Meet Allison

Allison Barsewsky is the Chief Financial Officer at Scimar. She’s responsible for the company’s financial planning. She also supervises the finance team and manages relationships with independent auditors.

“It’s busy, and every day brings a new challenge but I’m having the time of my life,” she says.

Allison joined Scimar after working almost 10 years as a public accountant.

“Coming into a company like this was a calculated risk for me. It’s a pre-revenue company, and there is risk with that scenario. You really don’t know where the journey will take you. But I’m passionate about what we’re doing and I love coming to work everyday.”

CEO Mick Lautt says Allison has brought an increased level of sophistication to the organization.

“She’s growing with us, and adding depth to our leadership team. We are building a company that embraces people with unique perspectives and skills. Allison is a key part of that process,” he adds.

Unique skill set

Allison graduated from Brandon University with a bachelor’s in Business Administration and holds a Chartered Professional Accounting designation. Her experience as a hands-on accountant combined with her big-picture perspective fits exactly what Scimar needs right now.

It’s a skill set Scimar’s Chief Development Officer John West says is missing from a lot of organizations.

“I talk with the CFOs at other companies and some of them haven’t touched a spreadsheet in years. They have lost touch with the details, and those details are really important when you are growing as fast as we are,” he says.

“I have a foot in both worlds,” Allison adds. “I’m crunching numbers, doing audits, and accounting for every dollar of our investors’ money today, but I’m also looking ahead to what our financial situation will be next year, and the year after that, and even ten years down the road.”

Manitoba roots

Allison brings an outsider perspective to the business, but on a personal level, she feels right at home with the Scimar family.

“I grew up in a small town south of Winnipeg. It’s called Morris, and it has a population of about 2,000 people,” she explains.

“I was definitely a small town girl. We would go to quad derbies and snowmobiling. My grandparents were huge into fishing and since we were very close with them, we would often go with them.”

As an adult, Allison has moved north with her young family: to Winnipegosis, an equally small town that is a short drive north of Dauphin. Other than her latitude, not much has changed.

“It’s right on the edge of Lake Winnipegosis. There’s the Mossey River with excellent fishing, and there’s provincial and national parks nearby. It’s a great area. It’s our little secret,” she says.

It’s a lifestyle that seems incongruent with her professional life, leading a multi million-dollar biotech company, but she says it keeps her grounded and connected to what matters most: Scimar’s mission to end type 2 diabetes.

So although most of her days are spent processing audits and creating projections, Allison still finds time to pull the occasional fish out of the lakes and rivers of Manitoba.