When spaces are inaccessible and, therefore, exclusionary, it has a deep and profound impact on those affected. Yet rather than truly understanding its widespread effects, accessibility is often not given the level of consideration and implementation needed to make the places where we live, play, and work truly inclusive for everyone.
Meaningful Access Consulting Co-Founders, Marco & Karin Pasqua.
We spoke with Karin Pasqua, Co-Founder and Accessibility & Universal Design Consultant at Meaningful Access Consulting, about how Meaningful Access Consulting is shifting perspectives, transforming inaccessible spaces, and empowering everyone to have equitable access and participation.
Tell us about Meaningful Access Consulting’s mission.
Meaningful Access Consulting is an accessibility and universal design consulting firm that believes everyone should have the opportunity to participate in every aspect of community life regardless of their ability or disability. We work with developers, cities, businesses, and not-for-profits to help ensure that their locations are not only accessible but functional and beautiful.
What inspired you to start Meaningful Access Consulting?
Marco, my husband and Co-Founder of Meaningful Access Consulting, is a wheelchair user and is directly impacted by inaccessible spaces, and my mind works like a cross between an occupational therapist and an engineer. Together, we love solving complex accessibility problems and turning barriers into thoughtful solutions. Being accessibility consultants helps us create a lasting impact not just for those with disabilities, but for our communities as a whole, including seniors, children, people with temporary disabilities, and those of us who just need a bit of extra assistance for one reason or another.
What were some of the challenges you encountered?
Marco never wanted to be seen as a person with a disability who stood on a soap box and advocated for access. He started out as a game developer but was laid off in 2008 when the recession hit, so he turned his attention to inspirational speaking. It took him a long time to reconcile his lived experience with his professional experience and accept the professional designation of accessibility consultant. Once the company launched and I joined him, the next challenge was to navigate moving from a team of one to a team of two and take into consideration the needs of our “Junior Associate,” our two-year-old daughter, Stella.
Marco emceeing the 8th Inclusive Employer Awards.
What do you consider Meaningful Access Consulting’s biggest success?
Our biggest success is seeing how our work has changed people’s attitudes. We know that the biggest barrier for most people with disabilities is attitudinal barriers, and shifting mindsets allows people to join us in improving the understanding of what better accessibility means for everyone.
We have really seen a shift over the last few years in the perception of accessibility and inclusion. It’s no longer “the right thing to do” but rather becoming part of people’s active consideration because of how accessibility impacts people directly — not just for the person who identifies as having a disability but also the senior awaiting knee replacement surgery, the person who’s a new parent and only has one hand free, the avid athlete who was injured last week, or the person needing support with their mental wellness. Accessibility impacts all of us, and we are starting to see that change in attitudes.
What makes Meaningful Access Consulting unique?
We are a family firm. We are a married couple, one with a visible disability and one without, and we bring our toddler along on many of our assessments and to job sites. We work together extremely well, and our combined experience really lends itself to the work that we do. We firmly believe that you should meet someone where they are at but then not leave them there. We focus on the positive and always provide a roadmap on where a business, organization, or government can take next steps to do even better.
How do you feel Meaningful Access Consulting makes the world better?
We help change people’s minds and perspectives and really help people understand that accessibility is not only “the right thing to do,” but really impacts all people of all ages, now and in the future. We help our clients understand that everybody needs to belong and participate in their communities. It’s not good enough just to add a ramp to the front of the building or use a service elevator. It’s about equitable access and participation. It’s more than just getting in the door but actually participating in every aspect that we wish to participate in.
Marco demonstrates that universal design benefits everyone by playing with his daughter at the accessible playground at Unwin Park in Surrey, BC.
How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?
The world is a better place when we are all able to be seen, heard, and participate fully in all aspects of our communities, be it live, work, play, or learn. When we create spaces where we are all welcome, our diverse perspectives can be shared, appreciated, and respected. Every person’s story matters, and every person deserves the opportunity to not only share their story but continue to write new and exciting chapters for themselves.
Tell us about Meaningful Access Consulting goals.
Our goal is to help shift mindsets by helping businesses, not-for-profits, and government organizations make changes to their employment strategies, built environment, and attitudes to work toward creating a more inclusive and accessible province, country, and planet.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
We are currently working with the Province of British Columbia, sitting on a technical subcommittee to help advance accessible employment strategies, as well as on the technical subcommittee for the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification (RHFAC) program. As such, we are helping to inform the Province of Alberta’s Accessibility Legislation engagement project as well as various cities’ Accessibility Strategic Plans, including the Cities of Surrey, Richmond, and Regina.
We are also very excited to be helping to shape communities around British Columbia, including the new Coronation Park planned community in Port Moody. At any given time, you’ll find us on a construction site, behind a computer reviewing plans, or, in Marco’s case, on stage providing disability awareness training events.
What do you most want people to know about Meaningful Access Consulting?
We are here to work with you, your design, and your budget. We’re not here to tell you everything you’ve done wrong, rather we enjoy pointing out all of the things you’ve done well – oftentimes, it’s not even things you’ve thought about through the lens of accessibility.
How can people help or contribute to Meaningful Access Consulting’s mission?
Give us a call or an email! We’d love to help you become more accessible and inclusive to people with disabilities. Be an advocate within your organization and see where there might be barriers or accessibility gaps for your staff and your clients.
Businesses have the power to do a great deal of good, and their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have the capacity to reach far and wide. Benevity, a Calgary-based software company, not only connects businesses with the resources they need to build purpose-driven corporate cultures, they have deeply embedded diversity, equity, and inclusion into the core of who they are and what they do.
We spoke with Janeen Speer, Chief People Officer of Benevity, about how this organization is fostering a culture of DEI and belonging internally to empower global impact.
Inside Benevity’s HQ, located in Calgary, one of three Benevity offices in Canada, with the others located in the US and the UK.
Tell us about Benevity’s mission.
Benevity’s mission is to build more purpose-driven corporate cultures by engaging employees, customers, and communities around causes that resonate with them. We also aim to drive automation, scale, and technology efficiencies on the charitable side of the landscape.
What inspired your founder to start Benevity?
Benevity Founder Bryan de Lottinville always wanted to leave the world better than he found it. In 2007, he discovered that of the then-$300 billion in donations in North America, less than 5% were being made online, less than 5% of donation volume was coming from companies, and 67% of employees were not engaged in their jobs. Benevity — one of the earliest B Corporations — was founded to constructively disrupt this status quo.
To better integrate business impacts and social outcomes, Benevity created a multi-sided tech platform that democratizes and empowers passionate, proactive, experiential participation in giving back. This is in contrast to the often dutiful, obligatory, transactional interactions that flow from the traditional once-a-year fundraising program for company-chosen charities.
What were some of the challenges Benevity’s founder encountered?
Benevity was initially built as an application program interface and was used by early clients by embedding the technology into their own platforms. In essence, it was an engine that powered things like disaster relief matching programs, employee donations, and sending and receiving electronic charitable gift cards through a company’s own giving website.
But to make the difference that the team aspired to, we knew we’d have to build a software as a service product to make it easier for companies to “plug-and-play.” We needed to build the car for the engine and had heard a lot about the challenges with current employee giving programs. Soon after, Benevity’s main product offering, Spark, was born in early 2011.
Benevity Founder and Executive Chairperson, Bryan de Lottinville, speaks at Goodness Matters, Benevity’s annual client conference, about the macrotrends informing the dynamic CSR industry.
What do you consider Benevity’s biggest success?
Canadian Pacific Railway was the first company to buy Spark, and Maui Jim was one of the first internationally recognized companies to become a client. But Nike was the big tipping point in 2013. Nike considered 38 workplace giving software vendors before ultimately choosing Benevity. This was a major win for Benevity, with only 12 employees at the time!
Now, with nearly 1,000 companies using Benevity’s software, including more than 25% of the Fortune 500, Benevity’s client community is comprised of the most iconic and mission-driven companies in the world.
What makes Benevity unique?
It’s not every day you get to wake up knowing you could literally change the world — unless you work at Benevity! We have a purpose-driven culture where doing good and doing great work go hand-in-hand. We hire passionate, smart, authentic people who are at the top of their game, and we want to make sure they don’t check important parts of themselves at the door. We’ve worked hard to build and nurture a culture that creates a sense of belonging at its core, where all of our people feel seen, heard, and valued, not despite their differences, but because of them.
