Francesca Gabaldon, above: “I don’t want anyone to feel lost and alone, like my mom when she came to Canada.”

RECYCLED: This article was originally published in October 2007

Dozens of women sit at hexagon-shaped tables eating from paper plates piled high with rice noodle salad, cornmeal tostadas, meatballs and bison cranberry stew. International potluck cuisine, I call it. One woman skillfully nabs a chocolate-dipped strawberry with her chopsticks while a young girl in a frilly pink dress happily eats with her fingers. Their meals are interrupted by some yelling at the front of the room.

“I want to apologize,” Lynn Berry shouts over the jackhammers ra-ta-ta-tating one floor below. “Normally they aren’t doing construction at night. I don’t know long this will go on.”

I think back to the conversation I had with Berry yesterday, when she gave me directions to this gathering at Bow Valley College in downtown Calgary. “There’s so much talking going on at these sessions,” she said, “sometimes I think I need to bring a blow horn because there’s so much energy.” And that was sans jackhammers.

Tonight’s potluck is a graduation of sorts for this year’s New Horizons Mentoring Program. Established in 2004 by the Youth in Motion education foundation, a charitable organization with offices in Calgary and Toronto, the six-month program pairs mentors with immigrant protégés. It’s designed not only to help immigrant women find jobs and settle into their new lives in Canada, but also to give mentors an intimate window into cultures around the world. Through monthly get-togethers such as this one, as well as phone calls, e-mails and one-on-one meetings, mentees get help in their search for meaningful work. But as mentors discover, immigrant women, no matter where they’re from, inevitably encounter hurdles.

Tonight’s jackhammer symphony is a small glitch compared to the onslaught of obstacles new immigrants confront every day: language barriers, cultural differences, housing problems – even shyness can be a major challenge. I learned a lot about these stumbling blocks while living and working in Afghanistan for most of 2004. Based in Kabul as a stringer with the Toronto Star, I started and ran a monthly political newspaper for a Canadian non-governmental organization. Rah-e-Naw (translation: enlightenment) was written and produced mostly by women.

Although the dozen women I worked with were aspiring journalists, many were timid and shy. They lacked self-confidence. That was understandable: their spirits had been beaten down for years by Taliban men who believe that women are weak and feeble and should be cloaked in burkas. Even today, many women in Kabul (which is far more liberal than rural Afghanistan) don’t go out at night because, as the newspaper staff told me and believed, no respectable woman is seen in public after dark.

One 17 year old, Ellaha, was painfully shy at first, rarely making eye contact. She always wore bulky, dark clothing. But after several weeks as the newspaper’s graphic artist and editorial cartoonist, she transformed into a determined woman who cracked jokes, wore colourful clothes and made regular trips to the male-dominated printing house.

Gawhar, a journalism student at Kabul University, blushed and giggled – a lot – when we met. But after a few months of hard, dedicated work, she began to shine as the newspaper’s star, crafting impressive investigative articles. She single-handedly broke a story about election corruption after ferreting out Afghans who had several voting cards, which they discreetly sold to political parties, who in turn stuffed ballot boxes. The story was a coup for Gawhar because it beat all international journalists in Kabul and received a mention in the New York Times. Our newspaper, published in three languages, focused mainly on Afghanistan’s first-ever democratic elections. After a few months, many of the women proudly evolved into assertive journalists, interviewing male wannabe politicians – a bold move because women, in typical Islamic tradition, aren’t accustomed to questioning men.

Three years later, I’m thinking of Gawhar and Ellaha as I look around the room at Bow Valley College. I’m wondering about the mentors, about what they feel while coaching and guiding their charges. After my experiences starting a newspaper, I know this type of teaching can be frustrating, but if you persist and remind yourself frequently of the goal at hand – helping women get careers – the personal rewards run deep.

