Dragon Arlene Dickinson’s simple secrets for financial success
Dragon’s Den co-host talks about her attitudes towards money and why material trappings can be a trap. By: Adam Mayers Personal Finance Editor, Toronto Star. Published on Mon Aug 31 2015 Arlene Dickinson is best known as one of the tough-talking, no-nonsense venture capitalist co-hosts of CBC’s Dragon’s Den. The highly successful businesswoman, who the broadcaster bills as a multi-millionaire, came by her success the hard way. She arrived in Calgary as a three-year-old with her immigrant parents, who were fleeing South Africa for a brighter future in Canada. “My father and mother wanted us to have a better place to live,” she says. “But we were the typical immigrant family, with five dollars in our pocket. Growing up, we had very little.” That upbringing has influenced Dickinson’s attitudes toward money, the trappings of material wealth and the things she is trying to pass along to her five grandchildren. Dickinson left the Den in January after eight seasons, and now shuttles between