Our diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives include panels for 2SLGBTQIA+ issues, International Women’s Day, and Black History Month, with speakers from all of Benevity’s offices talking about their diverse experiences and perspectives to help us understand how we can become better allies for each other.
We also have several employee resource groups, including groups for employees with visible and invisible disabilities (Benev-ability), for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community (Beneviqueers), our Black Employee Network & Friends (BEN & Friends), and more. Additionally, our Belonging Champions are Benevity-ites who work with the leadership team to identify more opportunities to create an even deeper sense of belonging at Benevity.
Another hallmark of our culture is our creative efforts to challenge the status quo, our recognition that we are not perfect but can always be better, and our willingness to go the extra mile for each other and our clients. It’s the kind of culture one gets when you’re able to connect people’s work with a genuine sense of purpose, meaning, and impact.
How do you feel Benevity makes the world better?
While Benevity is a relatively small business, we power impact from some of the biggest, most beloved brands out there. And in that way, we show the world that profits don’t have to be sacrificed in pursuit of purpose; in fact, the opposite is true. When companies lead with purpose, they are more likely to thrive. Benevity’s Talent Retention Studyshows that robust employee users of our software had 52% lower turnover rates in their companies than non-users, making the pursuit of a higher sense of purpose a win for companies, their people, and society.
We are showing the world that they can count on businesses to be a positive force in society. Whether it’s the fight for justice, equity, and accessibility, or responding to other devastating world events, Benevity, our clients, and networks are right there doing all we can.
So far, our clients and their people have generated more than $12 billion in donations and 56 million hours of volunteer time to support 418,000 non-profits worldwide — and 92% of those funds have been paid electronically. The company’s solutions have also facilitated 900,000 micro-actions and awarded 1.2 million grants worth $18 billion.
Our platform has also helped to rally companies and their people around DEI causes. For example, in June 2020, we saw a 15x increase in support of racial justice causes following the murder of George Floyd, with $166 million contributed in June versus $10 million in May. Countless more people got involved through their company’s corporate purpose programs, tracking 434,000 volunteer hours and 29,000 positive actions.
Each year, volunteers, or what Benevity calls Do-Gooders, give back during Benevity’s annual client conference, Goodness Matters. in 2017, Fortune 1000 company CSR leaders joined the Mojave Desert Land Trust for a stewardship event.
How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?
When differences are valued and everybody has access to the same opportunities, it’s easy to see that diversity, equity, and inclusion benefit everyone. And when people feel a sense of belonging, and the safety and security of being accepted, they can be their true selves.
Our team has over 50% representation of women both as a company and at the senior leadership level. Our team is also about one-third Black, Indigenous, and people of colour. We have reached this not by setting targets but by focusing on the behaviours that we felt were needed to drive a truly inclusive culture. And we’ve seen firsthand that the good created from a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace reaches far and wide, allowing for business, personal, and societal growth.
Tell us about Benevity’s goals.
At Benevity, we have something called a “Moonshot,” that is to act as a catalyst to infuse a culture of goodness into the world. Our main goal is to help companies help people be their best selves in their everyday lives by connecting them with a sense of purpose and belonging while delivering business and social impact.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
We’re constantly innovating within our product ecosystem, sifting through data to uncover new trends and speaking with trailblazers to stay ahead of the curve. One initiative is our Benevity Impact Labs, an incubator and resource hub that helps companies, non-profits, and individuals maximize their impact and authentically live their purpose.
Another initiative is the Speaking of Purpose podcast, hosted by Sona Khosla, Benevity’s Chief Impact Officer. Sona speaks to some of the world’s most disruptive brands, leaders, and changemakers whose unparalleled insight, inspiration, and advice help us understand how critical purpose is in business and the world. The episode, “DEI&B – More Than Another Corporate Acronym,” provides a deep dive into diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
There’s also the weekly Social Impact Show. We have episodes that explore important DEI-related topics, including how it impacts business today, modern strategies to promote DEI in the workplace, how CSR and diversity build better workplaces, and more.
What do you most want people to know about Benevity?
Benevity is not just a fintech engine to process donations to non-profits. Our goal is to inspire everyday goodness in people, and our products provide many ways to do that, including volunteering time and skills, participating in learning and activism, or making small, everyday behavioural changes like confronting unconscious bias and creating less waste at the office. All these things help to activate one’s sense of personal purpose and make a positive change in the world.
Benevity-ites celebrate International Women’s Day. In 2018, Benevity Founder and CEO, Bryan de Lottinville, contributed $100,000 of his personal funds in double donation matching for women’s causes with the hopes of inspiring incremental progress toward gender parity.
How can people help or contribute to Benevity’s mission?
When a tragic event happens in the world, we encourage you to look for avenues to take action and gain back the empowerment, connectedness, and hope that we all have intrinsically within us.
One way to do this is to find out about your company’s workplace giving program and get involved in it. Ninety-three percent of companies that use Benevity’s employee engagement software enable donation matching for their people. The most common match is one-to-one to the cause of the employee’s choice, although we are seeing more and more companies do two-to-one, three-to-one, and even up to five-to-one in special circumstances.
While Benevity has seen an incremental increase in participation across corporate purpose programs from 11% in 2021 to 12% in 2022, it is estimated that $10 billion dollars in matching funds go unused every year, and a big reason for this is because people simply don’t know it’s being offered! Imagine the social impact that could be made if more people took advantage of these powerful programs.
Around the world and in our communities, countless people experience oppression every day. Championing diversity, equity, and inclusion to combat this starts with looking at the environments closest to us — the workplace being a key one. That’s why Bakau Consulting has made it its mission to educate businesses on how and what practices to implement so workplaces can be positive environments for everyone.
We spoke with Cicely Belle Blain (they/them), Founder & CEO of Bakau Consulting, about how this organization is not only championing DEI practices, but proving what is possible by achieving equity within their own workplace.
Tiaré Lani, graphic recorder
Tell us about Bakau Consulting’s mission.
In 2018, I founded Bakau Consulting Inc., a full-service equity, inclusion, and anti-racism consulting company based in Canada, with a global, intersectional approach.
Since the beginning, our mission has been to help our clients make meaningful, long-lasting change within their organization. Our work is rooted in community, social justice, and a passion for equity, which translates into tireless advocacy for systemic change, and we work closely to develop and implement equity strategies that are instrumental, conductive, and sustainable. Bakau Consulting intentionally seeks to positively impact employees’ lives by paying living wages, providing health insurance and PTO, scheduling wellness check-ins, and encouraging work/life balance not only at our company but our clients’ as well.
In the last five years, Bakau Consulting has grown from a sole proprietorship to a team of 20 strategists, consultants, artists, researchers, storytellers, and educators with diverse lived experiences, skills, and expertise. The team and I have served thousands of clients worldwide, offering well-researched and historically-informed educational content.
What inspired you to start Bakau Consulting?
Bakau Consulting was founded on the stolen, unceded, and traditional lands and waters of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations in 2018. In addition to founding Bakau Consulting, I’m also the Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter Vancouver. At that time, Black Lives Matter was still considered a fringe movement, and there was little mainstream attention for anti-racism and social equity consulting. Starting Bakau Consulting was motivated by a passion to eradicate oppression from every workplace in Canada. As time went on, this passion has evolved in our mission to actualize sustainable, secure, healthy, joyful, and accessible workplaces.
At Bakau, we are driven by the essential care we have for our communities and each other. We intentionally gather as a team and envision alternative futures, and we trace roadmaps we believe will get us there, powered by the care, tools, and resources available for us at the organization. To co-imagine, co-create, and co-resist as a team isn’t easy, especially coming from such different cultures, ethnicities, and walks of life – it is exhausting, scary, and many consider it useless. Yet at Bakau, we manage to stay on track, motivated by communal radical hope.
What were some of the challenges you encountered?
As a small business, we constantly make difficult financial decisions. Leading with our values at heart centres us in our decision-making. We combine our knowledge, lived experiences, and values to help our clients transform their workplace, so it only makes sense for our own workplace to have the main focus be on the humanity of our employees.
We are proud to be a certified Living Wage Employer and offer thriving wages to our team. As a remote workplace, supporting the team’s well-being has been a challenge and a priority. We invest in not only providing a robust health benefits plan but encouraging our team to rest and not work overtime.
We offer a 4-day work week. For us, it’s about understanding that there is more to our humanity than working. Having a work-life balance is not just a buzzword to throw around for us, we stand for it and weave it into all of our business decision-making.
