Ledohowski among new entrants to Manitoba Business Hall of Fame

The late Canad Inns founder will join the ranks of Manitoba Business Hall of Fame members next year.

Leo Ledohowski is one of three honourees to receive the prestigious title. Mark Evans, the executive chair of Conquest Planning, and Michael Pyle, Exchange Income Corporation’s chief executive, are also slated to be inducted next year.

“Each of their stories is very unique,” said Greg Leipsic, president of JA Manitoba.

The non-profit oversees the hall of fame; its board chooses new faces annually. The incoming businessmen will be honoured at an April 6 gala at the Victoria Inn Hotel.

“I’m honoured to be in the same group as Mike Pyle and Leo Ledohowski,” Evans said.

He created NaviPlan, a financial planning software, which was adopted by some of the largest financial institutions in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. He sold the business to Zywave in 2011.

Evans then co-founded Conquest Planning, a financial planning software that uses artificial intelligence. The company has expanded internationally and raised more than $150 million in the last six years, according to JA Manitoba.

Evans has worked while in and out of cancer treatments over the past 18 years. He’s experienced kidney, lung and liver cancer, and a brain tumour last year.

Immunotherapy treatments on his current liver cancer have been “extremely successful,” he said Friday.

Doug Harvey — a fellow Business Hall of Fame member and CancerCare board member who died this month — was one of Evans’s nominators.

“(He’s) not in the world anymore, but still making an impact,” Evans said.

Both he and Pyle pointed to their companies’ charitable contributions as among the things they’re most proud of in their careers.

Pyle highlighted the growth he and staff led at Exchange Income Corporation. The company began with an initial public offering of $8 million; it has ballooned in value to $10 billion, Pyle said.

Exchange Income Corporation is involved in aerospace, aviation and manufacturing, including by providing aviation services to Canada’s North.

“The awards are individual, but they’re really about a group of people and what was accomplished with our company,” Pyle said.

Ledohowski transformed Canad Inns from a single venue to Manitoba’s largest hotel chain. The business has properties in Winnipeg, Portage la Prairie, Brandon and Grand Forks.

The City of Winnipeg named a street after Ledohowski last month. It’s an honorary naming on Jefferson Avenue, between McPhillips and Watson streets.

The Business Hall of Fame gala will have more seats this year — more than 600, compared to the usual 525 — because it’s moved from the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre, Leipsic noted.

Tickets cost $325.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com