I’m a passionate change-agent and skilled consensus-builder, who loves helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses and ideas. Start-ups can't afford to hire experienced, full-time CEOs, COOs, CMOs or Sales VPs, so they hire me instead, to help them ratchet up in all of those areas at once. I have 25 years' experience working with innovative non-profits and technology start-ups, with a particular penchant for rolling up my sleeves and jumping in with technology start-ups who have ideas and tools for improving health care.
I've always been an active volunteer. I even won a national "Volunteer of the Year" award once, while (ahem - obsessively) running a non-profit organization in Canada. I've worked with organizations doing important work in areas including grief & loss, suicide prevention, STEM education and more. At the moment, I'm a Partner with Seattle Social Venture Partners and am thrilled to be working with Urban Death Project, an organization creating ecological, sustainable alternatives to burial and cremation, as well as with STEM Paths Innovation Network (SPIN), an organization dedicated to creating opportunities for youth to engage in science, technology & math.
Some past clients
Lots of my clients have been really small companies - fledgling start-ups, sometimes without any employees even. I do love a start-up.
But I've worked with big companies too, usually when they are trying to behave more like small companies &/or learn from what their start-up counterparts are up to. So while I have lots of clients you haven't heard of, I have some you have. For example: Nike, the 2010 Olympic Bid, The London Science Museum, Marks & Spencer, Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, Virgin Mobile, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the UK Department of Trade & Industry. That last one was especially awesome ... the UK government made a commitment to have all Britons online within 3 years, and our group held responsibility for making sure teenage girls were part of that wave. We partnered with Sony Music, and had a blast!
I hold an honours degree in Media Communications from Queen's University, as well as a Master of Science degree in Technology & Policy from MIT.