Focusing on people and not solely profit has created some cash flow issues, but we don’t take it as a failure as a business – quite the opposite. We lead with our values and recognize it’s people who make our company a good place to work, and this is what we are proud of the most.
What do you consider Bakau Consulting’s biggest success?
We are proud to be a pillar in the community of those striving for diversity, inclusion, and anti-oppression. This is something that we commit to actioning in our business and the businesses we work with. We believe that the work we do cannot be done at the expense of the mental and physical health of our staff. We prioritize their diverse needs by providing a 32-hour workweek, extended benefits, additional health and lifestyle spending accounts, five vacation weeks, multiple avenues for seeking accommodations, and ample personal leave days.
Under Bakau Consulting, I’ve created numerous workshops and strategies to educate clients on anti-oppressive values. My workshop “Unlearning Anti-Blackness,” was one of the first public educational programs in British Columbia to cover Black Canadian history in detail for adults, while also offering powerful educational tools and teachings. The workshop has also been adapted for K-7 students and presented in various schools across the province.
Right to left: Cicely Belle Blain, Bakau Consulting Founder & CEO, and Blair Imani, author in a panel discussion.
What makes Bakau Consulting unique?
The foundation of our business is diversity and inclusion, and we actively ensure anti-oppressive values are infused into our everyday practices to uphold our commitments. The consulting assistance that we offer is particularly difficult and taxing due to the intricate correlation between our lived experiences and the educational aspect of the services we provide.
The nature of our work demands adequate care of our already diverse team. As a Black, queer-owned company, many folks from equity-seeking backgrounds find their professional home at Bakau, so we invest considerable time and resources into the ongoing safety and enrichment of our team. In response to team feedback, we increased mental health-related benefits, as well as introduced additional health and lifestyle spending account funds to deliver sustainable and consistent resources to support the safety, emotional health, and mental well-being of each team member.
How do you feel Bakau Consulting makes the world better?
As an organization and individuals, we understand that we will not end oppression within the workplace, especially not worldwide. We try to stay focused on the people around us, the lands we operate on, and the communities we belong to. At Bakau, we strive for our clients to implement as many large- and small-scale practices to make workplaces equitable and more enjoyable for everybody involved in and, therefore, outside the workplace. For us, this means a robust compensation package is a foundational element: pay equity, living wages, extended benefits, paid sick leave, as well as ample vacation and personal days – all are important for people to feel valued for the work they do.
Each person has a unique experience, so we work collaboratively to create accommodations for self-identified needs, and we encourage our clients to do so as well. We celebrate different religious and spiritual holidays, so we provide religious and cultural accommodations and hybrid work options that are important for fostering belonging at our workplace. In this sense, we are encouraged to take holidays and schedule days off around religious, spiritual, or cultural holidays and celebrations. Some of the holidays Bakau recognizes with paid time off include Yom Kippur, National Indigenous Peoples Day, Eid al-Fitr, among others. Employees are encouraged to take this time to observe the date as they see fit. With all of these initiatives in place, people’s lives are more enjoyable and, therefore, make the world a better place.
How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?
A world that prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion would be one where all people are able to thrive, be authentic, and experience safety. Currently, many people are experiencing oppression and discrimination on a daily basis on all different scales, from personal to systemic.
A world without diversity, equity, and inclusivity is a world ravaged by violent systems of oppression. We don’t want to just survive, we want to thrive. What does an imagined future look like when we have the space to breathe and hold radical hope at our centre? We want a world where we have the space to dream, a space where the most silenced voices can be heard.
Michelle Buchholz, graphic recorder
Tell us about Bakau Consulting’s goals.
Bakau’s mission is to assist companies, organizations, institutions, and collectives to identify integral areas of growth, both in the short and long term. From there, we work closely to develop and implement equity strategies that are instrumental, conductive, and sustainable.
All too often, there is an overemphasis on creating diversity and not enough on sustaining diversity. It creates a revolving door effect, and people of marginalized identities can be left in a worse place than where they started when the promotion of diversity and inclusion is mishandled.
Our goal is for organizations to commit to ongoing education, unlearning biases, and equity-informed policy updates. We want to promote psychological safety, boundary-setting, and opportunities for mentorship and growth to help mitigate tokenization and create an environment where people can truly thrive.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
Our new facilitation program!
Facilitation is a coveted skill that brings transformative structure to the workplace and beyond. Over the years, people would often ask us if we lead Train the Trainer workshops to teach others how to facilitate their own sessions. Our facilitation skills stem from lived experience, ample time, ongoing education, and navigating discomfort.
Our Facilitation Certificate Program (FCP) is a three-month guided, content-rich program. This online program teaches essential skills and strategies for powerful, inclusive facilitation. The FCP begins by strengthening fundamentals of anti-oppression, equity, inclusion, and intersectionality. It then evolves to skills-based training, including active listening and inclusive communication, cultivating safer spaces, activating meaningful dialogue, developing workshops and agendas, and navigating group dynamics and conflict resolution.
What do you most want people to know about Bakau Consulting?
We’d like folks to know that any organization, regardless of whether it is for-profit or not and regardless of industry or field, as long as we’re operating under capitalism, needs to stay vigilant of becoming complicit in the dehumanization of workers and labourers.
Joy Gyamfi, photographer, attending a Bakau Consulting panel
How can people help or contribute to Bakau Consulting’s mission?
Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, and anti-oppression are the driving forces behind our work. Any person that is committed to these values is already in community with us, seeking collective liberation.
We advise everybody, but especially people in leadership positions, to persistently honour and uplift the Indigenous communities and host nations of the lands that they’re on and to seek decolonial education (individually and as a team). We encourage everyone to pay reparations as it is feasible and to support small local businesses whenever they have the chance.
We want to motivate people to do research on their favourite brands, businesses, and service providers — find out what they stand for and make sure their values are aligned with yours. The more intentional we are with our social, creative, and economic capital, the better we can serve our mission, which isn’t just Bakau’s, it belongs to all of us.
Becca Schwenk, Bakau Consulting creator and Director of the Facilitation Certificate Program.
White supremacy in the United States has led to a deep-rooted history of discriminatory economic practices, from redlining to forced displacement due to gentrification, negatively impacting the Black community to this day. In order to right historical wrongs and create an inclusive, equitable future for Black homeowners and small business owners, reparations are needed.
We spoke with Randal Wyatt, Founder & Executive Director of Taking Ownership PDX, about how this Portland-based organization is building a diverse and compassionate community dedicated to providing reparations, renovations, and advocacy to Black homeowners and small business owners.
Tell us about Taking Ownership PDX’s mission.
Taking Ownership PDX’s mission is to provide reparations to the Black community in the form of free repairs, renovations, financial assistance, and advocacy to Black homeowners and small business owners in an effort to fight back against gentrification and displacement, to bridge the wealth gap that’s been created from historical oppression and exclusion, and to fight back against some of the city’s inequitable practices that have disproportionately impacted Black homeowners and small business owners.
Randal Wyatt, Founder & Executive Director of Taking Ownership PDX. This headshot was featured in a Portland State Magazine article about his journey starting Taking Ownership PDX while pursuing his Bachelor’s at PSU.
What inspired you to start Taking Ownership PDX?
During the Black Lives Matter movement protests, after George Floyd was murdered, a lot of people asked me how they could be stronger allies to the Black community because of all the work I’ve done in the community in the past. I told them because people who are considered white or fit into the social construct of white have a hell of a head start in this country as far as being able to get resources and financial stability and build generational wealth, they need to share their resources with the Black community by supporting businesses or donating or volunteering. I thought of the idea of creating a platform where they can donate and volunteer, and it would provide reparations to the Black community.
Why I chose homeowners and small business owners is because of my studies at Portland State. I finished my Bachelor of Social Science with a double minor in sociology and Black studies, so I studied white supremacy in society and kind of put it all together that white supremacy is predicated on land ownership — finding ways to take land and take whatever land they want, especially from vulnerable populations — because that’s the fastest way to build generational wealth.
So, I thought supporting Black homeowners and small business owners would be a good way to give allies a clear path of reconciliation and justice, allowing them to share their resources and get quick, tangible results; give them a chance to volunteer and meet and humanize the Black community of Portland; and get their hands dirty so that they don’t feel like they just need to write a cheque.
What were some of the challenges you encountered?
Constantly raising money and having enough money to finish up the projects. We’ve had an influx of people reach out wanting support and services, and we just don’t have the infrastructure to get through the amount of need there is as quick as I would like. We’ve made a great impact, but there’s just so much more need out there than my small organization is able to take on.
