The Story of How I Came to Be

Today, I seem like the perfect person for the job when it comes to social and environmental impact management and measurement, but it wasn’t always this way. I wasn’t always doing what I’m doing now. Actually, I used to do the exact opposite of what I loved to do.

So, how did I come to become a Conscious Impact Strategist? The story is pretty simple, I followed my passions.

Growing up in a small town in British Columbia, Canada, I was a keener. Super smart, always interested in politics from a young age - I have my dad to thank for this. We had endless conversations about Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister of Canada. Naturally, from here, I developed a strong awareness of the world around me.

I was, what some would call, a natural-born activist, always fighting the “good fight”. I was heavily passionate about human rights, environmental issues, globalization, and more. And, all this at a young age.

Aside from the passions, I learned about entrepreneurship at an early age. My parents were farmers running a family business. That slowly grew, and grew, and grew, but it was the single thing that helped teach me about work ethic, building on your dreams, and taking action. Again, I thank my parents for this experience.

Fast forward to my adult age, I became heavily involved in social services. I wanted to make an impact in the lives of the marginalized so I opted to become a Youth Justice Worker versus the typical occupational trajectory I was always urged to take. Being a Youth Justice Worker wasn’t sexy, nor did it really pay the bills. And, at the time, although I didn’t see it right away, it wasn’t the job that was pushing the needle on creating impact in the way I wanted to create impact.

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed working with high-risk youth, and I made a change in their individual lives for the time I was with them, but I wanted something much bigger!

Years into this work, I realized it was time to take a sharp turn. I was broke, I needed to make real money, and I was sick and tired of the bureaucracy that claimed Non-Profit Organizations. Here I was thinking I could make a huge difference working for Non-Profits and NGOs only to realize that may just be a bit of a pipe dream. So, I moved on to something seemingly so different - corporate finance.

Here, I found myself working for a small Investment Advisor’s firm. It was a startup. I wasn’t completely keen on working in finance, it wasn’t really aligned with my values, but it was something I needed to do more than I knew at the time.

I learned the ins and outs of investments, building a startup, and the finance world in general. It was a good job, overall, but there was something that was “out of whack” for me. Something just wasn’t right.

I felt like a sell-out for sitting comfortably in a job where I pushed paper and trades all day long, seemingly forgetting about the meaningful impact I was hell-bent on creating. Sure, I was volunteering during my off times, but that wasn’t the meaningful impact I was trying to create.

What was I doing? Nothing made sense in my life. 

Then came that day where everything started to make complete sense.

It was late 2016. I was processing away, just a typical day, however, the instructions that came across my desk were far from typical. A GenX household was asking to divest out of traditional investments and requesting to invest in Socially Responsible Investments. That had never happened before in my time being at this firm.

What gives?

At the time, I was told it was just a phase and it would soon blow over. I had a gut reaction that this was more than just a phase. I mean, the global climate of social and environmental issues plaguing society were pretty big and real at the time, so it didn’t surprise me completely to see someone wanted to make a difference with their money. I mean, isn’t that how you create an impact - choose where you want to invest? So I went digging, and what I found reenergized the impact-driven activist in me that was long dormant. 

I realized there was a market gap. I could see what had happened and what was going to happen. Shit was only going to get more real and in a not good way.

I sat back and thought about what I was going to do and only one thing came to mind. It was time to leave where I was and take my seemingly dynamic backgrounds in Non-Profit and corporate finance and combine them into one “job”. The problem: no one was offering that “job”. So, I created it. Albeit, not right away but rather, over time.

In 2017, I left my corporate finance job to pursue meaningful impact, however, I didn’t really know what that looked like. I chipped away at entrepreneurship, slowly carving out a path for myself while I researched more and more into my theory and what I thought was needed.

It turns out, all the experience I had developed throughout my entire life actually had a purpose. Today, as a Conscious Impact Strategist, I work with the changemakers that can really affect change. Corporations.

That’s right. Corporations, who have a heavy interest in their bottom line are the ones who are the most positioned to create meaningful change in society and the environment. I mean, that’s what was already happening, however, it wasn't a positive, meaningful impact.

Now, I work with companies to expand their Corporate Social Responsibility efforts in areas surrounding society and the environment. I help develop departments for companies that do not already have a Social and Environmental or CSR Department already established, otherwise, I work on Impact Strategy through delivering innovative strategies to departments or helping with execution through impact management.

I’ve put in my time to understand society, the demographics that lead today’s consumership, what this audience is demanding, and what role corporations really have in corporate citizenship.

I’ll tell you, it’s not charitable donations or philanthropic efforts but instead, meaningful action that’s tangible, measurable - the basis of business in general. 

Understanding impact, having a deep desire to create meaningful impact, and having an excellent understanding of business and the need for profit, my life has been nothing short of training and education for me to provide consulting services to companies in 2020 so they can create the real change consumers are looking for.

That’s the story of me, and how I came to be.