Sharka Stuyt is an Executive Coach, group facilitator, teacher and motivational speaker who works with individuals and organizations to help them realize their goals and vision. Sharka has over fifteen years of corporate leadership experience.She has played an instrumental role in helping many people and groups succeed and achieve their desires and aspirations.

Sharka was selected as one of the Top 40 Under 40 business people in BC by Business in Vancouver Magazine and was selected a finalist in the 20 Most Influential Women in BC in Dec. 2000.

Sharka is a Certified Executive Coach (Royal Roads University) and is a Coaching Clinic licensed facilitator (Corporate Coach University, Dallas Texas). Sharka has an Executive MBA and a BBA. Sharka has completed studies at Vancouver Counselling College and is a member of the Canadian Counselling Association.

Sharka is also a professor at Capilano College where she teaches Change Management and Leadership in the School of Business. She has also taught Executive Management Skill Development at Simon Fraser University in the Executive MBA program.

Sharka is a guest speaker at many industry events and has taken a leadership position in initiating corporate social responsibility in BC. She was recently on the Board of Directors of the North Shore Family Services a not-for profit organization that offers family-focused, community-based human service programs to individuals and families of the North Shore.

Sharka also was instrumental in founding the BC Technology Social Venture Partners, a B.C. based high tech not-for-profit which funds and supports numerous not-for-profits in B.C. She was a Director of the BC Technology Industry Association for 7 years and was previously on the Board of Directors of the York Technologies Industry Association, an Ontario-based group whose member companies represent nearly 80% of the high-technology revenues in all of Canada. Sharka has also been actively involved in the BC TIA technology industry awards and the New Ventures BC awards.

Prior to her shift to human potential building, Sharka was the worldwide Director of Marketing for Pivotal Software, where she helped grow the company from 12 employees to over 800 and from 0 in revenue to 100 million in 5 years. Sharka and her team coined the term "CRM" and evangelized the new product category across the U.S. and Canada. Today CRM is a common term throughout the world.

Sharka previously spent three years in Toronto as a senior director and manager with ATI Technologies Inc., the worlds leading video-graphics board and chip manufacturer. During her time at ATI, the company grew from $159 million in 1992 to $232 million in 1994. In 2006 ATI was aquired by AMD for $5.4 billion dollars.

Sharka also was the Director of Marketing at Bedford Software Inc., where she named and launched the world renowned product Simply Accounting. Sharka is currently on the board of directors and/or advisors of a number of technology companies, some of which include VantagePoint Systems Inc., HealthDynamics and others.

Business In Vancouver Magazine

Names Sharka Stuyt
Top 40 Under 40
December 28 - January 3, 2000 

Forty under Forty

B.C.'s business upstarts prove the power of ambition

It never fails: every year there's at least one Forty under Forty winner who's story makes me want to pack my bags and head for the hills. This year, the honor goes to Sharka Stuyt, who arrived in Canada as a Czechoslovakian immigrant, doggedly worked her way through university at night, climbed the high tech corporate ladder during the day, then, magically, landed at Pivotal as employee #12, launched the firm's flagship products and made her millions.

As I spoke to Stuyt about her story, there was no hint of arrogance or self-importance. Instead, she exuded the quiet confidence of someone who has made their own fortune and who doesn't take good luck for granted.

As a person under 40 myself, that conversation with Stuyt left me frantically reworking my own goals and deciding that, yes, it's time to push the bar up just a bit higher. And that's great -- it's exactly what Business in Vancouver set out to do when it created these awards in B.C. nine years ago. The 320 people we've featured in this space over the years are true examples of what happens when you combine gut-wrenching ambition with hard work, great ideas and a dose of luck. In short, these stories reveal our possibilities -- both as individuals and as a province. During this holiday season, I encourage you to take the time to read through them. I guarantee you'll come away recharged for the new year.

Thanks are due this year to our judges, Suromitra Sanatani of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and John Winter, president of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce. Business in Vancouver also appreciates the support of sponsors Deloitte & Touche and Royal Bank, who will host a reception for the winners in February.

To be a winner, you had to be a "top performer in a business environment, public or private," live or work in B.C. and be under the age of 40 on December 31, 1999.

And yes, we're already on the prowl for the class of 2000. Please send your nominations to Noel MacDonald

Sharka Stuyt, 32

Director of marketing, Pivotal Corp.

Sharka Stuyt knows all about making something out of nothing. When she was one-and-a-half, her family fled from Czechoslovakia to Canada. Her parents, in their 30s at the time, moved to North Vancouver and started their lives over again."I grew up with the belief that I could do anything I put my mind to," said Stuyt.

After graduating from high school, she joined Bedford Software in 1987 as a marketing manager. During the day, she worked on new ways to raise the company's profile, launching Bedford Accounting and Simply Accounting into the U.S. and Australian markets. At night, she drove up the hill to Simon Fraser University to take classes toward her business degree -- a process that took her six years to complete

International software giant Computer Associates snapped up Bedford in 1989, and Stuyt moved on to become vice-president of sales and marketing for Stratford Software in Burnaby. The company was working on a proprietary online information service and access software, a technology Stuyt now sees as being "just too early."

Soon after joining Stratford, Stuyt was offered the CEO position, but she declined, saying that at age 23 she would be in over her head.

She went on to work as director of marketing for ATI Technologies in Toronto, then made her big score, landing at Pivotal Software (now Pivotal Corp.) as employee No. 12 in 1995 (the company has since grown to more than iver 600 employees). As director of marketing, she launched the company's flagship customer relationship software. This year, Pivotal's stock rocketed, boosting Stuyt's personal wealth into the millions.

In between it all, she took 10 months off to travel the world, got married, had a son, started her executive MBA at SFU and became active in the B.C. Technology Industry Association.

She is now contracted back to Pivotal as director of marketing and is heading up a venture capital pool called Tech Growth Partners that she hopes to take public in January.

She's also looking for some more meaning and purpose in her life." I could die tomorrow and who would care how many products I've launched," she said. "I'd like to see how I can help."

Stuyt chalks up much of her success to her creativity, as well as her ability to stay flexible and not become too attached to her strategies. "If the environment changes overnight you have to go with it. You have to embrace change... In high tech, if you can do the job you can rise in the ranks very quickly," she said. *

Who is your corporate role model? Anita Roddick, Body Shop founder - "She's taken her core values and beliefs and used business as a means to fulfill them."