Finding all the resources to take on such a big task has been a challenge; the costs of materials going up so much has been a challenge; starting this during COVID-19, during a time when we aren’t supposed to be in close proximity had made it a challenge when we’re doing volunteer efforts; and being the one person that everything’s going through is a lot of work when something like this took off so fast.
Everybody wanted an interview. It’s a lot of pressure, and I’ve never done this before, so I was learning as I was going, building the plane while flying type of thing, and just doing it all in front of people with a lot of eyes on me. So, there’s a lot of pressure — it could get stressful at times. And just learning how to set boundaries and find a work-life balance. Those have been some of the biggest challenges.
What do you consider Taking Ownership PDX’s biggest success?
Our sustainability so far. Going on our third year and to have people still supporting us — being that we’re culturally specific and providing reparations, which is a controversial topic in America, unfortunately — and to raise over US$1.5 million in our time here, helping over 150 homeowners and small business owners, are all huge accomplishments.
So, just to be able to keep this thing going for as long as we have, I really wasn’t expecting that. I thought something like this would be a trend for a little while. I’ve seen other protests and things like this be supported just for a short while, and then it falls through the cracks, so this is exciting.
Bora Architects staff helped finish cleaning a vacant home on the market, which was a hoarding situation with an overwhelming mess for the new owner that impacted its ability to be sold. After the clean-up, the house went pending!
What makes Taking Ownership PDX unique?
I think what makes us most unique is that we started out as a protest. We started out really guerilla-style. I didn’t have any kind of business plan or anything, I just kind of was like, “here’s my idea, if anybody’s interested in supporting it, let’s do this,” and people trusted me. I raised my first US$100,000 through my own personal Venmo and PayPal, so much so that both those platforms actually banned me — for whatever reason, but I have to assume that it’s because of the amount of money that came through there and not being a business account.
Then there’s the fact that we are helping middle-class Black people and making it really easy, with very little, if any, hoops that you have to go through to receive these services, other than waiting on our waitlist as we try to raise money. There are not a whole lot of stipulations and requirements for you to get this, other than being a Black homeowner or business owner, and we’ll support you however we can and allocate as much money as we possibly can, and I think that’s unique because I know a lot of other organizations have a lot of rules and requirements and stipulations that make it really difficult to access their funding.
How do you feel Taking Ownership PDX makes the world better?
I think it’s the model that is really the most impactful, and what we’ve done with this model, being able to provide a clear path of reconciliation and justice for allies to be on; to be able to volunteer their time toward something they believe in; to donate their money and get quick, tangible results; to have a model that promotes compassion. I think what we’ve done with this model is big. Due to our limited size and funding, the work we’re doing is like a band-aid on a really major wound; however, this model I’ve created has the power to be extremely impactful, especially if it spreads and gets supported.
One thing we like to push is that the reason why a lot of Black people lose their homes in gentrifying areas is because affluent neighbours move in and complain about the property maintenance of their Black and Brown neighbours who typically do not make nearly the annual income as these new, affluent neighbours. That leads to the Bureau of Development Services putting liens and fines on their homes, which perpetuates their financial instability and leaves them vulnerable to predatory developers and real estate professionals.
So, I like to push the narrative of compassion that neighbours need to ask their Black and Brown neighbours why it is they’re in the situation they’re in and maybe see if they can help them in their situation, rather than call the city and put them in a bad financial place. I think all of this is inspiring people to take action toward what they believe in and what they want to see changed. I think it also inspires people to see that they can make a change, one neighbourhood at a time, or with just their ideas, which can become a really big deal overnight.
How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?
White supremacy, from colonialism, has definitely taken over most of this world in so many ways, but most of this planet is non-white, and I think that’s the importance. We need to create a world where everybody is included, where everybody gets an opportunity, where we’re not judging each other off of our skin colours or cultures and instead are appreciating each other’s differences. I think if we could do that, we could learn more from each other, we’d all have better human experiences.
One thing I always like to talk about a lot is how racism impacts white people. It actually excludes them from a lot because they’re the ones who usually end up in homogeneous communities due to things like redlining, and wealth, in general, leaves them in homogenous communities where they miss out on getting to know other cultures and getting to know other types of people, in general.
And quality of life. One thing that I always focused on since becoming a young father was community. I was never the type of person who believed the capitalism hype of greed and individualism; I always knew the world is a much better place when my community is a better place because that’s where I’m going out into. I want people around me to be happier because that’s going to leave me in a safer, happier environment, and same with my kids. So, I think that’s the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion — just quality of life for everybody. If everybody’s doing good, I think we’re all going to be healthier and happier.
Youth from the Blueprint Foundation and Constructing Hope’s Pre-Apprenticeship Youth Summer Program. The youth transformed this homeowner’s overgrown yard.
Tell us about Taking Ownership PDX’s goals.
My organization’s goals are to help as many Black homeowners and small business owners as we can with funding and resources and to continue to provide opportunities for people to volunteer, so we can help each other and create a more compassionate community where we help each other rather than tell on or create more obstacles for each other.
I hope to continue to raise more and more money every year. We are getting our 501(c)(3) status, so we should be a non-profit this year. That will hopefully create more funding opportunities, which will create more stability and help me hire staff and delegate more work so that Taking Ownership PDX is more efficient and sustainable. That’s a big goal as well.
Another goal is to partner with pre-apprenticeship programs, so we can provide hours for these students to get their certification in whatever their trade is and contribute to the next generation of construction workers, as the older generations of construction workers are going to be retiring at a pretty high rate here. I think it’s going to be great to be a part of the next generation of construction workers, to provide them with rewarding work, and hopefully, they will have more progressive minds, which I think will contribute to a healthier and more equitable, inclusive infrastructure that we create in our community.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
Currently, we are working on a kitchen remodel for a woman whose kitchen burned down, which left her house uninhabitable. We are in the process of remodelling the kitchen and trying to clean up the rest of the house to get her back into the home as soon as possible, as she’s been couch-surfing since the fire back in October 2022. That’s our biggest project at the moment.
And then we have Portland YouthBuilders building a deck for one of our homeowners. The deck before was a safety hazard as it was dilapidated, so that’s another big project that we have. We are constantly doing volunteer efforts, with at least three to four volunteer jobs a month, which include landscaping, and we just did an interior paint job. I have a couple interior clean-up jobs coming up as well.
What do you most want people to know about Taking Ownership PDX?
We’re very small, and we need people to be patient with us, particularly people on our waitlist. Just know that we are doing our very best to raise money and use it efficiently, so that’s the biggest thing — that we’re doing our best. We’re kind of in a transitional period right now.
I also want to let them know that they can support us by donating financially, spreading the word and letting people know that we need to raise money, sending us grant opportunities, and signing up to volunteer.
We have a community resource list on our website where they can submit their organization/company or somebody else’s (if they have permission), and they can get a little more exposure through our website, which gets pretty good traffic and also gives us a database to reach out to people whom we could utilize for our mission. It also has a place where it’s categorized by identity, which shows who’s BIPOC-, 2SLGBTQIA+-, and/or woman-owned, so for people who care about supporting marginalized business owners, that’s a good place to go.
How can people help or contribute to Taking Ownership PDX’s mission?
The best way is by helping us financially. Funding has dropped a bit because the economy’s in a bit of a recession, and I think people are being a little more conservative with their money. I understand donating to an organization isn’t always priority, but for us to remain operating and serving the Black community, we will need to continue to raise money. Donations can be made on our website.
They can also sign up to be a volunteer. We do have over 400 currently signed up, so we have a plethora of volunteers; I can’t say we have a need there, but we do encourage people to sign up because it’s a great experience, and we want as many people as possible to experience one of our volunteer projects since they’re really good networking and community-building situations.
And there’s the community resource list. It’s a great place to get some exposure for your business and show that you are a part of this mission and movement.
Sectors meant to help make the world better should not be exclusionary and inequitable. In order to ensure the sustainability sector lives up to its mission, people of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and walks of life must have equal opportunities in the field.
We spoke with Marie Jurcevic, Co-Founder of Diversity in Sustainability, about how this organization is equipping BIPOC leaders with the network, resources, and support they need to accelerate our transition to a sustainable and just future.
Tell us about Diversity in Sustainability’s mission.
Our mission is to equip current and future Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) sustainability leaders with the skills, networks, and resources to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and just future. We also aim to shift the wider ecosystem in sustainability to create an inclusive sector for underrepresented populations.