Mostly young but established professionals, the mentors tell me that, indeed, they “get” as much from their mentees as they give. They learn about their mentees’ foreign (and sometimes quirky) cultures and customs. They are humbled by the strength and courage of their mentees. They are emboldened; one mentor summoned the nerve to start going on blind dates after hearing how her mentee arrived pregnant from the Philippines. They translate everyday expressions such as “What’s up?” and explain what “camping” is to women who are baffled by the familiar tent-and-trailer icon on highway signs. They talk about Canadian office attire; one mentor spent a full hour discussing socks with her mentee. Some mentors are from immigrant families themselves; they empathize with their mentees’ daily struggles. Some simply cherish the opportunity to help other women.

“I really love working with women,” says mentor Lynne Perry-Reid. “I feel like there’s an automatic connection, no matter what culture you’re from, when you’re working with other women. It’s always a very caring, nurturing environment. It’s not competitive; everyone is working together.”

That’s so true. When women gather for a common purpose, a natural, instinctive bond often forms. Men do it too, usually while playing sports – it’s called male bonding. From my experiences, women tend to connect and relate differently. We have “hen parties” full of cackling and uncontrollable laughter. We nurture, support and inspire each another. We touch each other softly on the arm. We hug.

When the jackhammers stop rattling, Berry, New Horizons’ project manager in Calgary, looks up from the floor, from the source of the noise down below. “As always,” she says, “we begin with our bragging session. Anybody like to speak first? Remember we are all friends here.” Mentees may be uncomfortable speaking to a crowd, but getting out of their comfort zone is part of the program here.

Larisa Kulikova, a Russian who arrived in Calgary last year, stands up. “Most of us know that I work for a bank,” she begins with a thick accent. “The first week for me was a shock. I didn’t understand people. I had to read a lot of information online. It was so overwhelming, I asked the branch manager to switch to a teller position. I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to be fired.’ But I have a wonderful branch manager. She let me switch. Now I have more breath. I ask for help.”

After so many months in Afghanistan, I know too well about women being afraid to ask. In Canada – everywhere in the western world, for that matter – we’re raised and encouraged to question things. But in many countries, women are taught not to probe, especially one’s superior. It’s considered rude, disrespectful.

Before Kulikova sits down, the women break into applause. “That’s a very good message,” Berry says. “It’s always better to ask.”

Later, Berry tells me that running New Horizons feels like “herding cats” sometimes. Still, the program boasts a 95% success rate, with almost every mentee landing a job – many en route to their chosen career. At the beginning of each intake, Berry meets with mentors as a group. She tells them that while the program is “career focused,” mentors are urged to help mentees “figure it out” when they stumble in any way. Not to do the work for them, but to show them where to go.

“I’ve learned over the years that you can’t really separate life skills or personal issues from employability issues,” says Berry. “And mentees, and quite often mentors, have a lot to learn, and a lot to give.”

By Jeremy Derksen

The radio crackles through a swirling white deluge: “Thirty seconds.” Those are two words warning avalanche techs that a charge is about to be detonated. It’s routine procedure for ski resort avalanche control, but the risks would make most of us nervous.

“We’ve got unstable weather, remote locations…the destructive forces of nature. And on top of that, we’re handling explosives,” says Troy Leahey, an avalanche forecaster at Revelstoke Mountain Resort in British Columbia. “Risk is a combination of probability, consequence and timing. We mitigate that as much as we can, but working in the industry for a while we become comfortable with the risks.” An element of personal, along with professional, risk not only comes with Leahey’s job – recognizing how to work with it makes him good at what he does.

Most of us won’t face the physical challenges or life-threatening conditions Leahey faces, but taking professional risks can be a good thing. Our instinct is to avoid risk. After all, too much risk could jeopardize your job, pension and house. Widespread corporate risk has undone financial institutions and rocked the global economy

But avoiding risk is impossible and, it turns out, unwise. Without it, business stagnates, careers stall. “Risk aversion can prevent us from looking at opportunities as they arise,” says Michael Ungar, a sociology professor at Dalhousie University, in Halifax. “As a result, we may jump too late rather than anticipate change.”

