We have a special episode wrapping up season 1 this week!  We feature our first guest, Vivekan Jeyagaran who sits down with our host, Cheryl Ng to dig deeper into her decision to move abroad. Coming full circle from the first episode in going from corporate to international development, Cheryl will now be immersed in the field herself, hoping to broaden her perspective on impactful work to share with all of you.  

From the time of recording episode 2 with Vivekan Jeyagaran on corporate to international development, Cheryl didn't realize that she was going down this career path as well.  She will now be working with the UN Development Program Cambodia on the Youth Employment project and ABA Bank of Cambodia to help with the research on skills projection in response to emerging digital economy, improve digital and financial literacy, and support young entrepreneurs (including women residing in rural communities) operationalize their business, and establishing a business incubation hub.  In this episode, we not only talk about the thought process in making the decision to work abroad in the development sector, but we chat about the upbringing and trigger points in Cheryl's journey that led her from wanting to climb the corporate ladder to working in the development sector.

Follow Cheryl's journey on
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explorengcheryl/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/explorengcheryl
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryl-ng-276a6938/

We often think that fair trade means cutting into margins when running a business or a significant price increase for buyers.  Madison breaks down the many bias and economics of fair trade business models.  We chat about:

• How to market fair trade products
• Why buy fair trade products
• The innovation diffusion curve
• Nike's role in the fair trade movement
• How to influence consumer purchasing decisions and corporations to buy into fair trade (push from consumers vs pull from retailers)
• Capitalists vs. Fair Trade
• Maximizing Profit for Shareholders vs. Listening to Your Customers

Madison has been both a researcher and practitioner of fair trade for over 6 years. She began as an activist with Fair Trade Toronto; encouraging institutions within the city to make procurement commitments to buy fair trade products.

She later went on to join the board of Fairtrade Canada. During this time Madison was completing her Master’s degree developing a social enterprise that imported and sold fair trade promotional apparel.

Today, Madison works in marketing for a Canadian fair trade banana importer and teaches an undergraduate class on fair trade business models.

Equifruit's website: www.equifruit.com
Equifruit Social Media: @Equifruit (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)
Equifruit's current campaign:  www.behindthepeel.com (EN) #behindthepeel, https://souslapeau.ca/ (FR)   #souslapeau
Fairtrade Canada: http://www.fairtrade.ca/en-CA/What-is-Fairtrade
Madison Hopper LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madison-hopper-62b1b831/

In this episode, we sit down with Angela Wang, Senior Impact Analyst at Charity Intelligence Canada and Head of Research at a tech start-up Give Technologies. At Charity Intelligence, she informs and guides donors to give to charities that achieve the greatest social results.  Angela speaks about how do we look at organizations that want to do good, and how do we measure social impact?    We talk about the theory of change, the social impact return on investment, and how do we ensure that organizations doing good have a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for social return on investment.  Bringing together her research and analysis, her work at Give Technologies help develop personalized donation portfolios, assisting donors in convenient and impactful giving.  

Make an impact in all the causes you care about with just one monthly donation.  Start donating with Give: Apple Store or Google Play

LinkedIn: Angela Wang
Website: Charity Intelligence Canada
Website: Give
Instagram: @withgive

In this episode, we sit down with Christopher Thompson, a passionate young leader who has a desire to empower others and give back to the community. Chris has held many leadership roles such as President of the University of Toronto Mississauga Student Union representing over 13,000 students and managing the campus student centre. Furthermore, in addition to being appointed Chair of United Ways Young Leaders Council in 2015, he now serves at UofT as the Past President of the UTM Alumni Association, representing over 50,000 thousand UTM alums. Professionally Chris has worked in both the public and private sector, and in the private sector became Excel Marketing’s youngest Account Manager to travel across Canada to oversee new store display account setups. In the public sector, Chris has worked in Relations Management as the United Way (UW) Young Leaders Council Coordinator, the UW Human Resource Manager, and now in Community Investment as the Lead of the UW Black Community Advisory Committee. Regarding community engagement, Chris has always been passionate to give back and use the life skills and knowledge he developed to support youth development. Chris is now the  Founder of Skills For Life Inc, a charity directed at inspiring and preparing youth for the real world; through life skills training.

We dive into topics around being the first in the family to go to post-secondary school, bridging hard skills in school to the practical world for youth, incorporation options for a passion project and how through playing basketball, Chris was able to grow his network and mindset.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skills4lifeinc/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SLifeinc
Chris' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-thompson-40a34861/

In this no filter and candid episode, we sit down with Lucas Chang who is helping youth of all socio-economic backgrounds believe they can create change.  He's the Co-Founder of Y2Labs (a non-profit that provides students in high school and middle school opportunities to develop their problem-solving and innovation skills, and their entrepreneurial mindset) and Co-lead of Startup York (a volunteer-run community of more than 600 entrepreneurs and business owners from across York Region).  With the incredible work he's doing with educating students, Gen Z, in design thinking, he is changing they way someone approaches a problem using empathy based design.  We dive into topics around imposter syndrome, what Design Thinking is, Gen Z vs. Millenials, corporate to independent consulting, and what community building is like in York Region.

Lucas Chang's experience is unique and diverse.  He holds an MBA from Rotman School of Management and starting from his journey he was a Director of Web Operations and Director of Project Planning and Delivery at TELUS, as well as business consultant with Accenture where he worked with clients in financial services, transportation, telecommunications and at provincial and federal levels of government.  He then made a shift and co-founded Y2 Entrepreneurship Labs, which is a non-profit that provides students in high school and middle school opportunities to develop their problem-solving and innovation skills, and their entrepreneurial mindset.  