What inspired you to start Diversity in Sustainability?
Our organization was founded in 2020. At that time, waves of protests were sweeping the globe in support of racial justice, building upon decades of action on issues of civil rights and social and environmental justice. During this moment of reckoning, we turned the lens on ourselves as sustainability practitioners and thought about our own experiences in the sector. We realized that even as a sector that is trying to create a more just world, the people in the sector were not diverse and organizations were not equitable.
This conclusion prompted us to create the organization, and we also conducted some research in our State of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Sustainability Survey that validated this. We believe that it’s incumbent upon those of us who were able to break into the field to use our voice to challenge the status quo and create opportunities to live up to what this field is supposed to stand for, which includes diversity, equity, inclusion, and social and environmental justice.
What were some of the challenges you encountered?
One of our challenges is resourcing both from the perspective of time and finances. All three co-founders have day jobs, and we manage our organization on top of full-time jobs, other volunteer commitments, and young families. This also applies to our volunteers and Advisory Panel members, as the organization is volunteer-driven.
It’s also challenging for us to find and secure funding for our organization as our current governance structure limits our ability to access certain grants. We also want to ensure that we’re thoughtful about where our funding comes from so we’re not compromising the values of our organization; we seek to partner with like-minded organizations.
What do you consider Diversity in Sustainability’s biggest success?
We’ve managed to accomplish a lot over the past three years, and our achievements have been possible with the network we’ve built. Our organization has a network of about 5,000 people who are members of our Google group, our various social media platforms, and those who attend our events and support our work in various capacities — and all this has grown through word of mouth. This strong network of supporters has enabled us to continue to build the organization.
In addition, we’ve been amazed to hear back from people in the network about how it has helped them grow, find new opportunities, positively impacted how they hire, and connected previously disparate networks.
What makes Diversity in Sustainability unique?
What makes our organization unique is our focus. There are many organizations focused on sustainability and organizations dedicated to addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion, but there are only a handful that are doing both. As diverse sustainability practitioners, we’re proud to be taking a leadership role in fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within our field of practice, and we also think that we are doing important work in cross-pollinating new concepts, organizing groups, and connecting people to new opportunities in many different geographies and of many different backgrounds.
How do you feel Diversity in Sustainability makes the world better?
We make the world better by fostering a sustainable world built through diversity, equity, and inclusion. BIPOC are disproportionately affected by social and environmental issues, yet our voices and perspectives are not often included nor are we part of critical conversations to address sustainability challenges. Our perspectives must be valued and integrated into institutions at every level, particularly at a time when societal systems and institutions are being rethought. Centring the needs and thoughts of the most vulnerable will help create the most resilient systems for all of us to thrive. It is our goal to ensure that diverse people and perspectives are advanced in our field.
How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?
There is a lot of great research on this question. First of all, creating an environment where diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the centre, underpinned by a sense of psychological safety, helps us make better decisions. These different viewpoints help us to understand different dimensions of problems. This has many benefits, including:
Increased profitability: According to a McKinsey study, companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
Innovation: A diverse and inclusive workforce is crucial to encouraging different perspectives and ideas that drive innovation. A Boston Consulting Group study found that companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation.
Team collaboration and commitment: Workers in highly diverse and inclusive organizations tend to see a significant increase in team collaboration and team commitment.
Employee retention: Employees at highly diverse organizations also reported a higher intent to stay than peers with lower levels of diversity.
Tell us about Diversity in Sustainability’s goals.
Our goals are to contribute to a sustainable world and inclusive society by centring BIPOC voices in the mainstream, including BIPOC individuals within institutions at all levels, helping build a continuous pipeline of BIPOC talent, increasing opportunities for BIPOC practitioners, and working with non-BIPOC allies to contribute to enabling inclusive environments.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
We’d like to share more about our Inclusion Blueprint Dialogues. To provide a bit of context, in 2021, we conducted the inaugural State of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Sustainability Survey. The survey explored the demographics, barriers to entry and advancement, and individual experiences of those within the sector, as well as organizational support on diversity, equity, and inclusion for sustainability practitioners. It also highlighted the inherent privilege in the sector and the value of further discourse and conversation to drive concrete action on diversity, equity, and inclusion within the sector.
For example, 75% of survey respondents come from middle-class backgrounds or higher levels of social mobility, 62% have at least a master’s degree and 90% have at least a bachelor’s degree, and only 27% feel as though the leaders in their organizations are diverse.
Following the survey, we created the Inclusion Blueprints Dialogues. Building an inclusive sector of sustainability requires active participation from all corners of the sector. We are looking for those participants and partners who wish to inquire deeply, build empathy, and take bolder interventions in their professional roles and environments to create an inclusive sector. Through the Inclusion Blueprint Dialogues, we aim to work together to build a plan to get us there. The dialogues were formulated by assessing the life cycle stages of a sustainability professional — looking at youth, admissions, academics, career counsellors, recruiters, HR practitioners, and sustainability leaders of different backgrounds and examining key influences, inhibitors, and enablers to entry and advancement.
What do you most want people to know about Diversity in Sustainability?
We want people to know that our organization is here to support current and aspiring BIPOC sustainability practitioners. Our vision is to foster a sustainable and prosperous world built through equity and inclusion, and anyone that wants to support our efforts to achieve this vision is welcome to join us in whatever capacity they can. We encourage them to reach out to us to learn more about our organization.
How can people help or contribute to Diversity in Sustainability’s mission?
There are many ways to contribute to organization, which include:
Volunteering for our organization – Please reach out to [email protected] if you want to learn more about volunteer opportunities with our organization.
Attending our events, which include community calls and career series – We host quarterly community calls, which are an open forum for sustainability practitioners to learn from one another, share resources, and ask for career advice. We also host career series sessions where we profile BIPOC sustainability practitioners who work in various sustainability roles.
Joining our Google group – We created this group as a space for current and future BIPOC sustainability professionals and allies to share resources and learn from each other, whether it is job/board/speaking opportunities, relevant events, and articles. To sign up and learn more about our Google group, please go to our website: DiS Google Group — Diversity in Sustainability. Currently we have around 2,500 members.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion impact businesses in a tremendous way, enabling them to access a wider talent pool and opening the door to unique perspectives that enhance the capacity for agility and innovation. Unfortunately, the full picture of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace is often overlooked or lacks support. To rectify this, the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion (CCDI) is helping organizations across Canada understand the value of developing and implementing DEI practices and plans.
We spoke with Anne-Marie Pham, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, about how this national charitable organization is supporting workplaces through every step of their DEI journey.
Tell us about the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion’s mission.
Founded in 2013, the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion is a national charitable organization that helps businesses and organizations understand the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). We aim to build a more inclusive Canada for all, and we do this by offering learning, research, and knowledge solutions to our Employer Partners and DEI practitioners. We elevate the DEI profession through our certification program, and we partner with like-minded organizations to educate the workplace, as well as youth in schools and communities.
We are a workplace that aims to model the behaviours we want to see developed in our partners and clients. We are focused on our mission with a passion that continues to make a difference in the lives of working Canadians, and we endeavour to make an impact where it matters.
What inspired your founder to start the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion?
Twenty twenty-three is our 10-year anniversary. CCDI was founded by Michael Bach at a time when there was no national umbrella organization that existed to support workplaces to be more equitable and inclusive on a wide spectrum of diversity dimensions. Organizations existed to support specific aspects such as gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, etc., but there was no organization that was intentionally pan-diversity. CCDI met that gap and slowly developed employer partnerships across Canada.
We listened to the needs of workplaces and developed a solid and ever-evolving suite of learning offerings, case studies, reports, toolkits, podcasts, blogs, advice, and support to employers so we can walk alongside them on their DEI journey and to be, we hope, their trusted advisor.
What were some of the challenges CCDI’s founders encountered?
Any new organization needs time to build its profile and visibility and, certainly, that was the case for us as well. Building this organization from scratch meant we needed to create a lot of new connections and host many consultations with employers so we could develop the types of resources and services that were most relevant to them.
It took time to build that critical mass of Employer Partners to get us to a strong enough foundation upon which we could build our organization. That is why we are so thankful to our Founding Employer Partners who believed in the vision and took the risk to join us from the very beginning of our journey.
What do you consider CCDI’s biggest success?
