I woke up a B Corp and other world-changing views

As one of 9,000 Certified B Corps worldwide, Redbrick is now legally accountable to do business in a way that brings benefit to all stakeholders: workers, customers, community and our planet.

By extension, Redbrick’s portfolio companies, including our wee little initiative—Digital Entrepreneur—joins Redbrick in a collective mission to foster positive change.

This excites me because from the very beginning I’ve worked to make people and community a priority at Digital E.

Creating content for content’s sake was not what I wanted for our media brand. I want entrepreneurs to live the words on the pages of our digital magazine. Walk the paths of the contributors, who like our community, are still figuring things out. Feel confident in themselves and the decisions they make in life and business. And most of all, find joy, in the midst of it all.

The trouble with that aspirational outlook is that we’re still a business. And in business, there’s balance to be had between profit and impact—or so I thought.

With its B Corp Certification, Redbrick has given Digital Entrepreneur a tangible pathway to dream beyond the status quo. Something I never thought possible in a corporate setting, let alone in the tech industry.

So now, the wheels are turning. How can we shift our mission to reconnect entrepreneurs with the joy of business, and our vision to close the gap between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial action, into measurable impact?

I don’t have the answer, yet. But I’m determined to figure it out.

As part of that process, I started asking folks about their world-changing views. I’ve included a few of the most powerful perspectives below, and as more responses come in, I’ll update this article with more.

Leni Goggins

Director of Social Economy and Other Cool Stuff, Inclusion Powell River

I have worked in the fashion and textile industry helping to grow a start-up into a multi-million dollar company. I’ve worked in publishing, making multitens-of-dollars by creating art and watching and aiding writers to bloom and share their stories with the world. Now, I am a social entrepreneur working within a non-profit to create businesses that are both circular (diverting materials from the waste stream) and inclusive of people who experience barriers to work, such as people with disabilities.

I believe anyone can be an entrepreneur, but only some are born that way. I am one of those people. It is a privilege to come into this world being a creative and innovative person, being comfortable thinking outside of our societal boxes and limitations, and I am not only willing to try and to experiment, but comfortable with failing in the process.

There are certain conditions that made these traits dominant for me, one I am neurodivergent, so I have a learning disability and have suffered the dark side of my diversity with mental illness. A mentor of mine once said “entrepreneurship is a form of mental illness,” and I like to turn that on its head, framing it as it takes different thinking to create something new, and it takes diversity and flexibility to address the very complex challenges we now face as a species.

Two, I had parents that instilled in me those 1960s values of “you can do and be anything,” and this is an important position to consider as an entrepreneur. My parents were both creative, innovative, extremely hard working and resilient, despite neither having graduated high school and growing up in less-than-ideal conditions. There is of course a dark side to this rags-to-riches ideal, but I think believing in ourselves is critical to entrepreneurship, regardless of the very real and unfair hurdles that sit way higher for some than others.

Three, I have traveled all over the world and lived in places on earth ravaged by poverty, inequality and environmental destruction that is the result of our extractive colonial neo capitalistic world order. Seeing these places educated me in what is coming for us all, if we do not address and reverse the course we are traveling.

Four, I am a gifted bullshit artist, also known as a sales person. I can sell you your shirt because it really emphasizes the colour of your beautiful eyes, and it screams “you!”

It is so important to be able to inspire others to see your vision, even if that vision is complicated—like how to make sure your employees have access to fair wages and get to feel they belong at work, even when you might compromise your profitability, or how to change the systems that allow us to “take, make and waste” all of our natural resources.

I am an entrepreneur because I was born that way. I’ve gotten to where I am today because of my unique brain, my resilient parents, the privilege of travel and a god given gift of showpersonship.

Leni Goggins is Project Manager of the New Inclusive Economy and the Director of Social Economy and Other Cool Stuff at inclusion Powell River leading projects such as qathet Inclusive Manufacturing, OneLight and Kindred ReBuild.

She combines 20 years of experience working with people with disabilities, seniors and youth with her project management work with non-profit and socially minded enterprises.

