Eleanor Chiu arrived in Calgary in 1982 as a young immigrant from Hong Kong with one year of university behind her. Four decades later, she has helped grow Trico Homes into one of Calgary’s top residential builders and co-founded a charitable foundation dedicated to social entrepreneurship across Canada. In 2022, Eleanor Chiu was inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence for a career and a philosophy she sums up simply: doing well by doing good.
From Hong Kong to a Calgary Bank Teller Window
Eleanor Pui-Fong Fok was born on January 21, 1963, in Hong Kong, the sixth of eight children born to Wing Chi Fok and Sau Kuen Lai, entrepreneurs who had left mainland China in the 1950s. She grew up in a household defined by generosity, watching her mother send food and clothing to relatives who had stayed behind, and she was active in her church, where she met a fellow volunteer named Wayne Chiu. The couple married three years later. In 1982, after her first year of university in Hong Kong, Eleanor and Wayne emigrated to Canada, settling in Calgary with the support of the Calgary Chinese United Church. Eleanor enrolled at the University of Calgary, and her fluency in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English helped her land a job as a bank teller at Financial Trustco’s Chinatown branch while she completed her Bachelor of Commerce in Finance in 1985.
Becoming Trico’s Financial Backbone
Eleanor returned to school for a second degree in accounting, earning her Chartered Accountant designation in 1990 after articling at KPMG Peat Marwick in Calgary. She spent time at Nova Corporation as a Senior Financial Specialist while her husband built his homebuilding business, Trico Homes, and in 1998 she joined the company full time as Chief Financial Officer. Under Eleanor and Wayne’s joint leadership, Trico grew from a 15-person operation into the Trico Group of Companies, employing more than 200 people and ranking among Calgary’s top five residential homebuilders. Trico has been recognized as one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies every year since 2004 and as one of Canada’s Best Workplaces for Women, distinctions Eleanor credits to the company’s emphasis on an inclusive, socially responsible culture.
Turning a Housing Business Into a Social Enterprise
In 2008, Eleanor and Wayne founded the Trico Charitable Foundation to fund and encourage social entrepreneurship, and in 2012 she helped Trico Homes become a Certified B Corporation, one of only 2,000 in the world at the time. According to her Alberta Order of Excellence profile, Trico was named a 2020 Best for the World honouree for its work in the community category. Eleanor has also been a founding board member of Windmill Microlending, which provides loans to immigrants and refugees pursuing Canadian licensing in their fields, work that echoes her own family’s experience arriving in Calgary with little more than ambition.
A Legacy Shared With the Next Generation
Eleanor’s board work spans the Calgary YWCA, the Calgary TELUS Community Board, the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, and Mount Royal University, where she has served on the Board of Governors. Together, Eleanor and Wayne have supported SAIT’s Founding Builders program, the Trico Changemakers Studio at Mount Royal University, and the Trico Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Centre at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business. In 2018, she became a Fellow of the Chartered Professional Accountants, and in 2021 she received the Haskayne School of Business’s Management Excellence Award. In 2022, alongside her Alberta Order of Excellence induction, Eleanor and Wayne marked 30 years with Trico Homes and 40 years of marriage.
What might your own business achieve if profit and purpose were treated as the same goal?