If I were to reflect on the journey, our biggest success has been our ability to pivot and stay relevant and resilient in times of hardship and transition. We almost doubled our Employer Partner base in 2021–2022, and today we have over 730 Employer Partners across Canada, from tiny organizations to large multinational corporations, in all industries and sectors.
Workplaces continue to reach out to us to get connected, find resources and materials, and seek practical advice to help them advance on their DEI journey. This is encouraging to us! It makes us feel that our hard work and efforts to challenge ourselves and pivot where needed are making an impact.
What makes CCDI unique?
Our uniqueness lies in our ability to address a wide spectrum of topics on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. We have a diverse team of professionals with lived experiences who can provide advice in many areas, such as race, religion, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Where we don’t have internal expertise, we partner with great organizations and associates who bring their unique expertise and perspectives to best support our clients.
What also makes us unique and brings tremendous value is our focus on convening employers and amplifying the voices of DEI champions and practitioners who are doing the hard work within their organizations. We find that their stories and experiences bring grounded, real, and practical applications to our Employer Partners and our listeners.
How do you feel CCDI makes the world better?
In addition to making workplaces across Canada more ready and courageous to start or strengthen their DEI journey, we also have two other programs that help to make the world better in our view. The first is the Canadian Certified Inclusion Professional (CCIP) designation, Canada’s only certification program designed to assess an individual’s existing knowledge or skills against a set of pre-defined competencies. This helps to elevate the profile of DEI practitioners and helps employers hire qualified and experienced individuals in DEI-related functions.
The second is the See Different program, which focuses on empowering students to make meaningful change in their communities. We offer learning certificate programs where students explore concepts of identity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as power and privilege; learn about Canada’s history of systemic racism and discrimination; and engage in conversations to support their ability to enact change in their own communities and schools. We are excited to be able to support the next generation of workplace and community leaders!
How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?
I often imagine a world where there is no hate, no bullying, no covering of one’s authentic self, and there’s no need to feel anxious because you can be “outed” — where everyone has the same opportunity to succeed because systemic barriers have been identified and removed.
This is a world where we have solutions for everyone to thrive, not in spite of their differences but because of their differences and all the wonderful things they bring to our team, our clients, and our organization. This is a world where we feel hope; we know we are not perfect, but we are progressing in the right direction!
Tell us about CCDI’s goals.
We have ambitious goals for the next few years, which were developed in consultation with our clients, our team, and our board. We are hoping to build our profile to new markets in Canada in order to tell our story — not only the story of our people, but also the story of our employers, schools, and communities where we have partners. We also plan to do more research to advance knowledge on the most pressing DEI trends and concerns that are being felt in the workplace or that we anticipate will become emerging areas we will need to address.
We will also strengthen our team, which has been working very hard, by ensuring they are well-supported and are growing with us. And, like many organizations, we will be spending some resources to invest in our infrastructure and technology. There is much to be done, but we are ready for this challenge!
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
This year, we have launched a partnership with the UN Global Compact Network Canada (GCNC) to support the Government of Canada’s 50 – 30 Challenge, which asks organizations to aspire to two goals: gender parity (50% women and/or non-binary people) on Canadian boards and/or in senior management; and significant representation (at least 30%) on Canadian boards and/or senior management of members of other equity-deserving groups. We are working with UN GCNC, as their learning partner, delivering content on a variety of topics to accomplish these goals.
I am also excited to share that, in February 2023, CCDI was a founding member of the new Global Inclusion & Diversity Alliance (GIDA). GIDA partners are not-for-profit organizations working across the spectrum of diversity dimensions and are specifically focused on workplace inclusion. We come together to partner and collaborate, to learn from each other how to do DEI better, and to share thought leadership across our jurisdictions. We do this for the benefit of our respective membership networks and to make workplaces all over the world more equitable.
What do you most want people to know about CCDI?
Our bilingual website www.ccdi.ca is filled with information, resources, reports, and details about upcoming webinars and events. Take a moment to browse through and learn more. You can also follow us on our social media platforms via @ccdisocial.
How can people help or contribute to CCDI’s mission?
Please reach out to us if you are looking for support on your organizational DEI journey, if you’re looking for a speaker, if you’d like to learn more about the CCIP professional designation, if you’d like youth in your community to get connected to a DEI learning network, or if you have a story to tell that we should amplify. You can reach out to us via our website.
Additionally, as a national charity, we always appreciate any donations to help us fulfill our charitable mandate. Donations can be made on our website.
For non-Indigenous Canadians, ourselves included, there are aspects of how we live and interact with the world that we may have never questioned, particularly when it comes to economic and resource-based systems. Many of us have been raised and educated in spaces that espouse ownership of assets, and consuming items extracted from a façade of “infinite” resources.
Every day, however, we’re closer to reaching critical breaking points environmentally, economically, and socially. From unprecedented natural disasters to housing crises to heightened threats faced by the 2SLGBTQI+, BIPOC, and disability communities, these issues stem from a disconnect between the wisdom of the past and what a good life truly entails.
“We need to right size our relationship with each other, we need to right size our relationship with Mother Earth, and we need to right size our relationship and heal our relationship with the ancestral world,” says Paul Lacerte, Founding Managing Partner of Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, the first and only Indigenous-owned and -led venture capital firm in North America.
We were honoured to sit down with Mr. Lacerte for this issue of Make The World Better Magazine to learn more about the work Raven Capital does and the importance of Indigenous economic participation.
Historically Excluded from the Conversation
Indigenous Peoples were the first, and, to this day, remain essential caretakers of the land. From managing wildfires to protecting waterways, they continue to hold this knowledge from their ancestors, which could sustain this beautiful land for generations to come.
According to Lacerte, “There’s this incredible richness that is resident in Indigenous epistemologies and ways of thinking and being that actually, if I’m being totally honest, […] it’s possible that Indigenous ways of knowing and being is our only hope to avoid the apocalypse.”
Unfortunately, the economic systems in place have excluded Indigenous Peoples from having a seat at the table due to centuries of historic injustices, including stolen land, denial of basic rights, and residential schools, of which Mr. Lacerte himself is a first generation survivor, along with being a day school survivor.
In addition to the generational trauma of these historic injustices, the effects of decades-long exclusion from economic participation are felt to this day.
“There’s a seven-year life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. Seven years. I want to live those seven years, and I want my loved ones to be able to live those seven years — and my kids,” Lacerte tells us. “And so, poverty, and the lack of access to own-source capital is one of those big drivers.”
He goes on to say, “Economic exclusion and poverty is [also] a big driver for violence against Indigenous women. And we’ve had a whole national inquiry as to why so many Indigenous women are murdered or gone missing, and I have that lived reality in my own family. So there’s a lot of urgency.”
Framing Capital as Medicine
The founders of Raven Capital seek to bridge this economic gap faced by Indigenous Peoples. Their mission is “to empower Indigenous entrepreneurs with the capital and expertise they need to succeed,” with a vision of a revitalized Indigenous economy. The Raven Capital team works closely with Indigenous entrepreneurs to get them investment-ready, then helps facilitate the investor-entrepreneur relationship.
“We’ve really been pretty heavily engaged in looking for the kind of medicine that we need to create the straightest line to a better future than the past that we’ve had. Because there’s such a big gap in Indigenous-owned capital and Indigenous-managed capital, so that we can change the way that it behaves for our people, that we can change the experience of entrepreneurs, so that it’s less extractive and harmful, and so that the money acts a lot more like love and healing. There’s just a big gap in that space,” he explains.
“And so, we saw the opportunity and the right time to approach investors and see if, in this reconciliation climate, that there is a level of confidence and readiness to invest in an Indigenous-owned venture firm, and acknowledging that we’re going to behave differently and that the capital might look a little bit different.”
From left to right: Paul Lacerte, Jeff Cyr, Stephen Nairne
Operating from an Indigenous Worldview
To help tell the story of their viewpoint to investors, Raven Capital shares the following on their website: “As an Indigenous intermediary, we honour the Seven Sacred Teachings and operate from an Indigenous worldview. We follow traditional Indigenous protocols, work for the well-being of people and the planet, and acknowledge our responsibility to the next Seven Generations and weave that into our investment process.” The Seven Sacred Teachings guide them toward mino-bimaadiziwin, which roughly means “to live a good life,” and are represented by the Eagle (love), the Buffalo (respect), the Bear (bravery), the Sabe (honesty), the Beaver (wisdom), the Wolf (humility), and the Turtle (truth).
It was important for Raven Capital to integrate the Seven Sacred Teachings into their business practices, not only to honour the teachings for themselves but to also build a trusting relationship with the Indigenous founders they work with.
