Pat Corbett Bursary Awarded to Lesley Braby

March 05, 2009

Pat Corbett Bursary Awarded to Lesley Braby of Royal Roads University

Lesley Braby, a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Tourism Management Program at Royal Roads University, was awarded the Pat Corbett Leadership Award at the Tourism Industry Conference on February 13th. In addition to her program of study, Lesley works at the Canadian Tourism Commission and has been actively engaged in the industry for a number of years, having worked as a guide and trip manager for Backroads, and in communications for Air Canada.

The Pat Corbett Bursary is an award of $3,000 made to a student in a full-time tourism/travel/hospitality program in a public university, college or institute or through a private institution accredited through the Private Post Secondary Education Commission. This is an extremely competitive award: in 2008, 13 highly qualified applicants completed the extensive submission process.

The selection committee was composed of representatives from the Council of Tourism Associations of BC, the LinkBC network, and Pat Corbett himself. In recognition of the high calibre of applications from across the province, the committee decided to recognize two additional outstanding applications (out of the many) with an honourable mention and a gift of a Philips Canadian World Atlas. The honourable mentions went to Aliaa Elichashab of College of the Rockies and Gregory McCallum of Royal Roads University.

The award was presented at the Friday conference luncheon by Adrienne Corbett, Pat Corbett’s mother, with an encouraging video message from Pat (via a previous engagement in Whitehorse).

After accepting the award, Lesley reflected on her experiences studying tourism in BC. “While I've been working professionally in the tourism industry for about 15 years, I've only worked within BC for the past 18 months. What's struck me about the tourism industry in BC is the incredible leadership and commitment I've seen in the people I've been fortunate to meet in my short time here. Receiving this award was a privilege and a true high point for me in my educational and working life. I look forward to working together with the industry's leaders in the future to continue building a sustainable and vibrant tourism sector for BC and Canada.”

Stephen Regan of COTA “was very encouraged by these students,” noting they were “setting an example by pursuing tourism education at an advanced level, and building upon their already impressive leadership talents to benefit British Columbia’s tourism & hospitality industry in the future.”

For more information on the Pat Corbett Bursary awards and other financial resources for students, please visit LinkBC’s Resources for Students Page at http://linkbc.ca/main/?en&Students.