Most consultants show you client logos. I’d rather show you what I was accountable for when the outcome was mine to carry.
As lead executive
Community Natural Foods, 2010 to 2022
Revenue of the business I ran as lead executive, with more than 400 direct and indirect reports across multiple locations.
Revenue growth over the period, alongside new locations opened.
People moved into new roles when I restructured retail operations from a product orientation to a functional one.
Core systems implemented: HRMS, ERP and e-commerce.
Led the sale of the business to Calgary Co-op, then ran it as a Co-op banner for three years alongside their executive team.
Leaders I developed there who have since been promoted into senior roles at Calgary Co-op.
As owner
A privately held manufacturer
Days to build the turnaround plan.
Improvement to the bottom line inside the first year.
Spent turning the business around before I acquired it. I bought a company I had already fixed, from a founder who wanted out, at a point when it was still worth very little on paper.
Stable, profitable, and moving to a passive ownership structure. Which is the whole point. If it falls over when I stop, it wasn’t finished.
In the boardroom
Two chairs, three boards, and the designation
Foundations for the Future Charter Academy, Canada’s largest charter school system. Director for three years.
Canadian Health Food Association, finishing a seven-year term. Previously Vice Chair, HR Committee Chair, and Nominating and Governance Chair.
Director of a natural products retailer.
Institute of Corporate Directors, through the Director’s Education Program at the Rotman School of Management.
The designation matters less than what it sits on top of. I’ve held the gavel, I’ve sat in the seat, and I’ve been the executive on the other side of the table with something I wasn’t volunteering. That’s the range I bring to the board work I do now: resetting the chair and CEO relationship, building a scorecard and a set of measures a board can actually govern with, running annual board and CEO reviews that aren’t theatre, and rebuilding board packages so directors are informed rather than reassured.
Coaching
Credentials
Hours of coaching delivered.
Staff coached on their own agendas at Community Natural Foods, where I was hired to build an internal coaching program and then ran it.
The CNF MBA, part of a leadership program I built called the Community College. Several graduates run parts of that business today.
Certified Professional Co-Active Coach through the Co-Active Training Institute, since 2014. Months of coursework, required hours with real clients, and recorded sessions reviewed by expert coaches.
Smith School of Business at Queen’s, where my class elected me co-president and asked me to give the valedictory address.
The other scoreboard
Built in the same years as all of it
I don’t put this here as a virtue. I put it here because the list above is why people call, and the list below is the only reason I’d trust myself to say anything useful about building one without quietly paying for it somewhere else.
Children, preschool through grade three. School drop-off is mine, every morning, through every year on this page.
Married to Erica. We parent together, work together, and serve together.
Volunteer in several capacities at our church in Calgary.
Between the four of them there’s dance, gymnastics, soccer, hockey, swimming, and four sets of piano lessons. I’m in it rather than adjacent to it, and that is the thing on this page I’m proudest of.