Unicorn Leaders

Today we have Shawna Stewart on the podcast, VP of People and Operations at Railz Financial. Shawna is truly a people-focused leader, she has extensive background in psychology and organizational behaviour and experience involving performance management, full scope operational effectiveness, succession planning, employee engagement and talent development.  I’m so excited for you to listen to her e...

Laura Mindorff is the brilliant COO at Wicket. Laura has developed years of experience under her belt and shares her very tactical advice on how to create effective culture through things like rituals, culture champions, and what metrics to watch out for to check-in on your progress. I’m so happy to bring you this conversation because of Laura’s purposeful and relentless approach to constantly pri...

In episode 9,  Julia gives us insight into how she uses her humane recruiting approach to create a reputable employment brand that plays big dividends both inside and outside the company. She offers actionable tips on how to initiate trust on a team, how to lead the recruitment process to attract candidates with best practices, and how to show up in with an effective employer brand no matter the l...

Shawn MacDonell shares his unconventional story of saying yes to experiences from sports coaching, to facilitating tools for teaching in Columbia, to branding strategy, to professional coaching, to founding a creative agency. He speaks to how all of these offered him the experience of not being afraid of conflict and instead reframing it to curiosity and exploration. To understand why people make...

What does leadership mean to you? Ex-Shopify Chief Talent Officer Brittany Forsyth, used to think it was the same thing as management.  Over the years and various leadership roles she realized it means creating a following and driving that following towards a common shared goal.  In episode 7 she gives us insight into how she recognized her natural leadership tendencies and how they helped her lan...

“If you are building a talent strategy that’s based on a sample you saw online or a great book you read, you will not match what your business needs and so I think whenever I’m doing any kind of talent strategy or when I was consulting I was always asking people “what’re your business goals” and it was shocking to me where I would look then at the talent strategy and I couldn’t see the business co...

Have you ever been in a position where you didn’t feel proud of what you were doing in your career? Has your chosen field ever caused you emotional distress? Sam Witherspoon is the founder and CEO of IMRSV Data Labs, a company dedicated to increasing the safety and security of Canada and its allies through the effective, transparent use of data. In episode #5, Sam talks about how important it is t...

We often have the preconceived notion that leaders have to treat everyone the same in order to be fair. However in truth, managers need to respect everyone’s individual needs and motivators. On episode #4, Cassy Aite, the co-founder and CEO of Hoppier, shares how different values, environments and involvement can influence your employees’ motivation in the workplace.  Cassy also discusses the impo...

Did you know that 70% of employee retention is based on their manager and no other factor? People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Aydin Mirzaee  is the co-founder and CEO of Fellow.app , a meeting productivity platform that helps organizations have fewer, better meetings. In this episode Aydin talks about how managers can influence team performance and shares his thoughts on why he thinks g...

“We ultimately believe that it’s our role as leaders, as coaches, to find out what about that individual is going to make them fulfilled and be able to achieve their best outcomes in both work and in life and in order to do that you have to be radically committed to that employee.” - Michael Johnson Do managers always have a negative reaction when a cherished employee decides to leave their team o...

When you’re busy fighting for survival is there any room for growth? ‍When any failure means disaster, the stakes are too high for you to take risks — this means you’ll always choose the safe route.‍ Craig Handy leads a Global Revenue Operations team at Shopify, a fast growing startup, and he is also the founder of Jameson Strategies, his own RevOps consulting firm. He’s most passionate about how...

Fahd is a consultant, coach, leadership speaker, and millennial workplace expert who teaches new managers how to lead multi-generational teams. He specializes in transformative leadership and team dynamics training for high-growth startups. He created this podcast to take a deep dive into the world of building a billion-dollar company (a unicorn) in every episode.  Join us while we explore the lea...