Getting to know Pat Whalen

by Darcy Rhyno

Pat Whalen worked his way up from janitor to CEO of LuminUltra, a New Brunswick water quality company with a staff of 55, offices in Canada, the US, the UK, France and Australia, and customers in some 85 countries. For two of the past three years, he’s been named one of Atlantic Canada’s top 50 CEOs. Saltscapes spoke with Pat Whalen about model railways, Lego and immigration. 

Is science a family passion?

My grandfather was a train station operator and conductor with CNR. He was building entire model train systems on tables with all the electronics. I grew up watching that.

Did you show an interest in science as a child?

One word: Lego. From a young age, I was quite the aficionado of Lego. Two or three of those large Rubbermaid bins full of Lego are still in my basement. The other was computers. At a very young age I was building and programming computers. It was something my father had a great interest in. With all those things together, I probably didn’t have a choice but going into some sort of science.

Tell me about LuminUltra.

We’re on a mission to change the way the world thinks about microbiology in water. Our customers range from Fortune 500 companies like Exxon Mobile to lonely rural municipal drinking water plants in Louisiana.

Your company has saved lives.

Absolutely. We have saved lives, improved the environment and saved our customers wheelbarrows of money.

Alternatively, if you fail, lives could be at risk.

It’s embedded in our culture that we want to be the best at what we do every time because there are lives on the line. 

How did you get started in the company?

I started when I was 10 or 11, after I had done a paper route for two or three years. For the better part of six years, I was responsible for bathrooms, dishes and vacuuming the office. My mother tells me I took it quite seriously. If somebody didn’t clean off their desk so I could dust, I would leave them a note. 

Was your ambition to remain in the family business?

After a year or two of working as a laboratory technician, my father told me about the great opportunity I had in front of me with the company. Being a hormonal teenager, I didn’t want to work in the lab the rest of my life. He got quite upset with me. But I guess the old man had a plan for me, whether or not he knew it. I guess it worked.

Are you like your father and grandfather?

I’m like the apple that fell directly to the bottom of the tree. I’m constantly reading and learning. I tend to procrastinate because I like to work under pressure, and I tend to feed that procrastination through learning. My grandfather had an old saying, “Knowledge doesn’t weigh anything, so get as much as you can.” 

Your company is openly supportive of employing immigrants.

We’ve got offices around the world, so we have people from Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Latin America, South America, Australia. At the end of the day, we’re looking for the best people who fit our culture and goals.

Is LuminUltra stronger for them?

It has a fantastic impact on our culture. Employing immigrants allows us to craft our message, build our products, serve global markets and have a lot more fun along the way. Immigration was the founding principal of North America, and we need to continue to attract talented people from different parts of the world to grow our economies and become a better and more attractive culture to the rest of the world.