Prince George, B.C. – She arrived in Prince George from Ontario but make no mistake, the new senior executive at Tourism Prince George is a British Columbian through and through.

Monday was the first day on the job as the Chief Executive Officer of Tourism Prince George for Erica Hummel, who spent the day “meeting with my staff and meeting with the board and getting an idea of where we’re at at the moment and how we’re going to move forward.  We’ve got a board meeting coming up in a few days so we’re just preparing for the immediate meetings coming up.”

So, where does the new CEO come from?  “Well my most recent location was Toronto.  I was working in a tourism region called Central Counties Tourism, just north of Toronto and I spent two years there.  But really I’m from British Columbia.  I was raised in Logan Lake and I grew up in the interior, went to University College of the Cariboo (now Thompson Rivers University).  So I’m a B.C. returnee in a sense, but it’s nice to be back.”

Hummel is well-versed in the tourism field.  “I have a degree in tourism management, a Bachelor of Tourism Management and I have a Master of Arts in Tourism Policy and Planning, and I got the masters degree from University of Waterloo.”

So what attracted Erica Hummel to take this position with Tourism Prince George?  Apparently it wasn’t a difficult decision.  “Definitely I wanted to be in a community, I wanted to focus on one community.  In my previous roles I’ve been in a region which is much more difficult to get to know who’s who and to really make a difference on a local level.  So I really was looking for a place where you have a balance between everything I’d want to do culturally, for entertainment and shopping but also my passion is to be out in the wilderness doing cross-country skiing.  To have that balance, that’s what I found here and it really is a quality of life decision.”

Hummel arrives at an interesting time, with the Canada Winter Games now less than a year off.   She says “it’s one of the most exciting opportunities I think Prince George has seen.  I’m very much looking forward to being a part of it.  We’re going to be meeting with some of the team from the planning committee Tuesday.  Tourism Prince George will be working with the planning committee to, we haven’t established exactly what our role is at the moment, but once we establish what that is we’ll have to hit the ground running.  Ya, very excited to be a part of the momentum as we approach it and then also the legacy as its builds the destination for years to come.”

The CEO, who had no problem telling a nosey reporter that she is 37 years of age, says “I’m at a point in my career where I’ve had a lot of years of growth in every aspect of tourism that I’ve worked in so at this point it’s really a fantastic opportunity to be CEO with the staff and the resources that Tourism Prince George affords.  So it’s really a great opportunity to kind of take the lead on the tourism initiatives of the community here and to work with the region.”