Why is shopping for shoes more fun for some people than shopping for groceries? Pscyhologists and economists have found that some purchasing decisions can buy a little slice of happiness. As Elizabeth Dunn, a University of British Columbia psychology professor told the Boston Globe, “Just because money doesn’t buy happiness doesn’t mean money cannot buy happiness. People just might be using it wrong.” The money that is.

In “Happiness: A Buyer’s Guide,” the Globe made the analogy that treating a friend (or colleague) to lunch will make you happier than buying a new outfit. “Splurging on a vacation,” the story continued, “makes us happy in a way that splurging on a car may not.”

A friend of mine once described a similar sentiment. “I prefer to buy experiences, not products.” (She’s a salesperson with a background in marketing, by the way.) Marketers have long picked up on this, selling the more complex, shiftier commodity of an experience for a premium. If you can make someone feel like they’re doing something good by upgrading the experience, all the better. And if you can hook they by giving them a taste of the experience – hence the neologism “trysuming” – your product, er, experience, is golden.

Happiness is everywhere these days. On mugs from Dollarama, in books (such as the new Happiness Project) and on the web (e.g. We Feel Fine). There are happy companies, happy cities and even a Happy Job Search. Tara Hunt, a Canadian social media expert working in San Francisco is even working on a book about happiness as a business model. And that’s not even getting into the niceness movement. As Slate blogger and Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin puts it, “Making people happy make people happy.” Now if only happiness grew on trees. U

You look for stars. You look for the makeup of artists who can have long lasting careers and who could be headliners. – Clive Davis

The man who launched the careers of Whitney Houston, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith and Sean “Puffy” Combs could teach us all something about recruiting. He would probably concede, however, that finding great talent – whether you run a record label or a small business – isn’t what it used to be. Recruiting evolves, and fast. A decade ago, most companies posted ads in the newspaper, that soon-to-be-relic of a simpler time. Since then, a little thing called the internet (not to mention its social media offshoots) has changed the field of recruiting as much as it has changed the music industry. Predicting the future of recruitment is as difficult as predicting new ways that Kanye West can embarrass himself, but there are a few areas that job seekers and employers should watch in 2010.

Number #1: The Recovery

Thanks to the recession, prepare for the biggest movement of resources in recent memory. The latest economic forecasts suggest that Canada’s recovery, unlike the recovery in the U.S., will not be “jobless.” The sheer mass of unemployed, under-employed and others who have parked themselves in their current jobs to wait out the tough times mean that 2010 will still be an employer’s market.

That said, some companies will have turnover at levels they have never seen, let alone prepared for. The depth and scope of job cuts during the last 18 months means that the spike in turnover will be higher than other recent downturns. Forecasting when the turnover will peak is difficult, which means that employers should look at how to retain key staff – the ones holding the company together – so they have their strongest employee base when the recession is truly over. The good people are the first to move when times are tough.

Number #2: Look Long, Look Hard

Just because a recession is over doesn’t mean companies are going to spend more money to find people. Unlike the lavish spending in the early 2000s, access to capital will be tight – and the capital that is available will go toward projects that generate direct revenue. Some sectors such as healthcare and law enforcement require specific, highly trained workers, and companies in these areas will continue to recruit heavily. Most industries still don’t recognize recruiting as an integral long-term strategy to generate revenue, and this is unfortunate. Job seekers, therefore, will need to be able to prove their value upfront.

Number #3: Outsource This

As companies forego the overhead cost of rebuilding anaemic HR departments, the broader trend toward outsourcing and “projectization” will affect recruiting. Job seekers should look to third-party and virtual recruiters for opportunities, not just directly to potential employers.

Number #4: Social Media Rules

Just because you’re sick of hearing about social media doesn’t mean you can ignore it. Twitter has already become a great way to find positions. The traditional post-and-pray tactic – post the job and hope the right person finds it – is more and more replaced by the prey-and-sell method of headhunters. Recruiters have recognized the power new online tools give them to reach a wider talent pool of candidates who are not actively looking. In 2010, more employers will catch on to social media’s greatest contribution: building relationships with candidates. Job seekers, meanwhile, will need to make it part of their search strategy. Some fields such as marketing and communications, for instance, may require you to master social media platforms to position yourself as an expert in your field.

