A former OBJ Forty under 40 recipient says she’s excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, now that the training company she co-founded has been acquired by a national firm.
Mia Hempey started CTE Solutions with six others in 2002 after they had all lost their jobs during the dot-com bust. She received the Forty under 40 honours in 2005.
Early last week, CTE Solutions was acquired by ctc TrainCanada.
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“ctc came to us,” says Ms. Hempey. “I wasn’t looking to sell. I quite enjoyed being my own boss, but the industry is changing and there’s been a lot of small companies getting smaller and a lot of big companies are getting bigger.”
She says with the emergence of virtual training, competition is now wide open.
“It made a lot of sense to join forces and be a much stronger, much dominant player by leveraging their skill sets because they have locations all across Canada and we didn’t,” she said.
In a release issued to announce the acquisition, both companies called the deal a good fit, as they had complimentary offerings.
Ms. Hempey says ctc TrainCanada has a strong brand in desktop training and is known for its room-rental service – where the customer can rent the facilities for their own internal training – and CTE Solutions is more focused on the IT professional.
Her company, which has 20 staff in offices in Ottawa and Toronto, will act as a wholly-owned subsidiary and will now be able to take their IT expertise across the country.
CTE Solutions and ctc TrainCanada will keep their individual offices open in Ottawa, with CTE on Holland Avenue and ctc on Slater.
That’s an advantage in the local market, says Ms. Hempey.
“I can’t think of any training company in the city that has 20 classrooms,” she says adding all her staff will keep their jobs.
Ms. Hempey now becomes a vice-president of ctc TrainCanada, with the immediate job of overseeing a smooth merger of their services in Ottawa. Eventually she will then work on rolling out CTE services in the ctc offices in the western and eastern parts of the country.
Terms of the deal were not released.
