Walking the path.
Together.
Uncommon Partnership for Leaders
A love letter
I spent years working in social change — anti-poverty work, legal advocacy, the labour movement, politics. I believed in all of it. I still do. But somewhere along the way I started to wonder if I had the theory of change wrong.
The work felt necessary, but it was also exhausting in a particular way — the sense that we were always fighting, always reacting, never quite getting to the root of things. Never quite getting the world we wanted or expected.
What if the work was deeper than policy, regulation, political affiliation, winners and losers? What if the real work happened deep in the human heart?
When I started working with retreat centers, something shifted. Here was work that operated at a different level entirely — work that addressed the whole person, the interior life and the external reality. Work that didn't just change individuals but sent them back into the world changed —more open, more connected, more capable of love.
"When we hit resistance, we need to get excited, because that means something's working. We are on the cusp of change - this is what resistance signals"
For nearly a decade, I led Hollyhock — one of Canada's most beloved retreat centers.
I came to Hollyhock as a student of leadership in the mid 2000s and fell in love with the connection, the people, the wilderness, and the possibility. The power of retreat centers to change hearts and minds is something I felt in my bones long before I understood it in my head.
What I didn't expect was how much of the job would happen in the space between the vision and the reality — in the middle of the night, in the budget spreadsheet, in the board meeting where everything felt like it was working against what we were trying to build.
That experience is at the heart of how we work.
We partner with leaders who are working on something big — not coasting, not maintaining, but something that genuinely matters and is hard to pull off. Leaders who understand that the work they are doing is part of something larger than their organization. If you're carrying a vision like that, we want to walk with you. We bring honesty, strategic depth, and real care for your mission. No judgment about where you're starting from. Just a partner, walking the path with you.
We come as partners.
Uncommon Partners.
Honest inquiry,
then everything else.
Before the fundraising strategy, before the financial planning, before anything else, we sit down together and ask the questions that actually matter: What are you building? Why does it matter? What is getting in the way?
That clarity is not a warm-up. It is the foundation from which everything else becomes possible.
From there, we do the work together — core purpose, philanthropic strategy, earned revenue, financial planning, people and leadership development, and the organizational infrastructure that holds it all together.
Accompaniment,
not advice from adistance.
Our model is accompaniment. It means we walk alongside you as a genuine partner, invested in what you are trying to build and why it matters.
We are with you from the moment we begin working together, through the complex decisions and the ordinary ones. We bring care, strategic insight,honest counsel, and real enthusiasm to whatever terrain is in front of you. We ask questions that might be uncomfortable. We tell you what we actually think. And we find moments to laugh at ourselves and at thebeautiful audacity of trying to change the world and our organizations.
What we do together is serious. We know that the work is built through practice — through showing up, getting the reps, and trusting that the path reveals itself by walking it. You will have a partner beside you for all of it. You will not just have a map. You will have been walking it, with a thought partner beside you the whole way.
If you are carrying a vision that matters, we would love to hear from you.
Walking alongside leaders building a more just,connected, compassionate world.