Up in the Clouds | Calgary rainmaker Adam Pekarsky brings his “unabashed optimism” to Alberta politics

Adam Pekarsky has a secret life.

By day, he’s an aggressive and ambitious legal recruiter. But by night, he’s quietly and carefully developing some political muscle.

“He’s a mover and a shaker and he gets people’s respect,” says Kent Hehr, the Calgary-Buffalo MLA who’s taking a run at Calgary’s mayoral chair this fall. Pekarsky’s fingerprints are all over Hehr’s campaign. But it’s all strictly “behind the scenes”: he’s no campaign manager or fundraising director. He’s just, as Hehr puts it, “doing what Adam does.”

Which is? In the Hehr campaign, “doing what Adam does” includes everything from providing high-level strategic advice to reaming out the candidate when he says stupid things on the radio. It’s the same mix of strategic thinking, risk tolerance and what Pekarsky calls “typical Albertan unabashed optimism” that led the 40-year-old lawyer to launch a new business in an already competitive field smack in the middle of the worst economic recession in over half a century.

Pekarsky’s career officially started in 1998, when he was called to the Alberta bar, following the path of his father and grandfather. He articled and started building a career with the firm now known as Fraser Milner Casgrain (FMC), then a strong regional law firm with offices in Calgary and Edmonton. He was going to work hard, make partner, make lots of money and make his father proud.

Instead, he nearly broke the poor man’s heart. “It was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had,” he admits, “telling my dad I was going to walk away from the law and basically be a commission salesman for some company he never heard of.” The company was Robert Half, and it wanted Pekarsky to build up its legal recruitment arm in Calgary. He discovered a knack for the task, and after his stint there he returned to FMC not as a lawyer but as the firm’s director of western professional development and recruitment. Still, he wasn’t meant to end his career in a law firm as a non-lawyer, and as Calgary and Alberta boomed like mad Pekarsky found himself again the target of corporate headhunters.

“I learned more about being a good recruiter by being the hunted than I could in any other setting,” he says. The prevailing predator was Korn/Ferry International, and Pekarsky made the move in February 2008. But by the fall of that year the world was in the process of falling apart, and recruitment wasn’t exactly booming. In Pekarsky’s mind, that just meant it was the right time to launch his own recruitment business.

“It became clear to me in the fall of 2008 that I would have to start building a practice from scratch,” Pekarsky says. And if you’re going to build from scratch … well, why not really build from scratch? “If I wanted to build a really top-notch legal consulting business, Korn/Ferry was not the right platform. They’re top executive search full stop. There was no room in that model for different fee arrangements, for working down market, for smaller firms or startups, or for specialized consulting services.”

By July 2009, he was on his own, “couch surfing” at Deloitte courtesy of some friends. “They let me use their office. I had a computer and a telephone, and very low overhead,” Pekarsky recalls. “I started reaching out to people I knew.” Before he knew it, he was on a plane to Toronto with Scott (Rusty) Miller, the former chief legal counsel of Petro-Canada. After the Suncor/Petro-Canada merger, Miller had been recruited by national law firm Ogilvy Renault LLP to head up its Calgary office. Miller thought Ogilvy should put the talent hunt for the new office in Pekarsky’s hands.

“I spent five hours with them talking about the Calgary legal marketplace, and four of those were me telling them how incredibly difficult recruiting for this office was going to be,” Pekarsky recalls. “I think they appreciated the candour.” They did, and Ogilvy’s national managing partner, John Coleman, remains a fan. “I have a very high regard for Adam’s knowledge of the Alberta legal marketplace and his professionalism,” he says. He should, too, given that Pekarsky delivered some top talent to the fledgling Ogilvy office, including Ben Rogers, the former co-chair of the energy group at Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP. “No one knows this market and its lawyers and law firms better than Adam,” says Rogers. “He’s been an immense resource for us.”

Ogilvy proved to be an immense resource for Pekarsky, too. Not only did the mandate give Pekarsky sufficient cash flow to stop squatting at Deloitte, but it brought him a much greater degree of visibility that quickly produced a steady flow of clients. As it celebrated its first birthday, the Pekarsky Group was carrying out work for Opti-Canada, Talisman Energy, Pengrowth, Parkland Income Fund and Alberta Home Warranty. There are less glamorous names on the list too, like a two-lawyer shop in Medicine Hat for whom Pekarsky’s just found a third. “It’s not just the big guys who need to work with a recruiter,” says Pekarsky.

His is an unusual attitude in an industry in which humility is about as common as a bottle of cheap scotch in the company liquor cabinet. “There are only so many top-tier firms you can work for,” Pekarsky says. “If you’re an ethical recruiter, and we are, you cap yourself in that area quickly. But there are so many opportunities elsewhere.”

For Pekarsky, the more challenging and difficult the opportunity, the better. Take his involvement with Tourism Calgary. “I was looking for a board to get involved with that would have me giving back to my community somehow,” he says. A colleague pointed him to George Brookman, who was overhauling the board of Tourism Calgary. “George said, this will be brutal, hard work, very political and may not be successful,” Pekarsky recalls. “With a sales job like that, how could I say no?”

That’s vintage Pekarsky, and it’s that aspect of his character that has Brookman convinced that his young colleague is going places. “He’s going to be prime minister or lead the delegation that brings peace to the Middle East,” Brookman quips. Or is it a quip? “This man has a bright future in the city. He will be involved in business at high levels, and hopefully even in politics.”

Of course, he’s already involved in politics. It’s just that you just never see him doing it. Before law school, he spent three years in Ottawa working for Alberta MPs and getting bloodied on leadership campaigns. (“Remember the post-Mulroney leadership race, where Kim Campbell finished first and Jean Charest second? I worked for the guy who finished third.”) When Ralph Klein stepped down as premier in 2006, Pekarsky participated in his behind-the-scenes way in the subsequent leadership race (for the record, he didn’t back Ed).

And then, of course, there’s Hehr. Pekarsky was part of the group that hired the fresh-out-of-law-school Hehr back in 2000, and the two men worked closely when Pekarsky returned to FMC in a professional development/recruitment capacity. Pekarsky was on board when Hehr ran for the provincial legislature. He’s in the background now.

“I’m not stumping for him or anything,” he stresses. He’s got to be careful: conflicts are everywhere. Tourism Calgary for one will need to have a good relationship with whomever wins the Calgary mayoralty race. If it’s Hehr, he’ll be happy.

If it’s not, then Pekarsky will manage. He always does.

“I’m unabashedly optimistic,” he repeats. “Or perhaps blissfully, wilfully blind. Wilful blindness is a great trait of Albertans. It’s what gets us to where we need to be – regardless of what the headlines from the East tell us we should be doing.”

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