Marco Pimentel

CMO, Redbrick

Storytelling is everything. From how you build your team culture, how you attract and retain employees, and how you tell the world about the work you do.

A good storyteller will always win. In a seemingly all digital world, we get consumed for our attention, and our attention span has drastically changed. You could almost call it the attention economy. How you cut through that attention and build meaningful connections is through storytelling.

This is not just a small about us section on your website, but a change in mindset to think about how you story tells all the bits and pieces of your business, which includes bringing in stories that are personal to add vulnerability in what you do.

Everyone has a story to tell.

Marco Pimentel is the CMO at Redbrick, the parent organization to a portfolio of disruptive technology companies.

Combining his passions for entrepreneurship and the outdoors, Pimentel has a podcast, Someone Like You, which discusses how to build a business that’s good for the planet, and Unless Ventures to invest in brands that create climate change solutions or produce better, sustainable goods.

Jocelyn Light

FOUNDER, DEELIGHT COnsulting & EASY VEGAN FOODS

The reason I choose to go beyond business norms with my mission and vision for both Deelight Consulting and Easy Vegan is simple: it's the right thing to do, and it makes sound business sense.

This journey began about a decade ago, fueled by a gut feeling, the optimism of someone fresh out of school, and an open-minded COO. As a white person from Canada working for a geographically Ghanaian organization with predominantly Ghanaian employees and a North American executive team, I was confronted with the stark realities of workplace inequity. This was the first of many environments where I navigated invaluable lessons on dismantling, rather than perpetuating, globally inequitable systems of power.

Decision-makers–CEOs, funders and the like–agree that ethics are important, but they’re often more swayed by numbers. Ethics ultimately have to make sense for the bottom line. Fortunately, the argument isn’t difficult to make.

Research consistently shows that diverse teams perform better, organizations with diverse management have stronger revenue, and progressive practices like the four-day work week can lead to a more productive and engaged workforce, ultimately boosting the bottom line.

In every role, I’ve acted as an internal DEI consultant, advocating equitable practices to be an organizational priority. However, I realized that while I loved building strategies and fostering inclusive cultures, I was less passionate about convincing leadership of their importance. This led to the founding of Deelight Consulting—to help executives who, like me years ago, want to do the right thing but may not know how.

Easy Vegan Foods was born from a different journey, but its business strategy is a direct descendant of my earlier career lessons. In addition to the human-centricity of the values that built Deelight Consulting and the importance of data-informed decision making, building a business around food underscores our connection to the well-being of Planet Earth.

At every step, our guiding principle is simple: do not exploit. This means not exploiting the planet, people or myself. Easy Vegan is built on non-negotiable principles that ensure our practices are sustainable and just.

We're not only making decisions for today, but for the future. The key to doing this lies in the questions we ask. When considering whether to hire a driver, we ask, "What is the living wage?"

As Founder of Deelight Consulting and Easy Vegan Foods, Jocelyn has over 10 years experience designing and growing high performing teams.

Prior to launching her own local, eco-friendly meal kit business, she worked in international social enterprise (or B Corp) start-ups where she led business ops expansions into new countries, designed new service and product functions and developed intersectional talent strategies.

Celia Chartres-Aris

Disabled Government Special Advisor

In the political industry, disability, despite disabled people making up 25% of the population, has historically been disregarded or not given the weight of conversation it deserves. We have been pigeon-holed only into health and social care discussions, as an after-thought, focusing on surviving not thriving.

I am driven by challenging this mentality, to put pressure on our electives to be representative of the largest minority group in the world, to challenge stereotypes about what Disabled people can and can’t do, to improve opportunities and open participation, and to ensure that the legislation and policies which govern our everyday lives are equitable and inclusive of Disabled people too.

Celia Chartres-Aris is a multi-award winning Disabled Government special advisor, campaigner and lobbyist, researcher, policy and legal expert, founder and investor advocating for the improvement of disability equity and accessibility inclusivity.

She has founded several disabled-led organizations focused on the development and advancement of policy, ensuring that Disabled people are at the heart of legislation and consultation across the globe.