The business of communication: BComm student connects to community

Learn more about the Bachelor of Commerce program.

Lisa Girbav has always been a storyteller. When it came time to choose a career, she embraced her passion for storytelling in a post-secondary radio broadcasting program.

For the better part of a decade, she had a career in broadcasting from Terrace to Vancouver, where she worked at both corporate and independent radio stations, including Bell Media and CFNR FM, a First Nations radio network serving over 82 communities in BC.

Now, she’s the manager of communications and public relations for the Lax Kw'alaams Band in northern BC, where the Prince Rupert resident is also an elected trustee on the Lax Kw'alaams Settlement Trust.

Key to bridging her experience behind a microphone and her job representing the interests of the Lax Kw’alaams people is her education in the Royal Roads University Bachelor of Commerce program, from which she expects to graduate in spring 2025.

“I find the work I’m doing is really rewarding and I really enjoy it,” Girbav says. “I’m using the storytelling part of my brain but, at the same time, because I’m the communications person for the Band as an organization across multiple departments, I need to be well versed in a variety of subjects. I feel like a mini-expert in almost every subject across the whole organization.

“I think that that is where a lot of my strength has come from, the content from the Royal Roads program,” she adds. “Now, I’m able to better explain how budgets work to our members who are not familiar with financial accounting or budgeting — trying to put it into much more accessible language.

“Having business courses helped with clarifying the Band as a government and the way that we connect that government to the public, essentially.”

Girbav notes a Royal Roads University Student Association Award was critical to kicking off her education at Royal Roads and says such grants are essential to attract a diverse student population, particularly Indigenous students who are interested in post-secondary schooling but don’t have the financial means to pursue education that can help launch them into competitive careers. 

“I think that grant definitely helps to bring in people who have something of value to bring to these courses, and something of value to bring to the workforce, but they might not have had the chance otherwise.”

While her RRU education helps with the work she does in her small community — where, with her husband, she also writes a blog called Güüdisk — go harvesting encouraging young Ts'msyen people to harvest traditional food from their territory — she says the exposure to students from diverse backgrounds and places has opened her eyes to varied worldviews and communication styles.

“I really enjoyed the amount of teamwork that’s involved in these courses,” Girbav says. “Just having a variety of personalities and people from different backgrounds, and different ages and ethnicities — they come with their own personal experiences, which I think makes the group work really enriching.”

Learn more about the Bachelor of Commerce program.