Number #5: It’s Not Just Who You Know

Posting positions will still be an efficient way of finding interesting candidates. There is no significant difference between posting a job opening on an online board now and posting it in a newspaper or employment office a decade ago. While general online job boards may become extinct, niche job boards aren’t going anywhere.

Number #6: Next-Generation Management

Like job seekers, the next step for recruiters is to adapt to new tools. These new tools will need to include ways to track not only candidates who have are actively seeking work and have, but potential candidates who may not even know they are being targeted. Recruiters will need to become part-time sleuthes, often working with little upfront information about people who aren’t actively looking for a new job.

Number #7: Mobile Recruiting

The final trend is more of a shot-in-the-dark: recruiters will be trying to reach more and more Gen X and Yers and the oldest of the Digital Generation where they live: on their smartphones. Who knows when – or if – companies will eventually accept job applications from your iPhone.

Monty Python Job Interview

This looks like it could be bible camp. Young people, mostly in their late teens, are making the cheerful, tinkling sounds of breakfast. Even the groggy kids are smiling, talking about the hows and whys of their grogginess.

In a room beside the dining area, the sun shines through a stained glass Jesus and someone plays a piano in the way people at parties absentmindedly strum guitars – half to stumble on a potential hook, half to get attention. The event, what with all the bright religious paraphernalia on the walls, sounds like a hymn written by Rufus Wainwright. Maybe. Only this isn’t Bible Camp. It’s Gay Camp. At least, that’s what one of the founders calls it.

Photograph by Curtis Comeau

Kristopher Wells stands in the middle of the morning hubbub. Breakfast is over for the most part, and the campers are starting to look busy, entering the lobby, exiting, returning, grouping up. Wells talks to the campers who come up to him, like the big, copper-haired kid in a neon blue Obama shirt. But mostly, Wells, who is well built, head shaved, and wears the eternally unfashionable uniform of a camp counselor – khaki shorts, socks rising out of outdoorsy shoes – is playing host to a group of media. He selects a few articulate, camera-friendly kids to tell their stories to a local news reporter. After he ushers the interviewer and interviewee outside to talk in the morning sun and then sits off to the side watching the younger generation spread the good news of Camp Fyrefly. He looks proud. This, just as much as what will go on at the camp itself, is what the camp is about.

Wells started Camp Fyrefly as a place for Canada’s “lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, two-spirited, intersexed, queer, questioning, and allied youth,” (or LGBTTQ&A) in 2004. That broad definition is how Fyrefly is described on the website, and it’s a big tent. (The “y” in Fyrefly is not a typo – it stands for youth.) Embedded in that misspelled jumble is the goal to foster leadership in teens. The camp doesn’t exactly have sessions on how to give, say, Obama-style, hope-infused speeches or to create the next generation of LGBT CEOs; the leadership training is more internalized. Which makes sense, considering that a lot of the problems LGBT youth face are internalized, too.

Before he started Camp Fyrefly, Wells was a teacher in St. Albert, a suburb of Edmonton. After a student from the school killed himself, Wells felt responsible. “That was a significant turning point in my own life,” he says. “We had never been able to talk about our identities in the school environment. I saw how the school dealt with it, with complete denial and silence, and decided that I couldn’t be in that kind of environment as a gay teacher who had to be closeted to work.”

He left teaching and joined a youth group called Youth Understanding Youth, which became Camp Fyrefly. Now Wells runs workshops in four provinces and has worked with more than 150 teens (the average age of attendees is 18, who can attend for a subsidized cost of $25). This is possible because the camp is more about community than bricks and mortar. It can go anywhere, even to this church in St. Albert.

