Credit Clearing Specialists

Vivian Chen – Credit Clearing Specialist

The combination of passion for wine and travel brought Vivian to Canada. Vivian traveled to many provinces of mainland China with her parents when she was young. Vivian She settled down in Vancouver in 2000 but she was left with the belief that "traveling is more eye-opening than reading". Vivian's love of wine has grown even more since gaining knowledge of viniculture by completing the WSET foundation class. With a strong marketing and real estate investment background, Vivian is an expert at real estate investment consulting, business managing and winery merging. Her friendly personality comes out naturally to provide exemplary customer service. Vivian speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin fluently. She specializes in taking Chinese customers on the tour that brings them deeply in-touch with the local culture and interprets local people's experiences. 陳惠欣是一個對紅酒和旅行充滿熱情的人。惠欣從小就跟隨父母走訪了很多城市和國家，她在2000年最後定居在溫哥華。惠欣親身的旅行經歷讓她深刻體會到 “讀萬卷書，不如行萬里路”的道理。惠欣一直是個紅酒熱愛者，尤其專門學習了紅酒認證課程之後，她對紅酒品嘗和釀製都有了更進一步的研究。 惠欣的專業是市場開發和地產投資。惠欣的性格開朗，直率加上她的專業知識，每一個各戶都非常喜歡和欣賞她。惠欣精通英文，廣東話和國語，她希望作為中西方 的文化商務橋梁，幫助中國人直接並深入的接觸西方的人文，從而帶來商機，同時也帶給西方人認識東方文化的機會。所以與惠欣的接觸是你開闊思路，促成商機的 嚮導。

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Lionel Grant – Credit Clearing Specialist

Lionel Grant is a business consultant whose experience ranges in the energy sector as a public and member relations expert as well as event planning. Lionel spent 20 years in hospitality in various roles managing convention centres, catering operations and assisting with the planning of many large scale events such as “Live 8” and many professional golf association events. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and is a proud Canadian, enthusiastic outdoorsman and devoted husband.

Jeff McDonald – Credit Clearing Specialist

Jeff McDonald is a corporate communications pro with business development and marketing experience in many different industries, including tourism, travel, real estate, economic development, health care, wine, and others. He’s a networker with a wide circle of professional and personal contacts, in Canada and internationally. His past roles include communications positions with Vancouver Economic Development Commission, Tourism Whistler, and the British Columbia Wine Institute. His skills begin with strategic communications planning and tactical execution, and everything else he does professionally flows from that.

Jeff lives in Vancouver, Canada, and has traveled extensively in North America, Europe, Central and South America, and Mexico. He’s a skier, a road cyclist, a back-country trekker, a mountain climber, a writer, and a lover of all things connected with wine, especially drinking it.

Rod Fong – Credit Clearing Specialist

Rod resides in Vancouver where he grew up. He spends his time doing the things he loves: spending time with friends and family and learning his craft in the food and beverage industry.

He leads an active and healthy lifestyle playing sports and dedicating his time to his young family.

Rod has a proven track record in business. His past success has been earned from establishing good relationships, hard work and innovative ideas. His future success as a broker will be to build on his reputation and continuing to build a “win – win” situation for his customers.

Gary Strachan – Credit Clearing Specialist

Strachan’s research at Agriculture Canada provided data to enable the BC grape and wine industry to redevelop during the 1990′s with new grape varieties and appropriate technology to create wines competitive with the rest of the wine world.

Strachan assisted the re-establishment of the BC wine industry after its contraction in the wake of the 1987 Bilateral Free Trade Agreement with the United States. He drafted new wine standards for the VQA assessment programme, established screening taste panels, and shared his knowledge with dozens of new wineries who chose to enter the reorganized wine industry, assisted them to write business plans and obtain BC wine production licences. Reconciled BC VQA standards with Ontario VQA, US BATF, Canada Food and Drugs Act and European Community wine laws.

Former Gov’t of Canada delegate to Office Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin General Assembly. Organized the first BC VQA wine evaluations, wrote the VQA protocols, drafted the rules. Former Chair of the BC Wine Industry Technical Committee, Director of the Pacific Northwest Chapter, American Society for Enology and Viticulture. Former Judging Chair of the Okanagan Wine Festival, Former Wine Judging Chair of the Pacific National Exhibition, Wine Judge of the Interior Pacific Exhibition. Organized and taught the first Viticulture courses and the first Winery Assistant courses of Okanagan College.

Nancy Strachan – Credit Clearing Specialist

After many years of training and performance awards, Nancy studied for her solo performance and teaching degree, voice and piano, at the Royal College of Music, London England, on scholarship. She has served on many boards:
Director, Summerland Arts Council andPublicity Chair, director, Summerland Community Cultural Development Committee, director on the Board and choir member of Musaic Vocal Ensemble, and director, Board of the Summerland Museum. She was co owner of Okanagan Wine Tours, and later was co owner of First Estate Cellars, responsible for inventory management, sales, events, decor and displays, book keeping and cash.
Much experience in public relations was gained during her employment at Summerland Radio Station CKSP (now CHOR). She was hired to gather news and events, report, write and broadcast news. She became news director, collected advertisement copy from sponsors, wrote and produced advertisements with sound effects etc. She was on air host for two daytime shows, comprising news, interviews, music, advertisements, and public service announcements.

Carlo Nigro – Credit Clearing Specialist

Carlo is easy going, patient and friendly. He has been involved in the financial world, in one way or another for 25 years. He loves entrepreneurship, capitalism and free market ideas. He loves to network and his own network of contacts includes people with innovative ideas and services to serious investors. Although English is his first language, he speaks reads and writes Italian fluently and can get by in Spanish. Favorite saying: “There are more people with money than people with ideas; you just have to find them.”

Stuart Kay – Credit Clearing Specialist

Stuart has over 25 years of real world experience as an entrepenuer working in numerous industries including Barter, Financial Planning , Marketing, and Recycling. Stuart has always been able to spot trends early on and provide valuable services to the businesses that he has worked with. Stuart loves the barter exchange business and sees Credit Clearing Solutions as the perfect answer to help many companies both large and small.

Stuart envisions CCS as a win win solution that fits right in to Stuart's other Michigan-based businesses. He intends to network with the thousands of entrepreneurs and enable them to benefit from the exciting opportunities provided by Universal Expansion Group. Most of all Stuart loves his family, which includes his wife and three children.