Stop. Collaborate and listen: COSIA’s VP Wes Jickling and his team are helping bright minds move big ideas forward.
May 12, 2026
To be successful, whether it’s on the basketball court or in the boardroom, a few things have to be at play: collaboration, communication, selflessness, trust, reliability and resilience. For Wes Jickling, Vice President of Innovation and COSIA (the innovation arm of Oil Sands Alliance), those qualities have been honed through competitive team sport, global work with the United Nations (UN), high-ranking roles in government, and raising three teenagers.
Growing up in Estevan, Saskatchewan (a community of about 10,000 in those days) he was already primed for an eventual career in oil and gas. Coined the “Energy Capital of Saskatchewan,” Estevan was a place where most families, including his own, were tied to coal-fired power plants, coal mining, or oil and gas. While Wes took the long route before coming home to the industry, every experience informs how he shows up today.
In high school, he was intrigued by the experiences of exchange students. After graduation, he did a year-long exchange in Brazil. This is where he caught the international travel bug. Back in Canada, he completed his undergraduate degree in international relations at the University of Calgary while shooting hoops for the Dinos basketball team. He later earned a master’s degree in international relations and development from Aalborg University in Denmark. With his sights set on working for the UN, he soon landed a role with that organization in Brazil.
Swish.
From there, Wes continued his UN work in Mbabane, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Kyiv in Ukraine, and Khartoum, Sudan.
“My work focused on public health – HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis for example, and food security, both distribution and strategy,” says Wes. “Governments in those countries were seeking development support or humanitarian assistance to tackle these challenges. My job was to help make that happen through collaboration and consensus-building. It meant getting local and foreign governments aligned on how to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS (as an example), and persuading organizations with different mandates, pressures and politics to move in the same direction.”
After five years abroad – and with a growing family – Wes returned to Saskatchewan. He joined the Government of Saskatchewan in international relations during a period of expanding international trade missions, for which he was a natural fit. He then moved on to Canpotex (a global potash marketing and supply chain company, one of Canada’s largest exporters) before becoming Chief Executive Officer of Innovation Saskatchewan and then Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
All of this brings him to where he is today: living and working in Calgary as Vice President of Innovation and COSIA. But we could also call him the “Chief Collaborator”.
“COSIA is pretty unique globally in how energy companies collaborate to advance research and technology,” says Wes. “It enables major oil sands companies to share intellectual property, exchange technologies, and work together to solve complex challenges and improve environmental innovation. It’s not a talk shop – it’s a place where scientists and engineers from different and competing companies actively problem-solve together. It’s practical collaboration, and it’s rare.”
Wes and his team help facilitate that work by bringing member companies together to surface ideas, identify the most urgent priorities, and build agreement on how to move forward.
Wes says it’s about building trust, aligning interests and helping smart people work together effectively. “The job is to stay disciplined and focused on the big picture. It’s patience, listening to the smart people in the room – scientists, engineers, experts from our member companies – and moving the group along to a workable solution. I truly see our role as enabling collaboration and helping to turn brilliant ideas into funded projects.”
And once those projects are launched, the work isn’t done.
“There’s a persistent misconception of oil sands companies that environmental innovation isn’t a priority. That couldn’t be farther from the truth,” Wes says. “I wish more Canadians could see the work first-hand, meet the people who are dedicating their careers to improvement, and understand how advanced and committed the industry actually is. Canada is really good at this.”
Finding innovative solutions to the industry’s challenges is tough because they’re unique. There’s no ‘app for that’ and it demands creativity, critical and forward-thinking, and a commitment to keep finding the right ideas to make it better.
For the young professionals eyeing a career in the energy industry, Wes offers this: there’s room for many skills, not just engineering and geology. Learn to collaborate and be reliable. Follow-through matters enormously. This industry plays a stabilizing role in the global energy future and there’s meaningful work to be done.
The game may be different whether it’s basketball, international affairs or the energy sector but the same skills apply: be a team player, listen and stay agile.
