CONTRARIAN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT COMPANY CULTURE
A podcast with Executives & HR Leaders.
We spill the tea on diversity, equity, inclusion, employee experience and the future of work.
Episode 26: Staying Steady in Times of Transition with Dr. Mary Anne Moser
As the current President & CEO of TELUS Spark Science Center, Dr. Mary Anne Moser is an award-winning designer and communications director. Mary Anne brings more than 25 years of experience in entrepreneurial roles where science meets society. Twelve years ago, Mary Anne co-founded Beakerhead, an international first that brings people together at the crossroads of art, science and engineering, and was their full-time CEO for 6 years. Mary Anne has worked across a variety of not-for-profits from the Banff Centre to the University of Calgary to innovative organizations created by the government. Being a working mother of triplets has made Mary Anne a coveted leader to work for, as she understands the individual needs of her team members and is a major advocate for flexibility.
Episode 25: Doing Work For the Good of Others with Jordan Raynor
Today’s episode is with author and serial entrepreneurial, Jordan Raynor. He believes that a major part of the human experience is doing excellent work in the service of others. We dive into how companies can create environments where deep work unto the pursuit of mastery can be fostered. We even touch on how hiring for diversity is incredibly important to implement in your organization.
Episode 24: Throwing Away "HR Best Practice" with Bonnie Powell, VP of People at Bench
Today's episode was actually recorded before the Covid-19 pandemic with Bench's VP of People, Bonnie Powell, who I admire so very much. While some of the information shared might be a bit "out of date," the golden wisdom contained is truly timeless, and most certainly still music to my ears as I believe it is breakthrough thinking for the HR & company culture space.
Episode 22: What a 30 Year Career At Disney Taught Duncan Wardle about Innovation
Duncan Wardle, Former Head of Innovation & Creativity for Disney spent 30 years with the organization and is now invested in helping businesses like yours wildly improve their innovation capabilities. This episode is the right resource for you to understand how to begin transform your company culture into one where creativity can flourish. Today, innovation is no longer just a buzzword to throw in your investor deck. With the dizzying speed at which technology has progressed over the last decade, innovation has become a tangible difference-maker.
Episode 21: How a Global Green Beauty Brand Thinks about Company Culture
Co-Founders of Routine, Neige & Pippa Blair make a stellar team. As the innovator, Neige has always been bringing brilliant formulas for natural products to her friends. With the help of Pippa’s business mind, they brought Routine to life! At the heart of their success is a commitment to relationships & caring for one another, and the insights on building company culture are therefore quite compelling!
Episode 20: Why Diversity & Inclusion Is the Best Thing for Your Business
Cicely Belle Blain is a diversity & inclusion business consultant, activist and writer; they are one of Vancouver’s fifty most influential people of 2018, as awarded by Vancouver Magazine, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter – Vancouver, one of CBC’s 150 Black Womxn Making Change in Canada and BC Business 30 Under 30 2019 and has served as a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation to the United Nations. Their work is informed by their professional and academic background at the University of British Columbia and their lived experience as a Black, queer artist, a community builder, an intersectional feminist and a Black liberation activist. Cicely Belle’s first book debuts in 2020 with VS Books & Arsenal Pulp Press.
Episode 19: Canada’s Fastest-Growing Company on How To Build a Better Culture
Article has grown over 24,182% during the past 5 years. Caroline Schein, as the VP People & Culture. As Canada’s Fastest-Growing Company, the executive team has its work cut out from them. Specifically, Caroline is responsible for building Article’s people and culture practices across North America. With more than 20 years of senior leadership experience in the hospitality and retail industry with brands such as Best Buy, a multinational consumer electronics retailer, and Boston Pizza, a North American restaurant chain, Caroline has an MBA specializing in leadership from Royal Roads University, and a MA & PhD in Human and Organizational Systems from Fielding Graduate University. She shares wonderful insights about the future of work & how to build a better company culture.
Episode 17: “I don’t believe in reference checks…” with Michel Falcon
Michel Falcon is an entrepreneur, international keynote speaker and author who leverages his People-First Culture™ philosophy to create customer experience, employee engagement and company culture strategies to grow businesses. Often he has unconventional opinions like not using reference checks in his hiring process. He is the author of the best-selling book, “People-First Culture: Build a Lasting Business by Shifting Your Focus From Profits to People” and the creator of the Team Operating System online course. Michel also operates a portfolio of restaurants and venues in downtown Toronto. His venues have grown to earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue with more than one hundred and fifty employees in less than two years by using the same strategies he’s going to share with us today. He has been hired to advise companies like Subway, Verizon Wireless, Alfa Romeo, Electronic Arts, and many others globally recognized brands.
Episode 16: How To Be Fearless & Have Bold Conversations With Your Leaders at Work with Julian Rosen
As Founder of The Fearless Life Project, Julian Rosen is an unstoppable force dedicated to serving others & seeing them rise to their full potential. You can be fearless at work and lean into bold conversations with your leaders, and Julian is here to show you how!
Episode 14: The Future of Leadership Development & Creating Psychological Safety with Ashley Mielke
As Founder and Director of People and Culture at The Grief and Trauma Healing Centre Inc., Ashley has nearly a decade of clinical experience as a practicing psychologist, and it is this scientific background that forms the foundation of her signature training program—Conscious Culture Bootcamp.
Featuring in national publications and appearing on global news channels, Ashley is a frequent media contributor and renowned public speaker.
Ashley found her own ‘Why’ early in life following a difficult childhood punctuated by her father’s substance abuse and eventual suicide. From this, the darkest and most painful period of her life, she uncovered a deep and passionate desire to serve others and a natural ability to create a safe space in which to explore life’s most challenging questions—a skill that has been immeasurably valuable in her career both as a psychologist and trainer.
