be12 per cent of the province's population. Over the next decade it is estimated that one in four people seeking employment will be Aboriginal. Today there is a demand for 3,000 Aboriginal job placements in Manitoba.

"The training agency is working extremely well. We are now getting calls from more and more corporations wanting to find individuals with certain skills," said Cowan.

"I'd like to actually see a First Nation university, an independent university that is designed for First Nation people. One that will have management training programs that will better equip our people for senior-level positions in private and public sectors," she said.