Goodbye may be the hardest word, but for Darryl Lake it will serve a short-lived purpose.
Sixteen years after taking the lead at the Northern Ontario Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT), Lake is taking down his shingle as CEO next spring, but plans to remain involved with the Sudbury-based innovation centre.
Retirement was a difficult decision for the former college instructor, who established NORCAT with former Cambrian College president Glenn Crombie in 1995 in an effort to keep skilled Sudbury youth in the North.
“I think it's always nice to retire when the place that you started is doing very, very well,” Lake said. “You don't want to retire and hand off a burden to other people; you want to hand off a success, and we are coming off of two extremely good years.”
During his time as CEO, Lake has guided the not-for-profit organization through a number of transitions, including the establishment of a mine to test out new technology and mine training, as well as the construction of a 60,000-square-foot facility, which is undergoing an expansion that has already been fully rented.
That NORCAT is the only innovation centre to evolve from a college environment is a point of pride for Lake. NORCAT's ongoing work with NASA has allowed it to develop new technology for the mining sector, and its occupational health and safety training has become the standard for mining giants like Vale and Xstrata Nickel. It is now in use across Canada.
Lake is also pleased he could band the cities of Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay and Sudbury together in the Northern Technology Alliance, a consortium that opens up doors for Northern innovators by granting them access to experts across the province.
NORCAT board of directors chair Michael Atkins commended Lake for his dedication to the organization and its mandate.
“For 16 years Darryl has been at the centre of what needs to be done to leverage a resource economy into a knowledge economy,” Atkins said in a news release. “He has been relentlessly focused on commercialization, innovation, corporate sustainability and high-level networking. His legacy is that we now know we can do things not previously imagined. Who would have believed 16 years ago a Sudbury innovation centre would be hired by NASA to help build its future? It is a change in culture.”
Bedford Consulting Group has been hired by the board to lead the search for a new CEO. While Lake won't be directly involved in the selection process, he emphasized his preference would be to hire someone from Northern Ontario for the job.
In addition to spending time with family and volunteering in the community, Lake would like to remain involved with NORCAT, if on a smaller scale. He said he'll continue to make himself available, offering his experience if needed.
“I hope I'll still be involved in some way, which we haven't figured out yet, but it's time that somebody else took the reigns,” he said. “It's one of those things that you're very lucky that you're able to do in your career, and I've been very, very lucky.”