Episode 13: A Masterclass on Employee Recognition with Tom Short, Chief Customer Officer of Kudos
Over the course of 25 years, Tom has used his passion for entrepreneurship and marketing to launch numerous, highly successful companies. At each organization Tom has built, employee experience has been the cornerstone to building effective teams. His expertise and learnings resulted in the development of Kudos as a solution and system to promote and enhance corporate culture, motivate individuals and create great employee recognition & experiences.
Tom leads business development, marketing, and customer engagement at Kudos and is active in speaking engagements and thought leadership activities in the HR industry. He is passionate about the role employee recognition plays in creating a great employee experience and is dedicated to educating the world about what genuine recognition can do for people everywhere.
Episode 12: Building Culture on a Startup Budget with Kaleah Baker
Kaleah Baker, COO and Co-founder of BridesMade – Canada’s only bridesmaid dress rental service! After growing up in small town Saskatchewan, Kaleah completed her BBA in Marketing & Management at Bishop’s University, and her MBA at Wilfrid Laurier. Both schools are known for their tight-knit communities, so it’s no wonder that a collaborative culture would be a must within her own business. From startup to standout success story, Kaleah loves telling her entrepreneurship story.
Episode 11: How To Build a High-Performing Company of World-Changing Millennials with Former Chief People Officer of WE, Victoria MacDonald
One Canadian organization that has made one of the greatest global impacts is WE. We have the honour of hearing from Victoria MacDonald, their former Chief People Officer today for a brilliant discussion of millennials, translating values into actions & leading a team in a hyper-growth mode!
Victoria is a 20-year veteran HR professional who is known for building cultures of alignment, accountability and high levels of engagement without pool tables, beer fridges or free food.
Episode 10: Listening to Your People in a Fast-Growth Company with Tia Fomenoff
Tia Fomenoff has always loved helping others solve their problems—whether she’s placing people in their dream jobs, working with customers to make more money, guiding small businesses on the uses of social media or even recommending great restaurants to acquaintances. In today’s podcast, Tia shares in-detail how she and the leadership team have listened well to their employees, even adapted accordingly to the extent of giving a $2000 mental health spending limit for every employee!
Her unconventional career-path began in northern British Columbia in the non-profit and tourism industries, then shifted to focus on digital marketing and customer success at high-growth tech companies Unbounce and Buffer. Tia is now the Senior Director of People and Culture at Thinkific, where they build software that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses.
Episode 9: Make Mastery Commonplace in Your Culture with Darcy Tuer
Darcy Tuer is the co-founder and CEO of ZayZoon. And doesn’t mess around. His company recently raised $15 million to increase employee financial wellness. As an experienced founder & personal growth geek, he offers a lot of wisdom to other culture builders out there!
Previously to ZayZoon, Darcy was co-founder and president of Spira Data Corp. for 11 years. In his tenure at Spira, Darcy and his team took the company from concept to processing over$3B annually in revenue and payroll data. Spira currently has offices in Calgary, Denver and Houston.
Episode 8: Spirituality at Work with Mike Maeshiro
In today’s workplace where diversity and inclusion are paramount to a business’ success, we must consider all the ways to make an inclusive environment possible for our employees. What is often missed is their spirituality, a notoriously taboo subject at work, yet incredibly important to billions of people worldwide. But why? If we all agree that we are body, soul AND spirit, shouldn’t we explore a bit of what it could look like to start to include the 33% of our employees that we faithfully ignore?
Our guest today is Mike Maeshiro, an expert in spiritual intelligence, an entrepreneur, business leader, and a pastor. Most likely you’ll listen and be taken aback at the way Mike approaches certain leadership situations, how he motivates his team and how he assesses the environment at his workplace and how you can too!
Episode 7: How To Integrate Virtual Assistants Into Your Company Culture with Bobbie Racette
Today’s episode is all about Virtual Assistants, Remote Workers & how all this fits within your current company cultures. We are proud to feature Virtual Gurus, once a little remote working agency with a team of 10 people, now a team of 150 people, considered the largest freelancing platform in Canada. Today we’re uncovering some of the secrets surrounding the mysterious world of remote work and virtual assistants, so tune in now!
Episode 6: Tackling the Touchy Subject of Masculinity in the Workplace with The Kings of Hearts
If you want vulnerable… you’ve come to the right place. If you want to listen to people who do not have it all figured out, are most definitely in process and are seeking to understand & learn… that’s here too.
This week’s episode features two of the co-founders of Kings of Hearts, Yenukwa (Nuke) Kombian and Andy Nguyen, whose mission is to create safe spaces for men, develop self-awareness & character skills while embracing vulnerability to live a life rooted in love & service. BOOM!
Without question, we are living in a world today where masculinity is almost a dirty word. It’s met with backlash, confusion and often a lot of hurt. And rightly so. And yet we are provoked to believe that we can change the narrative. This is a conversation about men being sometimes misunderstood, ways we can change & improve, and ways to switch the conversation from being all about gender to about humanity.
Episode 5: Turning Your Culture Around & Getting Out of the Way with Matt Diteljan
On this week's episode of the CultureING Podcast, we are joined by Matt Diteljan! As the Founder & Futurist of Glacier GenZ Advertising, he gets to see things from a bird's eye view and focus on the future. Matt first grew Glacier from his dorm room in University to an international multi-million dollar company with hundreds of clients, 50+ employees, and a well-respected name in the Higher Ed. marketing sector. When he’s not at the Cascade office, Matthew is very active on several boards including the Entrepreneur’s Organization and the EO Accelerator Program, or you can likely find him sending it down a mountain on his mountain bike.