When Mr. Lacerte and the Raven Capital team approach Indigenous entrepreneurs who are looking for capital, they say that the words these entrepreneurs share with them are medicine.
So, instead of asking, “are you looking for capital?”, Raven Capital would approach with something like, “can you please share your medicine of making a change in the well-being of our people?” Instead of “meetings,” they come together to lift up Indigenous Peoples, which, for them, is sacred and, therefore, a form of ceremony.
“When our team says that to Indigenous founders, there’s almost an immediate healing that starts to happen because of the love and dignity and humility and respect, and some of those Seven Sacred Teachings start to become activated. And because those teachings are activated in our conduct, in our words, in the way that we create the condition for communication and information exchange, it starts to become way less extractive and hierarchical and imbalanced, and it starts to become really loving and safe.”
Speaking the Same Language
Raven Capital also works with non-Indigenous investors who do things in congruence with the Western economic systems in place. Therefore, the Raven Capital team is focused on helping both groups speak the same language when it comes to capital.
According to Lacerte, decolonizing the exclusionary business lexicon is a necessary step, and Raven Capital is committed to doing just that. “One of the ways that we are decolonizing the process and bringing forward Indigenous values and the Seven Sacred Teachings is to change the way that we talk. And that is also risky because the ecosystem trades in the space of confidence, and confidence is often derived from mastery of those acronyms and mastery of the commercial concepts, and so people look for that. And so, the approach that we’re taking is to redefine the way that we speak with each other.”
And the approach that they’re taking is working. In January 2023, Raven Capital closed a $100 million Indigenous venture capital fund, backed by some of Canada’s most prominent foundations and financial institutions, which provides patient and growth capital, as well as support, to start-up and growing Indigenous businesses.
Indigenous-Led Social Enterprises Driving Positive Change
Not only does Raven Capital’s fund directly support Indigenous social enterprises, these social enterprises also create meaningful and quantifiable impacts in Indigenous communities and beyond.
For example, Cheekbone Beauty, a company in Raven Capital’s portfolio, is the very first Indigenous-owned and -founded cosmetics company. They have a theory of change to empower people with make-up by making them feel seen and connected with others, and, thus, less likely to inflict self-harm, a cause near and dear to Cheekbone’s Founder, Jenn Harper.
True to Cheekbone’s mission to make a difference in the lives of Indigenous youth and women and to better the planet, Cheekbone has donated over $250,000 to important causes, uses recyclable packaging, and works with corporate leaders in the cosmetics industry to reduce the level of racism against Indigenous women.
And Cheekbone Beauty isn’t the only social enterprise in Raven Capital’s portfolio that’s advocating for and empowering marginalized groups.
Bobbie Racette, a queer Indigenous woman, is the Founder and CEO of Virtual Gurus, a marketplace of talented Canadian and American virtual assistants. Lacerte tells us that Bobbie’s theory of change is investing in people across the DEI continuum, betting on people that others have given up on.
“For Indigenous and non-Indigenous people along the gender continuum, when they see role models like Bobbie, I think that [it] is empowering, enabling, and it’s charting a pathway that other folks see and can walk in her shoes,” says Lacerte of Bobbie’s success in leadership roles.
Not only are these social enterprises in Raven Capital’s portfolio paving the way for more Indigenous representation in the broader economy, some, like OneFeather Mobile Technologies, are directly facilitating Indigenous participation through their services to ensure more Indigenous people have a spot at the decision-making table.
Lacerte states that OneFeather, “is removing barriers to participating in democratic processes by enabling Indigenous people to vote on their cell phone. And that, because of the mobility of Indigenous people, that is reducing barriers around travel and distance, it’s reducing our carbon footprint, and it’s enabling more fulsome participation in […] land-based decisions.”
“That wisdom, and the fulsome of the democratic process for Indigenous people to participate in land management decisions, is really good for Canadians, […] and enabling the voice of Indigenous people who often act as stewards and sometimes the last line of defence around sacred waterways, around sacred sites, around old-growth forests. And there is huge strength that’s being built in the Supreme Court of enabling Indigenous jurisdiction, but that jurisdiction can get given expression by removing barriers through technology and enabling people to vote with their phones, renew their status card on their phones, and make sure that the legal framework inside the jurisdiction of what we know as Canada is not allowed to continue to exterminate our people through legislative and regulatory processes.”
By making democratic participation accessible for all Indigenous Peoples and economic participation accessible for all purpose-driven Indigenous entrepreneurs, positive change happens, environmentally, economically, and socially — something that benefits everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike.
Members of the Raven team at Raven’s CEO Retreat, 2023.
What’s Next for Raven Capital
Upon closing the $100 million Indigenous venture capital fund, Raven Capital will be deploying roughly $60 million of that in Canada and investing about $40 million in the United States.
Raven Capital has also updated their impact measurement framework, called Raven Impact Measurement (the RIM), which was published in December 2022. The RIM speaks to their epistemology, philosophy, investment practices, and alignment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It’s open source, so Lacerte invites everyone to go to Raven Capital’s website and download the RIM document to use it for their purposes.
“The idea is that we’re gifting that medicine into the ecosystem for folks to be able to draw those lessons and those teachings and use it to strengthen their own life, use it to strengthen their own personal investing practices, use it to understand that every dollar that you spend as a consumer is an investment decision. And we can start to shift people’s paradigm of the way that economic strength, for every single dollar is used, and that it can start to lean towards this reconciliation space and this regenerative economy and restorative economy.”
Additionally, Raven Capital recently brought together their portfolio companies for a three-day, land-based retreat to heal on the land, do some ceremony, spend time with elders and knowledge keepers, and engage in training and skill-building to prepare for the uncertain economic climate and scale companies for impact. Lacerte says the goal of these retreats is to focus on wellness, prevent mission drift, and continue facilitating the decolonizing trajectory.
“The inertia in the capital markets and the commercial ecosystem […] is towards extraction, the inertia is towards profit, the inertia is towards individual wealth as opposed to community well-being,” Lacerte tells us, pointing to his right. “And we want to go this way,” he adds, pointing to his left with a laugh. “We want to shift a lot of those things, but it takes a lot of intentional effort to do that.”
How You Can Get Involved
Reconciliation has been part of Canada’s discourse for years now, but many non-Indigenous Canadians may not know where to start or how to deepen their work. With a plethora of content to parse through, there’s one resource in particular that Mr. Lacerte recommends for everyone to engage with.
“Here in Canada, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is now legislated, as of June 2021. And so, we are going forward now, inviting both individuals and companies, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to familiarize themselves with the 46 articles of the UNDRIP and then understand where there are opportunities to take action to implement one or more of those 46 articles.”
He continues, “It’s been since 1982 ‘til today that there’s been this effort to bring this global consciousness about the fundamental rights that Indigenous people have and the way that there is mutual benefit. The more we give expression to those rights and remove the barriers to the fundamental human rights of Indigenous Peoples, the better off our land will be, the better off our society will be, and I think we’ll have a society that we can be proud of because we’re taking our foot off of the throats of Indigenous Peoples and good things will happen for all of us the more we do that.”
Additionally, if you’re an investor or are simply in the market for new consumer goods and services, Lacerte says there are plenty of opportunities for you to use your dollar to support Indigenous-led initiatives. “For investors, there is certainly going to be an opportunity this coming summer to engage and participate [with Raven Capital’s initiatives]. And, obviously, shop Indigenous. If there are opportunities going forward, folks can familiarize themselves with the Raven Capital portfolio and Indigenous marketplaces all over Turtle Island. There’s this massive opportunity to transform the Indigenous economy as consumers, as customers, and as allies, so there’s lots of opportunity in that space.”
We thank Mr. Lacerte and Raven Capital for the opportunity to listen and learn about the important work Raven Capital is doing, as well as the incredible Indigenous social enterprises within the Raven Capital portfolio. We appreciate you sharing your time, wisdom, and stories with us and our readers.
Making the world more diverse, equitable, and inclusive is a collective effort. That’s why it’s important to educate ourselves, assess our personal and professional DEI efforts, and find actionable ways to participate in and support the cause.
We’ve compiled a list of helpful DEI resources you can use to deepen your understanding and enact positive change.
DEI Resources from Organizations Featured in Make The World Better Magazine
Check out these inspiring guides, toolkits, ebooks, and DEI resources from individuals and organizations that have been featured in Make The World Better Magazine.
