6 hours Ago By Devon Dekuyper
Ken Lima-Coelho has a powerful voice and he knows how to use it — whether it’s through his work as president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) of Calgary and Area, volunteering at the Calgary Foundation or singing in the four-man a cappella group, the Heebee-jeebees. Through his diverse career — from media and museum work to recreation, non-profits and mentorship — his focus has always been on “community building, and connecting people and trying to do social good,” Lima-Coelho said. “Those have been the hallmarks of my time.
” He was the recipient of the City of Calgary’s Community Advocate award for an individual in 2019, and the Queen Elizabeth 2 Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022. Using his voice to ask questions and to connect people has been key to his success, whether it’s in his professional life or his volunteer work — even on social media. “I have this silly little experiment that I’ve been doing — it’s called the daily distraction,” he said.
Every day on Facebook, he asks a question. Sometimes it’s lighthearted, (“Tell me about your slippers”), and sometimes more profound (“How are you really doing today?”). “I started it on March 16, 2020, when we were all locked in our houses,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
“I thought, well, I don’t know how long we’re going to be in here, so how are we going to create some community?” Five years later, the daily distraction is still going strong — and, despite differences of opinion, it’s brought people together. “We’ve created this little community,” Lima-Coelho said. “It’s safe.
Nobody’s attacking each other.” Brianne Oliver, chair of the BBBS national board of directors, says Lima-Coelho has become well known in the city through his myriad endeavours. “Ken is somebody everybody in Calgary seems to know.
He’s our Kevin Bacon,” said Oliver. “He creates authentic relationships across such a wide range of the Calgary community . .
. People really feel connected to Ken.” Oliver was part of the team that hired Lima-Coelho, and noted that his ability to think about the community as a whole — and to create authentic connections to serve the community — is what sets him apart.
“He really has such a great lens on how Calgary works and what Calgary needs as a community to be successful, and a deep desire to connect the cause that he’s supporting into the community,” Oliver said. “He’s not running a charity where he waits for those who need our services to come to him,” she added. His volunteer work started a new chapter in his life Lima-Coelho started out as a broadcast journalist, spending 15 years working for the CBC.
After a brief stint with the Glenbow museum and a subsequent return to the CBC, his volunteer work began to open new doors. He spent nearly 10 years at YMCA Calgary, first as a board member and later as the vice-president of community engagement, and has now been at BBBS for three and a half years. The non-profit matches kids who face adversity with carefully screened and trained mentors to provide them with support.
“The kids that we serve, they’ve got challenges in their lives — absolutely,” he said. “But having that one trusted adult or even youth mentor in their lives at the right time, with great training and great support and great partnerships, means that we can prevent a whole bunch of things that might happen if they didn’t have that.” Lima-Coelho learned a lot about the effect that a trusted adult can have from his own first mentor, Winn Anderson, who was the aquatics director at the YMCA that he went to every day after school as a child.
“Winn was always there,” he said, “when we were getting in trouble or when we were trying to do good. “She was very carefully, and I think constructively, teaching us community — teaching us what volunteerism meant, how showing up mattered, what responsibility looked like, what the consequences were when you screwed up — and I never forgot that.” What he saw then, and what he sees every day through his work at BBBS, is that the title of mentor is earned.
“Nobody ever hung a sign on Winn and said, ‘You will be a mentor.’ She was just that way. And that rubbed off, not just on me, but probably on a whole generation of kids.
” Lima-Coelho has carried those lessons not only into his professional life, but also into his volunteer work. He got his start in the world of community volunteerism thanks to a gig with the Heebee-jeebees. Kerry Longpré, who at the time was the Calgary Foundation’s vice-president of communications, saw the group perform at a community event.
She reached out to invite him to join the foundation’s arts and culture committee, which was a grant advisory committee. “I’m really indebted to Kerry for seeing something in me as a 20-something-year-old, because I had no business being in that room,” he said. “But then I realized I did have business being in that room, because I brought a different perspective.
” It was a passion for helping organizations strategize, though, that kept him around over the past 25 years — and led him to seeking out volunteer opportunities at other organizations such as the YMCA, the Calgary Chamber’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, and the Calgary Board of Education’s Education Matters. “I like doing stuff — don’t get me wrong,” he said. “If there’s a playground being built in my neighbourhood, I’ll put my rubber boots on and try to pull sod and do all the rest of it.
I love that. “But when you’re at the governance level of a board, you can help an organization set strategy and think through some of the really challenging aspects of either that organization’s mission or, frankly, a broader mission.” Lima-Coelho has also found inspiration in the perspectives that other people bring to the boards and committees he’s been involved with.
“You learn from really smart people that don’t need to be there — they’re not getting paid,” he said. “They want to be there, and they want to show up in that way and do good and unlock potential in staff and other volunteers that are doing different parts of the work.” He believes that everyone has talents that can be used to support the community in some way.
“When it comes down to it, it’s not about giving back. It’s actually about giving forward,” he said. “How can we inspire the next generation? How can I inspire my own kids — I have a 20-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter — to show up for their community?” Changemakers, a regular series in the Calgary Herald, started Feb.
25, 2025. Read more at calgaryherald.com/changemakers.
Who are the changemakers you know? If you’re aware of someone making a difference — big or small — in our community, send us a couple of sentences, along with that person’s name, describing why they deserve a public nod. We’ll publish their name, along with your description of why they are a changemaker, at calgaryherald.com.
Feel free to send along a photo, too, to [email protected].
