Ken Georgetti’s career has taken him from pipefitter to president of the Canadian Labour Congress and from shop steward to start-up founder of labour-owned, multi-million dollar companies. What the Ottawa Citizen newspaper described as “Georgetti’s consensus-building West Coast cool” has led the Canadian Labour Congress to add 700,000 new members under his leadership since 1999, growing to represent a record 3.2 million workers. Along the way Ken has met world leaders like Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and the Dalai Lama, and directly heard the plight of workers who have been horribly disabled in the sweatshop factories of China and developing nations. Ken is a modern labour leader – someone who has walked countless picket lines to support striking or locked-out workers and has been a controversial but respected guest in corporate boardrooms and cabinet offices, in every situation strongly advocating for working people and their families. Ken combines the traditional militancy of the labour movement with a keen understanding of business developed through the creation of Concert Properties, western Canada’s largest unionized residential developer, and the Working Opportunity Fund, a major labour-sponsored venture capital investor. First elected at age 46 in May 1999 as the youngest president in the CLC’s history, Ken came from a family of union activists in Trail, BC. During his 13 years as President of the British Columbia Federation of Labour, Ken earned a reputation for being innovative and outspoken while its membership more than doubled – from 218,000 in 1986 when he was elected to 450,000 members. At both the CLC and the BC Federation of Labour, Ken has helped modernize the organizations, ensuring that labour was more representative of the face of the workforce, by actively promoting women, visible minorities and youth.