Stephanie Nelson Named as New Chair for BC Cranberry Commission

The BC Cranberry Marketing Commission will have a new chair, due to the shuffling of a number of regulated commodity positions.

Kalpna Solanki is moving on from the position to join BC Turkey, and will be replaced by Stephanie Nelson, the current executive director at BC Broiler Hatching Egg Commission .

“I just celebrated 15 years with Hatching Egg,” she says. “This is my first chairmanship and we have a new minister. We’ve met with her and we’ve got some information on what she’d like to see.”

While she loves working at Hatching Egg, Nelson also recognized she was longing to add new opportunities to her work experience without changing her job. She spoke to the former BC Agriculture and Food Minister, Lana Popham, and offered to serve in whatever way her skills might benefit the province’s agriculture sector. Cranberries was a fit and she became chair on December 21.

“I didn’t apply for it specifically. At the time, I’d talked to [Popham] and asked if there was anywhere I could help,” she says. “Cranberries is interesting. I’m not involved in horticulture so it’s going to be a brand-new world. I’m interested in learning a whole new area of agriculture.”

Nelson knows a few of the faces in the cranberry industry and is looking forward to working alongside those she knows and those she doesn’t yet.

“It was a slow start over Christmas, but I was able to attend their Christmas social,” she says. “I will definitely be at the AGM [on March 7]. I want to learn about being a great chair and about cranberries.”