He is also a co-lead of Startup York (a volunteer-run community of more than 600 entrepreneurs and business owners from across York Region), the principal consultant at KnL Business Consulting, and a regular workshop facilitator, speaker, mentor and judge at entrepreneur- and student-focused forums.  Previously, Lucas was a Program Co-Director of the Shad York 2019 campus, a member of the York Angel Investors and a principal at PerfectlySoft, a software startup company. 

Learn more about Y2Labs: http://y2labs.co/
Y2 Labs Twitter: https://twitter.com/y2labs
Y2Labs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/y2labs/
Startup York Region Twitter: https://twitter.com/StartupYork
Startup York Region Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StartupYorkRegion/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaschang/

This is a very first episode, where we have 2 guests on the show, Akeem Gardner and Randy Osei.  These two humble gentlemen are creating a community where they're leveraging their existing connections with professional athletes - leveraging their influence and capital to work on giveback projects through Return the Love Community Support and Atlas 365.     

This episode is a unique take on what impactful work really means, it doesn't have to be a newest or most innovative tech startup or getting into the weeds of development work, these guys are making a difference by thinking globally and acting locally in ways that we may of not thought of.  Some of their work giving back includes education and character development for youth through sports, and helping create opportunities in the cannabis and hemp industry. 

Akeem Gardner, CEO & Co-Founder of Atlas 365 Inc., is a dedicated, hard-working, and driven individual who is focused on community building and innovation in niche markets. His core work includes education and character development through sport, motivating our
youth - the leaders of tomorrow, and helping create opportunities in the cannabis/hemp industry. He has recently earned his LL.B from the University of Kent in Canterbury (UK) and is working towards being a licensed lawyer by the Law Society of Ontario.   

Randy Osei has been in the business of basketball since 2012 and has seen the good, bad, and the ugly. With the knowledge, experience, and relationships Randy gained, he went ahead and launched Rozaay Management which specializes in creative marketing and branding. Rozaay Management is a company that prides it's self as expert relationship builders.  . Over the past 4 years we've built a reputation as a company that delivers on promises and can be counted on when it matters most.   Most recently, in 2017 Randy has co-Founded a start up, Atlas 365 which is fighting climate change by accelerating society to a low carbon economy with the use of industrial hemp and financial technology. In 2019, Randy Osei launched the Athlete Tech Summit which brought together professional athletes and start ups for relationship building and business opportunities.

Learn more about Atlas 365: http://atlas365.ca/
Akeem’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1akg__/
Randy’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/randyrozaay/

A political economist in tech for human rights & responsible sourcing, Vera Belazelkoska brings her diverse experience and perspectives from several countries around the world including, Argentina, Thailand, Nicaragua and Namibia. Now based in Toronto, Vera is the Program Director at Ulula - a social enterprise that equips businesses with technology, data, and analytics to monitor risks of human rights abuses in order to create more socially responsible supply chains.  Vera shares nostalgic memories from her birth country, Macedonia, and also provides perspective on how technology can be leveraged to help communities and workers in emerging economies.

Learn more about Ulula: https://ulula.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VeraBelaa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vera-belazelkoska/

#3 (Part 2): From working at a big 4 accounting firm, PwC, to a Consumer Packaged goods company, Proctor and Gamble, Vivekan Jeyagaran talks about his transition into the international development sector.  In part 2 of this episode, we talk about maintaining relationships with family and friends while abroad and how to navigate relationships when interests change don't always intersect . Going abroad and relocating for a job, is different for many people, and so we have to ask ourselves what does our utility curve look like and what tradeoffs are we willing to make? Growing up as a Sri Lankan born Canadian, Vivekan openly shares about how his upbringing and institutional discrimination happening back at home has shaped him to be the person he is today.

Get your dose of good here: www.impactfulworkpodcast.com

Vivekan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivjey/
His blog posts:
Working in Laos - A True Liberation: https://medium.com/@vivekanjey17/laos-the-hinterlands-of-civilization-670644bf083a
Crafting a Masterpiece is an Iterative Process - International Development and I - https://medium.com/@vivekanjey17/crafting-a-masterpiece-is-an-iterative-process-international-development-and-i-79177c50ce17

#2 (Part 1): From working at a big 4 accounting firm, PwC, to a Consumer Packaged goods company, Proctor and Gamble, Vivekan Jeyagaran talks about his transition into the international development sector.  In part 1 of this episode, Vivekan breaks the misconceptions of the financial implications of moving into the international development sector. Touching upon his journey of working in emerging economies, Vivekan sheds some light on some of the interesting tourism projects he’s working on currently in Laos., including facilitating inclusive business models to diversify farmer incomes, ethical elephant sanctuary operations, and plastic reduction.  He also shares his thoughts on human centred design, and managing different stakeholders from government, to farmers, to his partner organization while working in a new country using patience and empathy.

Get your dose of good here: www.impactfulworkpodcast.com

Vivekan's LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivjey/
His blog posts:
Working in Laos - A True Liberation: https://medium.com/@vivekanjey17/laos-the-hinterlands-of-civilization-670644bf083a
Crafting a Masterpiece is an Iterative Process - International Development and I - https://medium.com/@vivekanjey17/crafting-a-masterpiece-is-an-iterative-process-international-development-and-i-79177c50ce17

#1: There's endless, impactful work in the world that's waiting for you to take on.  And yes, there's many of definitions of impactful work, it could be closing a deal worth millions of dollars for a corporation or creating a technology   implementation for corporations to ensure ethical supply chain management.  I'm aware everyone has their own definition of impactful work, but that's not what we're here to define.

This episode is an introduction to how the Impactful Work podcast is here to help you find more meaningful work, and the story behind the creation of this.