As kids mill around, the local media are talking with one such kid who just ran for city council in Surrey, B.C. He is confident and eloquent, a born leader. “Our unofficial motto is ‘take what you need and give to others,’” Wells explains. “Someone has created the opportunity for you to be here, and it is investing in you as a leader. How are you going to repay that investment? We let the young people define the kind of leadership role they are going to take, and recognize for many of them, they need to spend the time being leaders to themselves first.”

After the campers have their time on camera, Wells is up. He speaks effortlessly and manages to make his sound bite material sound sincere. He’s like the cool teacher who had that remarkable, yet elusive ability to connect with students. Watching him, you can see just where the campers who had their moment on camera might be in a few years. U

When you opened Vij’s you knew how to cook, of course. How much did you know about business?
Nothing, basically. But my father was a businessman, and through osmosis you learn to become a businessman as well.

My father brought $22,000 cash in a bag from India and I had saved $10,000. If it had gone under, we’d have felt like, “Oh shit, that was a lot of money.”

Vancouver chef and restaurateur Vikram Vij

It was very lean. My break-even point every day was $100. If I did $100 a day, I’d know I would survive. Some days I did $96 or $92. Sometimes I would ring in naan bread or something so that I could feel that I’d done $100 in sales. I cheated myself knowing I was cheating. It was a psychological game that I’d play with myself.

About four months after the restaurant started, a food writer called the Urban Peasant, James Barber, gave me such a raving review that people started coming. Then I was making $130 and $140 a day in sales. And I never looked back.

Was that a turning point?
I was running out of money. I had put the restaurant up for sale. We were all dejected. My father was upset; I was feeling a little bit down. This review came out and people started coming in. Actually, if credit has to be given it’d be to Angela Mills and Robin Mines and all the Vancouver food writers who reviewed the restaurant.

What did you find most challenging about those early days?
People had no idea. The challenge was to show people a more modern style of Indian food – not butter chicken and tikka masala. I made a delicious lamb curry with cinnamon. They still ask for butter chicken, and they’re mad I don’t do it. It’s not their fault; they’re just not educated.

What have you learned about leadership over the years?
I had this old-world way of dealing with the staff by screaming and yelling. I’ve calmed down extremely. But I will still say stuff like, “Don’t you get it? Why don’t you get it?”

The other thing I’ve learned is that we live in North America, and these people are not your servants. They are here to work and help you achieve your goal, so you’d better be nice to them.

If you had to compare your leadership style to one of your dishes, what would it be?
There’s a dish that I’ve just put on the menu called Rajasthan-style goat curry, which is based on my travels to India in April. The meat is slow-cooked for six hours. It’s tender inside, but has very strong flavours. And lots of spices – there’s a conundrum happening with the spices – and a blend of different layers and angles and heat at the back of your palate. I always respect the tradition of a dish, but modernize it by adding blueberries or some acidity. That dish to me is who I am as a human being: Strong, sometimes tender, sometimes spicy, robust and to be enjoyed piping hot.

Today your wife, Meeru Dhalwala, runs the kitchen, while you manage the restaurant. Why did you decide to divide these roles?
Meeru was in Third World development in Washington, D.C., when we met. She didn’t have a working visa. She had no cooking experience. She would just hang out in the kitchen in Vancouver and see what I was doing.

The bigger the restaurant got, the more I was running around. There was payroll to be done, produce to be bought, connections to be made with farmers. And both of us are strong personalities, so we would butt heads on what dishes should taste like. I said, “Look, I can’t work with you and fight with you all day and come home and act like nothing happened.”

She’s the creative force behind the dishes. She will work with me on the menu. She’s also responsible for the emotional well-being of all the women in the kitchen. All these Indian women have some issues at home, family issues and stuff, and they go to Meeru for advice. She’ll say, “This is what you should do: put your foot down; tell your mother-in-law to fuck off.” She’s a force to reckon with.

That’s a very traditional way to develop staff.
Normally when you get accolades and become a big restaurant, you hire executive chefs from outside. But I do it differently: If you stay longer with the company, I will pay you well and you’ll learn how to cook — which builds loyalty, brings consistency to the food and creates harmony within the community. The food shows passion.

