Cameron st. john

Vice President Maple Leaf Adventures
Since he was disgorged from Brentwood, Cameron St John has careered across BC’s economy through all four of its largest industries: mining, forestry, technology and tourism.

Through his career, Cameron has achieved his life goals in balancing travel, income, family (3 kids and wife of 22 years) and inspiring work. While at the University of Victoria, Cameron worked with boats and taught sailing (a lifelong passion inflicted by this school), eventually returning to Brentwood as a sports coach. At the same time, he developed a passion for a number of political issues, culminating in a hobby first as a student politician, and later a mini-career of political organizing, campaign management and lobbying, all within two years of graduating from with an economics and sociology degree (in other words: a major in capitalism, a minor in communism).

A clean break with politics in 1996 led to a position as an economic researcher at a large company, what is now Teck Resources. In that role, he projected metals prices, and found a way to talk himself into rail rate negotiations and a hostile takeover bid, yielding lifelong lessons about how business really works.

In 1998, Cameron turned himself upside down with travel to Australia, earning an MBA at the University of Sydney, and somehow got lost on his way home. Meandering through Hong Kong, China and Singapore, he became the regional financial manager at Sterling Commerce, a big software company transforming itself into a small business.

The chaotic environment of the 2001 e-commerce crash created a new career path: Cameron became the guy who brought order to chaos, first in political campaigns and then in ailing companies. A self-described “turnaround guy”, Cameron has now led business transformations in a pest control company, a tree planting initiative, a US carbon sequestration company, a metal recycling company, and a vitamin export distributor with Canada’s biggest health supplement brand, Webber Naturals.

Today, Cameron can be found as Vice President of a local marine eco-tour company, Maple Leaf Adventures, owned and chaired by fellow Old Brentonians, helping with its emergence from Covid.

Along the way, Cameron has concluded that at graduation, Everything He Knew Was Wrong. He now thinks that conventional wisdom on which university, what to study, how to choose one’s first job, and how to pursue a career is flawed, and he will share secrets of how to get a business career right.

Find Cameron on Brentonian Connect

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-st-john-2b4780/

www.mapleleafadventures.com