Bakau Consulting – Resources Toolkit: Bakau Consulting has compiled an exhaustive list of DEI articles, books, podcasts, and other resources covering a wide range of topics, from fundamentals of anti-oppression to strategies for 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion and everything in between. Available in English, Spanish, and Russian.
Benevity – Belonging: The Third Piece of the Diversity & Inclusion Puzzle ebook: Benevity fosters a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and is sharing this fundamental part of their workplace culture with everyone. This guide, directed at corporate social responsibility leaders, teaches companies all about belonging, its importance, and how it benefits the workplace.
Diversity in Sustainability – Mamadou Abou-Sarr: Bringing Intentionality to ESG:This interview with Mamadou Abou-Sarr, international financier and Co-Founder of V-Square Quantitative Management, explores the importance of sustainable investing, pressing issues in sustainable finance, and his experiences, achievements, and advice.
Raven Indigenous Capital Partners – Raven Impact Measurement Framework: Raven Capital’s framework, the Raven Impact Measurement (RIM), provides insight into how they measure the impact the businesses in their portfolio are having on Indigenous Peoples, communities, and on the ecosystem, along with sharing their epistemology, philosophy, investment practices, and alignment to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
AccessibleEmployers – Workplace Accommodation Guide: This guide provides actionable ways to accommodate for both visible and invisible disabilities, proving that increasing workplace accessibility doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive.
LinkedIn – Inclusive Language For Marketers: A Pocket Guide: LinkedIn has created a guide to help marketers incorporate a more inclusive lexicon in all of their communications. The guide includes best practices and alternatives to common exclusionary language.
McLean & Company – DEI Strategy Research: This DEI guide helps HR leaders create a people-first DEI strategy, empowering them to assess their current efforts and gaps, determine a clear purpose and how to carry it out, implement organization-wide DEI, and measure progress.
UBC Sustainability Scholars Program – Exploring a Just and Inclusive Circular Recovery: Part of the UBC Sustainability Scholars Program, this report explores the benefits of the circular economy and the social enterprises that intersect with it, offering insight into the jobs that a transition to the circular economy can generate and share, reuse, and repair businesses within marginalized communities.
Veza – Anti-Racism Sample Statement: Equity, diversity, and inclusion organization Veza Global has provided an anti-racism sample statement, which companies can adapt to create their own anti-racism commitment statement and steps.
Sparx PG’s Resources
Since DEI is so important to Sparx and a crucial part of our DNA, we have created some DEI marketing resources of our own that we hope will benefit you and your purpose-driven organization:
Why and How to Add More Diversity Into Your Marketing Efforts: There are many benefits to adding diversity to your marketing efforts, but in order to avoid performative or disingenuous “woke-washing,” we’ve created a guide on how to do it in an authentic, actionable way to truly make the world better.
How to Avoid “Rainbow-Washing” during Pride Month: June is Pride month, which means it’s a great time for your organization to live its values and support the 2SLGTBQIA+ community. However, it’s important to make sure your efforts aren’t “rainbow-washing.” Be sure to read our guide on how to be a true ally this Pride month, and beyond.
Join Forces with Sparx
Sparx would love to work with your purpose-driven organization to build a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable community. Want to team up? Give us a shout for a free consultation. Together, we can help make your diversity story shine.
As a CAMSC-certified company, diversity is likely a key part of your identity and a value your brand is committed to supporting. Communicating this commitment to diversity will help drive your impact and demonstrate that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an authentic part of your brand.
Keep scrolling to discover why sharing your DEI story is an important step on your impact journey and to learn actionable tips that will give your purpose-driven marketing strategy a boost.
Why is DEI Marketing Important?
A DEI marketing strategy is no longer a nice-to-have, it can be make-or-break. In a 2019 survey conducted by Adobe, 61% of respondents said diversity in ads was important. The majority of consumers care about diversity, equity, and inclusion and are interested in marketing that visibly communicates a company’s commitment to DEI.
Marketing that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive also builds trust with current and prospective customers. In the same Adobe survey, 38% of the respondents said they’re more likely to trust a brand with diversity in its advertising, while a Microsoft Advertising Inclusive Marketing Research study found that 70% of Gen Z consumers feel greater trust for brands that represent diversity in their ads.
Along with building trust and demonstrating a commitment to shared values, DEI representation in marketing drives up engagement and creates long-lasting emotional bonds with your desired audience. For example, 76% of Gen Z consumers are more likely to support brands with authentic advertising.
DEI marketing is important for another reason as well: it draws in loyal, like-minded consumers who share your vision of a better world, and thus, are more likely to be interested in supporting your CAMSC-certified diverse business and furthering the DEI cause. A recent Deloitte study found that 57% of consumers are more loyal to brands with a commitment to addressing social inequities and that 90% of Gen Z consumers are more willing to make a purchase they believe is beneficial to society.
When a CAMSC-certified company uses DEI marketing to communicate their unique and authentic diversity story, it’s a win for everyone. It will drive up visibility and engagement for your brand, expand your audience, and further the DEI cause, creating positive impact for all.
What Does Effective DEI Marketing Look Like?
DEI marketing should be representative of both your internal team and the audience you want to engage with your brand. So, what does that look like exactly?
Effective DEI marketing removes barriers, celebrates differences, and invites everyone to interact with you by communicating your unique story and values in a way that forms a strong emotional connection. It contains imagery and messaging that is accessible, inclusive, representative of folks from different walks of life and backgrounds, and keeps gender balance in mind.
After all, representation is a bridge to your brand. Consumers want to feel seen and heard, and will ask themselves, “can I see myself in this?,” which is why 47% of Gen Z consumers are more likely to trust brands that they feel represent them in their advertising. Unfortunately, a Top Design Firms’ study found that only 29% of BIPOC consumers feel that their race is accurately represented in advertising, and a 2021 Facebook study found that 54% of consumers do not feel culturally represented in online advertising, even though 71% of consumers expect brands to promote diversity and inclusion and 59% are more loyal to brands with diverse and inclusive online advertising.
If consumers can’t see themselves as the right fit for an organization’s product or service then they will not feel connected to a brand, and that feeling could result in decreased engagement. To build that bridge and invite in your desired audience, your DEI marketing should represent them accurately while avoiding homogenous, biased, or cliched imagery and messaging.
Communicating Your Diversity
As part of an effective DEI marketing strategy, you can communicate your diversity story with the following suggestions.
Put your CAMSC certification in places where they will be seen, such as your website footer, email signatures, social media profiles, and advertisements and collateral. If you’ve invested in certification, be sure to put it on display.
Use images that are representative of diversity, equity, and inclusion across all your content and channels. Consider doing a content audit, if necessary. It’s important to be vigilant when it comes to your visuals so that you avoid exclusionary, biased, or cliched imagery. There are a lot of different databases with stock image collections that represent different demographics and underrepresented groups. You can also use images of your diverse CAMSC-certified team on your website, instead of stock images.
Avoid exclusionary language choices. Words are powerful, which is why it’s important to carefully select each word to ensure it supports your message and welcomes your audience. Stay up to date on politically correct terms, look at how different groups refer to themselves and echo their wording to avoid problematic language, use gender neutral words, and be mindful not to include language that supports stereotypes.
Ensure that your content is accessible for individuals with disabilities. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provides the international standard for making web-based content accessible for people with disabilities. You can test your webpages and marketing collateral against these standards to help you determine how accessible your website will be for everyone. Make adjustments as needed and ensure text and visuals are clear, readable, and compatible with screen readers.
Get everyone’s input. Since your CAMSC-certified organization has a diverse team, it can be extremely helpful to give everyone the chance to provide their input. By bringing forward their unique backgrounds, perspectives, and identities, your teammates can help identify problem areas and provide innovative ways to communicate to audience segments you want to include. Just a note: don’t expect diverse employees to heavy-lift educating fellow staff and/or consumers. Be respectful of their time, energy, and boundaries, and consider how you can compensate them for their efforts if they agree to help out beyond their usual job description scope.
Conclusion
Integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into your marketing, communications, and content is a huge part of walking your talk and sparking positive change. Creating a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse society rests on all of us. If you can demonstrate that you can do this in your business by marketing with purpose and communicating your DEI story, other people will look at what you’ve done as an example of what they can do as well.
Join Forces With Sparx
As a CAMSC-certified organization, Sparx would love to work with you to build a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable community. Want to team up? Give us a shout for a free consultation. Together, we can help make your diversity story shine.
