Title: Leaving Every Organisation Better Than You Found It

Summary:

Kaitlyn Kitzan, Saskatchewan farmer, entrepreneur, and sectoral leader, argues that lasting leadership means improving every organisation you touch and passing it on stronger than you found it. Drawing on lessons from her family farm, her early entrepreneurial ventures, and the volunteer ethic instilled by her parents in a rural community, Kaitlyn makes the case that the foundation of great leadership is not ambition alone but the habits, values, and emotional intelligence cultivated from childhood. In this conversation with Jesse Hirsh, she offers a candid, grounded look at what it actually costs — and what it gives back — to lead in Canada's agri-food sector today.

Show notes:

Kaitlyn Kitzan grew up on a Saskatchewan farm forty miles from the nearest city, and that distance shaped everything: her work ethic, her entrepreneurial instincts, and her conviction that a leader's job is to leave every organisation better than she found it. That guiding principle, borrowed from a phrase she heard growing up under Premier Wall, runs through this entire conversation — from how she approaches board work and farm succession to how she thinks about stress, sleep, and the volunteers who hold rural communities together. Jesse Hirsh invites Kaitlyn to unpack what that commitment actually looks like in practice for someone managing a seven-person business, sitting on multiple boards, and navigating the emotional complexity of a family farming operation all at once.

One of the most striking threads in the conversation is Kaitlyn's reframing of mental health and stress in the agricultural sector. Rather than asking people where they're at emotionally — a question that still carries stigma in many farm communities — she asks them about their battery level. Are you at fifty percent? Seventy-five? And crucially, what do you need to do to recharge? She applies the same framework to herself, describing the discipline she has built around sleep, her deliberate practice of leaving weekends unscheduled when event season piles up, and her ongoing struggle to say no to opportunities she genuinely wants to take. The honesty here is notable: she is not offering a tidy wellness program but describing an active, imperfect negotiation between her drive and her limits.

Kaitlyn is equally direct about the cultural divide she sees among her peers when it comes to volunteerism and community contribution. She traces her own volunteer ethic back to selling chocolate bars at a hockey canteen at age three, and to parents who modelled the idea that you give back to the community that raised you. What frustrates her is watching friends and new employees ask what's in it for them before committing even an hour of their time — a mindset she connects not to geography or generation but to how people were raised. That argument cuts against easy rural-urban or east-west narratives and lands somewhere more uncomfortable and more specific: that the values transmitted in childhood are the single biggest determinant of whether someone grows into a leader who builds things up or someone who waits for things to be handed to them.

Listeners will come away with a clearer picture of what it actually takes to sustain leadership in Canada's agri-food sector over the long run — not the highlight-reel version, but the daily arithmetic of energy management, emotional intelligence, community investment, and knowing when to walk away and go for a walk. For anyone working in Saskatchewan agriculture, in rural entrepreneurship, or in the volunteer and board structures that hold the sector together, Kaitlyn's perspective is both a practical resource and a reminder that the future of the herd depends on people who are committed to leaving things better than they found them.

Topics: Farm Leadership, Mental Health & Stress, Rural Entrepreneurship, Volunteerism, Farm Succession, Saskatchewan Agriculture, Emotional Intelligence, Work-Life Balance