April 9, 2024
CALGARY, Alberta (July 2, 2013) — Gord has been working at Long View since 2009, in that time he has held various leadership positions, most recently as President of North American Operations. A quick survey of Gord’s resume prior to Long View indicates what the executive team, and employees at Long View have long known to be true, Gord is a born leader.
From Gord’s early days at the Hudson’s Bay Company and IBM, he quickly assumed leadership roles bearing significant challenge and responsibility. After IBM, Gord chose an entrepreneurial path for 12 years, helping to build CSB Systems into an award winning enterprise resource planning software company. During this time he also served on the international board of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) for many years and served as the EO international president from 2001-2002. In 2005 CSB was acquired (and Gord with it), by Bell Canada. During his time at Bell, Gord served on the executive and was given insight into the challenges and pitfalls of leadership on a far grander scale.
According to Mawhinney, “At that point in my career, a lot had already happened. I had spent time with well-respected companies early in my career, had started and sold my own businesses, held executive positions in a large internationally-recognized company, and I was fortunate enough to have seen a lot of the world with EO. But I still felt like the most important work of my career was in front of me, not behind.” Gord took a year off from his career to spend time with his wife and four children and also completed a graduate degree in leadership from Royal Roads University.
When it was time to go back, despite having many options available to him, he only made one phone call. He called Don Bialik, Long View’s CEO and founder. The two had been introduced years earlier. “From the moment I met Don, I knew there was something different about Long View. It was a healthy business, loaded with potential but what really mattered to me was the way they cared for their people, and had no interest in ever selling.” Said Mawhinney.
Choosing someone to succeed you as CEO is challenging for any organization, but it’s an especially precarious task when it’s a company you founded and grew to more than 1000 people, with a strong corporate culture. It took Don Bialik two years to know that Gord was the right man for the job, and then another two years of preparation to get ready for this critical transition. But now the day has arrived, Don couldn’t be more pleased about the person who will succeed him.
“Gord is a skilled executive, one who brings with him a wealth of experience, both as an entrepreneur and as an executive. That said, these are not the reasons that I have chosen Gord as my successor. Although I fully believe his intelligence, and business acumen will go a long way towards building upon the momentum that Long View has amassed, those qualities alone are not enough. What Gord possesses, and the requisite highest on my list when considering a successor, is his understating of what I colloquially refer to as the ‘heart’ of Long View,” said Bialik. “We invest heavily in our employees, because above all else, it’s important to me that our employees feel valued, challenged, and happy to call Long View their employer.”
Don Bialik will not be retiring, in fact, far from it. He’s already started his new role as Chairman of Long View’s Board of Directors, and according to Bialik, he plans to be, “A very active chairman. My next role will enable me to step back from the demands of the day-to-day, and give me a chance to work on higher level strategic initiatives as we move towards our goal of becoming a 100 year old company.”
ABOUT LONG VIEW: Long View, a true success story as one of North America’s foremost providers of IT consulting, outsourcing solutions, and cloud services, began 13 years ago in Western Canada. With a clear focus on combining business and technology in key areas such as cloud, datacenter infrastructure, user support, and IT outsourcing, Long View is able to define and customize what the future of IT looks like. Innovative, flexible, cost-effective, and business focused . . . that’s Long View.
For more information:
Tannis Ebbels Director of Marketing and Communications Long View
Phone: 403.387.3489 E-mail: [email protected]