You’ve complained that many restaurants are motivated by business concerns instead of passion.
I’m always concerned about restaurants that are driven by concepts. If you don’t love what you do, eventually it will show and you will fail – it doesn’t matter how good a business person you are. I have the passion for food and for wine and for people. I love all these three things.

You make a flatbread from cricket flour. What do crickets taste like?
Exactly like pumpkin seeds. It was my wife who created this dish. She read somewhere that we can eat crickets and bugs, so we made flour and put cricket bread on the menu to see the reaction. The most important thing was the environmental aspect. Crickets are high in protein and low on the food chain.

Do you eat cricket bread at home?
No.

Foodies and critics – of which there are many in Vancouver – consider Vij’s one of the best Indian restaurants not only in Canada, but in the world. If you’re in town, don’t bother making reservations at Vij’s, or its sister restaurant Rangoli. It’s all democratic: show up and wait in line with everyone. Vikram Vij’s newest venture is a series of culinary tours through India. Butter chicken lovers need not apply.

You’ve decided to become a Business Superhero. Good for you – the world needs more Business Superheroes. So what comes next? Expose yourself to gamma radiation? Hang out in labs, hoping to get bitten by a radioactive spider? Watch the night skies for alien ships? I’m happy to tell you nothing that strange is required. To become a Business Superhero, you simply have to decide to be one and then follow the Ten Golden Rules for all Superheroes.

Even superheroes need coffee breaks. Toronto photographer Ian Pool depicts superheroes in everyday situations.

GOLDEN RULE #1: DO NO EVIL
In Oliver Stone’s classic 1987 film Wall Street, billionaire corporate raider Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) espouses the virtues of greed, proclaiming, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right; greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

“Greed is good” is painted on the wall of my office. But you have to read the whole quote to understand Gekko’s true meaning. First, greed is the spirit that drives you to acquire more (more money, more information, more success). Second, Gekko depicts greed as aspiration in action; it is the essence of the evolutionary spirit, and of progress. Only when greed forces you to do evil things (as it does to Gekko) does it become a problem.

This illustrates a fundamental lesson Business Superheroes should learn: like greed, goals are for the most part neither good nor evil – it is the means you employ to pursue those goals that render your actions praiseworthy or blameworthy.

Is it wrong to want a big salary? Not if you aim to acquire it honorably.

Is it wrong to want to succeed? Not if you can do so without harming others.

Is it wrong to negotiate a deal? Not unless you use unethical means to do so.

The quest for and acquisition of wealth are not vices in comic books. In fact, many superheroes are millionaires in their civilian identities. In 2007, Forbes created a list of the top 15 richest fictional characters. Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman, came in eighth with personal holdings worth approximately $6.5 billion. (Fake Steve Jobs was 11th.) Contrast Bruce with Lex Luthor, Superman’s arch-nemesis and fourth in the 2005 Forbes list: Both are billionaire industrialists, yet only one’s actions are painted as evil. Why? As in so many things, it is the means – not the ends – that define the actions.

GOLDEN RULE #2: SWEAR AN OATH
When superheroes recite an oath, they are reinforcing their promise to commit to a specific action and/or pattern of behaviour. The most famous is the oath taken by the Green Lantern each time he recharges his power ring:

In the brightest day; In the blackest night.
No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship Evil’s might,
Beware my power…Green Lantern’s Light!

In addition to helping you focus on your goals and values, a Business Superhero oath – or personal mission statement – helps you communicate your value and values to others. My own mission statement is, “Wise counsel for smart companies.” Not only does this reaffirm my selected purpose in life (that is, adding value), but it also conveys my goals to others in a simple and powerful way. My mission statement appears on all my cards, websites and promotional material. NEXT: Establish your MO.

Gaping Void blogger Hugh MacLeod doodles wisdom about work-life on the back of business cards. He’s turned those visual brainwaves into a new book that is part manifesto, part guidebook to unlocking your Creativity. Some are prosaic, some are things we all know but could use a refresher on, but all are choice bits of insight to something deeper and more meaningful than a corner office – the keys for opening the door to career sovereignty. Here are few I found. Read the book to find yours.

