Home is where the heart is

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/08/2010 (5684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Success may be the icing on the cake, but it is family and community that rule Chris Brawn’s heart.

He may have chosen to live in Calgary for the past nine years and established his computer career there, but he still spends a great deal of time in Brandon.

"My parents are still there and so are my grandparents on my father’s side. I try and get home every six weeks or so. And it’s nice to get away," he said from his office in Calgary.

"I try to spend at least half my time in Calgary and half my time in Brandon. I’ve lived in a few larger cities and I think Brandon is about community. I feel a tie to the community.

"It’s the perfect size and the people are decent, fantastic people. It’s a town where you feel that people care about you. On a selfish level, I come back to Brandon to feel centred. It’s that place that’s most like home."

As well, the Neelin High School alumnus has invested in this city and owns a house here.

He has local partners, with whom he has produced custom-built homes.

"We have a very small construction company — Fidelis Developments — as well as I do some rentals and have some land," he said, adding that he has a two and a half year old son named Noah, who along with work, also keeps him in Calgary.

"He’s a great kid. I really lucked out with him," Brawn said.

His dedication to his hometown and to family does not surprise Patti Campbell, who has known the 34 year old since he was a preschooler.

"He values his family and he has a lot of loyalty here. He’s made a lot of investments in Brandon. I think he associates coming home to Brandon with the peaceful side of his life. He can hang here with old friends and family, and allow himself to slow down a bit," she said.

"My children are younger than he is, but he was always interested in their lives and them. He’s an all-round nice person who is nice to have around."

There is caring and appreciation in her voice as she speaks about the child he was and the adult he is today.

"He is a very clever young man, a unique thinker. His time through school was very successful. He excelled, stood out," she said, recalling that is interest in computers began very early in his school life.

"He was a regular kid, except that he had this gift (with computers.) So it isn’t a surprise to all of us that he is as successful as he is. I admire the fact that it’s never gone to his head. I find what’s unique about Christopher is that he can travel around the world, meet with business people wherever, then comes home and can hang out. And, he’s always, always looking out for anybody who needs his help."

After Grade 12, Brawn spent another high school year studying in Spain, wanting to learn a third language, following that with a year at Brandon University.

"Then, I went to school in Waterloo, where I took a bachelor of mathematics, after which I drifted to Calgary," he said. "I had a friend, Dustin Borotsik, one of Rick’s sons, who graduated about a year before me and he had a consultancy there with another friend of mine."

He had graduated at about the time the dot-com industry floundered and the job he had lined up was eliminated.

Jumping at the chance to work with other Brandonites, he headed west.

Since that first experience, he has established new business-related software, doing the technical work for other companies.

"We’ve done a couple of online banks and we did some mail order pharmaceutical stuff, back in the day when that was trendy," he said. "Now, I have a software company called Agilabs and do mostly (research and development). I come up with ideas, prototype them and either partner with people to build them into companies or just sell them to companies."

He and his Calgary partners enjoyed much success when they created the engine for Paygea, an online credit card processing company based in Israel.

"It’s the new economy: Compete wherever you can," he said.

That being said, Brawn is motivated beyond simply making money.

He cares about others. A lot.

When the earthquake hit in Haiti, he just had to help out.

The Brandon native headed to the devastated country as a member of the Canadian Red Cross’ disaster management team and spent three weeks there at the end of February and early March.

"We have some responsibility in society and I’ve been really blessed. I was born in the best country in the world. I lived a very good life growing up and had a ton of opportunity. I always felt it was important to give whenever you could," he said, adding that the French skills honed in Neelin’s immersion program facilitated his work in Haiti.

"I spent four or five days in Port-au-Prince and it was very eye-opening. At that point, they were moving from the emergency relief stage to inching into recovery. I was there at a really good time."

He also did shelter work in Jacmel, where the Canadian and Haitian Red Cross worked in tandem in one of this country’s Red Cross’ largest missions.

There he was responsible for distributing NFI, non-food items.

"In our case, that was tarps or tents, hygiene kits, sleeping mats, jerry cans, mosquito nets, those kinds of things as well as doing community consultation and individual home assessment throughout rural communities," he said.

This entailed a lot of walking through bushed areas and stumbling onto houses because there is no census-taking there and no means to identify where people have established their home.

"We assessed each house for damage and determined if they required aid, then put together site distribution centres, where we bring in the logistics and the NFIs and give them out," he said, pointing out that as of May, the Red Cross had helped 42,000 people with NFIs in Jacmel alone.

While on site, Brawn recalls the urgency of getting this work done because Haitians are at the mercy of the weather — the spring rains that followed the earthquake and the threat of hurricanes during the summer and fall months.

"The long term push is to try and get people in housing that can withstand hurricanes. That’s a real challenge," Brawn said.

"I would absolutely go back, but it’s tough to find a block of time off. Three weeks is what I can do, but they like longer contracts. But, it was an unbelievably positive experience."

Most recently, his Red Cross involvement took him to Medicine Hat and the surrounding area, following the late spring flooding.

There, he did logistics and human resources management.

"Again, it was whatever they needed. We ran a recovery centre in a little town called Irvine and helped with partner organizations, whatever way we could help and make a difference," he said.

"There were a lot of really heartbreaking stories. It’s not Pakistan, but the scope of this flood… it’s probably 150 kilometres north-south. It had washed out a section of the Trans-Canada. That whole affected area, it’s massive.

"This was the first time we did a provincial recovery effort, helping people get back into their houses. It was great. There were really good people."

Beyond volunteering for the Red Cross, he has applied to the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves, with the hope of working in signals and systems.

Though Brawn has yet to hear a response to his application, he would like to share his background in cryptography, math, communications and technology and serve his country.

"It would be a good fit for my skill set, but also a good opportunity," said the former air cadet. "And I feel a certain sense of nationalism."

A close friend since Grade 4, Joel Klemick has witnessed Brawn’s development.

"Chris is very bright, very creative, very generous, exceptionally kind and considerate. He has a natural compassion for people and circumstances that comes from deep inside him. That has opened my eyes to appreciating depth of personal values in new ways," Klemick said.

"He’s very open minded and worldly, in a man-of-the-world way. He never fails to surprise me because he’s always working on something new."

Together, they have embarked in business ventures, like the local construction company, that produced and sold three houses.

"We took on some big dreams together and going through the experience of birthing something and growing it up and setting it free was great," he said. "He taught me a lot about business and leading."

Though he may not always be physically in Brandon, his hometown is always in Brawn’s thoughts.

"My secret dream would be to bring the next (software) start up back to Brandon. Technology is global. It just happened that the partners I started off with had projects based in Calgary, but they just don’t need to be," Brawn said.

"Almost all of my employees have been Brandon or southwestern Manitoba guys that I knew growing up or who came through ACC or BU, with the level of education and commitment to work that’s hard to find out (in Calgary.)

"I can’t say enough good things about southwestern Manitoba and if there’s a way to bring my business back there, I’d spend all my time there."