Get to Know… Owen!

What is your role at Vovia?

I am an Account Manager, which means that I am the face and voice between our amazing team of specialists and analysts at Vovia, and our clients. Innovation plays a big role in everything Vovia does, and I work closely with our group to plan and execute marketing strategies to drive success for the relationships we hold. My goal is to make the needs and desires of our clients become one with the team at Vovia.

I also get to work on budgeting and estimating, but that’s much less interesting than interacting with the great people on both sides of the business.

What do you in your free time?

In a perfect world, I would be playing hockey, drawing, reading books (comics!), enjoying video games and movies with my children, and taking long romantic walks with my wife. In reality, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about technology, comic books, video games and sports, but have yet to find a good book or blog about romantic walks with one’s wife…

I am a big fan of traveling as well and have been on some cool trips with my family.

Where are you from?

This is an interesting story, all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down. In south east Calgary, born and raised, on the playground is where I spent most of my days… yeah I am one of the older guys on the team so Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire was a regular program in my younger days.

While being Calgary born and bred is becoming rarer by the minute, I love this city and have never really wanted to live anywhere else. It is surprising to learn how many of my colleagues at Vovia are also born and raised Calgarians. Whenever the wanderlust kicks in, we just look to the horizon and think about planning a family vacation.

Where are your favourite spots to visit?

Hawaii is a haven my wife and I fell in love with almost 10 years ago. We’ve been to Maui (the best), Kauai (the wettest), and Oahu (the busiest). The goal is to visit Kona, and then we will probably be Maui-ers for life. Susan Murphy tell’s me Kona will change these plans.  Guess she is more into Volcanos, we’ll see!

I would also love to spend more time in Israel. In 2009 we spent 11 days divided between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. It was an amazing experience and one I would love to do again someday. The history, culture, and people were all incredible and so different from what I know in my world. That said, the camel riders that followed us up our climb of Mount Sinai I could have done without…

New York was the best people watching trip I’ve ever been on. Not to mention all the shows we took in and the famous people we were able to stalk – I mean ‘meet’. Highlight: Met Matthew Gray Gubler at the National History Museum. He was in line with us! Lowlight: Ran into Hank Azaria in Central Park, but he was too busy to stop and say hello. I don’t think he realized who I was…

One of my most cherished journeys was the day I spent in Legoland with my 4-year-old son. I’ll remember it forever, but sadly I think my son only has a few fleeting memories that we went. Guess we’ll have to do it again some day!

What is something people would not know about you?

I’m a twin! I have a twin sister, Amber, who is 8 minutes older than I am and she has never let me live it down. Thankfully, she’s half my size so that came in handy over the years whenever she would hold her age over me. I come from a long (maybe short?) line of twins; my father is a twin, and my mother’s father is a twin. I desperately want twins, and sadly my sister has stopped producing children at two (no twins). It will be a sad day when the twin line is broken and I am currently sitting at one boy, and one girl (not twins).

I also own seven sword replicas from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy! Even though my wife thinks I should sell them, I vowed to ‘keep them secret, keep them safe’ and you can’t just go around breaking vows. They are… my precious!