Four Seasons Vancouver & Whistler

CHEF NED BELLKate Colleyhighlights
Written By Kate Colley + Chef Ned Bell

More than15 yewars of combined leadership at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. Kate led marketing communications for the Vancouver and Whistler properties. Ned transformed YEW into a profitable restaurant built around sustainable seafood as Executive Chef.

Kate’s Role

Kate served as Director of Communications for Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver for ten years, including six years concurrently supporting Four Seasons Resort Whistler.

She led hotel and restaurant positioning, international media relations, campaigns and partnerships for two prominent Canadian luxury properties. Her work included major events, destination storytelling and communications for YEW seafood + bar, earning recognition through multiple Four Seasons’ Americas Pinnacle Awards.

Ned’s Role

As Executive Chef of Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver and YEW seafood + bar from 2011 to 2016, Ned oversaw the restaurant as well as banquets, catering and in-room dining. He repositioned YEW around sustainable seafood and moved its menu to 100% Ocean Wise choices. During his five-year tenure, annual restaurant sales grew from approximately $6 million to $10 million.

Why it Matters

Four Seasons gave Kate and Ned direct experience operating at the highest level of luxury hospitality. Kate learned how to protect and build a global brand across hotels, restaurants and destinations. Ned showed that a large hotel restaurant could make responsible sourcing central to its identity while delivering strong commercial results. That combination of communications, operations, sustainability and revenue growth now informs Hatch’s work with hotels, restaurants and tourism brands.

Kate Colley + Chef Ned Bell

Kate Colley:
Kate Colley has worked across nearly every format hospitality offers — destinations, resorts, hotels, restaurants, wineries, and major events — and she brings all of it to every engagement. She led the host property communications strategy for Canada’s G7 Leaders’ Summit at Kananaskis and spent a decade as Director of Communications for Four Seasons Vancouver and Whistler. She has also been an operator — co-owning Naramata Inn, tripling revenue during a pandemic, and doing the kinds of risky, exciting things that look obvious in hindsight. She is a strategist, a marketer, an operator, and an advisor — and oftentimes the person who walks into your business, spots the gap between where you are and where you could be, and helps close it.

Chef Ned Bell:
Ned Bell is currently Creative Advisor for Okanagan College’s $61.3M Centre for Food, Wine and Tourism, the face of two of Destination BC’s new iconic tourism brand videos, and the only Canadian chef on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Blue Ribbon Task Force. His 30-year career spans fine dining, luxury hotel leadership, hospital food transformation, government partnership work, and two decades of sustainable seafood advocacy — including founding Chefs for Oceans and cooking for the United Nations. He works at the place where food, systems, and real change intersect.

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