Dragons' Den's Wes Hall among finalists for $30K National Business Book Award
The $30,000 annual award recognizes the best business-related writing and research in Canada
Dragons' Den's Wes Hall is on the shortlist for the 2023 National Business Book Awards for his memoir No Bootstraps When You're Barefoot: My Rise from a Jamaican Plantation Shack to the Boardrooms of Bay Street.
Founded in 1985, the $30,000 annual award recognizes the best business-related writing and research in Canada.
No Bootstraps When You're Barefoot: My Rise from a Jamaican Plantation Shack to the Boardrooms of Bay Street follows Hall's personal story. Now an entrepreneur and philanthropist, he grew up in poverty in a home where domestic violence was prevalent. The book details how he overcame these challenges and trauma to achieve personal and financial success, as well as how he now uses his voice to advocate for social justice causes.
Hall is a Jamaican-Canadian business leader and business school instructor. His podcast, Between Us with Wes Hall, features conversations on systemic racism with leaders of colour. The founder of the anti-Black racism initiative, BlackNorth, he is also one of the investors on the hit TV series Dragon's Den.
The other books on the shortlist are Unprecedented: Canada's Top CEOs on Leadership During COVID-19, compiled and edited by Steve Mayer and Andrew Willis and The Next Age of Uncertainty: How the World Can Adapt to a Riskier Future by Stephen Poloz.
Unprecedented: Canada's Top CEOs on Leadership During COVID-19 is a series of essays that explain how Canada's biggest companies survived the corporate world during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CEOs are from all different sectors and provide important insight into crisis management.
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Mayer is an investment banker with Greenhill Canada and Willis is a writer and columnist with The Globe and Mail.
The Next Age of Uncertainty: How the World Can Adapt to a Riskier Future provides insight into the Bank of Canada from the former Governor and experienced economist, Poloz. He explains the current sense of uncertainty and why the bank does what it does in these moments of unknowability. He uses past crises, including that of 2008, to provide what might be in store as time goes on.
The 2023 winner will be selected by an independent jury and will be announced at an in-person event on Nov. 8.
Last year's winner was Billion Dollar Start-up by Adam Miron, Sébastien St. Louis and Julie Beun.
Previous winners include Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland, The Patch by Chris Turner and Viva MAC by Andrea Benoit.
