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 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 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.