Gaping Void author Hugh MacLeod's corporate pyramid scheme

1. The secret to success = me putting the hours in. Quote/Unquote: Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it’s managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, instance, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.
2. Doing what I love will be an emotional and financial roller coaster. Quote/Unquote: Good ideas have lonely childhoods… They alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
3. Someone took my crayons away and I’d like them back. Quote/Unquote: Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
4. Always keep sex and cash under your pillow. Supporting thesis: The Sex & Cash Theory (page 32).
5. Human tapeworms have been feasting on my creativity. Evidence: The modern, scientifically conceived corporation (pages 35 through 37), that is churning out what MacLeod describes as non-autonomous thinkers. The “I don’t know, what do you think” people.
6. It looks like I’m going to have to climb the mountain. Quote/Unquote: Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb. Let’s say you never climb it. Do you have a problem with that?
7. I need a red marker to draw my red line. Quote/Unquote: The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not.
8. Work for a boss who lets you hunt the woolly mammoth. Quote/Unquote: Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling, it’s a primal calling.
9. Mess around with insanely high ambitions. Quote/Unquote: One part of me thinks it’s good for kids to mess around with insanely high ambitions, maybe one or two of them will make it.
10. Careful when you’re messing around with insanely high ambitions. Quote/Unquote: Looking back I see a lot of screwy kids who married themselves to their “Art!” for the wrong reasons.
11. DIY.

Hugh Macleod’s book is published by Penguin Canada. His next book is tentatively called Evil Plans and will have insights gleaned from a “Seth Godin-meets-Jack Kerouac” road trip.

Michele Fugiel Gartner, self-described “philanthropy junkie,” didn’t truly understand that there was a world outside of her hometown until the Russian letters started to arrive. She was in the eighth grade, in Chicago, and had written to a school magazine looking for a pen pal. Her query was translated and published in a similar publication in Russia. The responses filled her mailbox – she received more than 300 letters – and opened her up to hundreds of different lives, most similar to her own. “That was a big marker for me,” Gartner says. The letters showed her that “there is something else out there.” The experience sparked an interest in intercultural dialogue that has led her around the world and, now, to Calgary.

Philanthropy junkie Michele Fugiel Gartner of Social Venture Partners Calgary. Photo by Marc Rimmer

Gartner and I meet over coffee not far from her digs at Social Venture Partners Calgary (SVP), where she is executive director. A private philanthropy firm that matches individual donors with local non-profits, it is a member of the global association SVP International. Beyond telling me the story of her post-Soviet pen pals, it’s difficult to get Gartner to talk about herself. Her impulse is to talk, instead, about the “sector,” about policies, about the “we” of her colleagues at SVP. In anyone else, this tendency to stay on message would suggest stiffness or even evasion. But she laughs so easily and so often, I realize talking policy is what brings Gartner joy. She is not merely promoting the non-profit sector, she is revealing what fills her heart.

Gartner studied communications at Arizona State University and, after graduation, taught English for two years in Japan. She returned to academia with a focus on Asia and made her way to the East-West Center in Hawaii, then to the School of Orient and African Studies at the University of London, where she studied public diplomacy. Eventually, Gartner joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle. This was her first foray into the world of large-scale, multifaceted private philanthropy.

At the Gates Foundation, Gartner quickly learned that philanthropy was about more than just a Robin Hood transfer of dollars from the rich to the poor. She learned the difference between giving and “giving well.” She learned the due diligence of grants and grant writing. The government side of philanthropy. The political side. The grassroots side. She learned about tax and legal implications and the policy intricacies of policy that would bore most people into numbness. Philanthropy is “really layered,” she says. “That’s why I am so captivated.”

After rounding her way from Chicago to Arizona, Japan to Hawaii, and London to Seattle, Gartner arrived in Calgary last year with her husband, Craig, a Canadian-born banker she met in London. While she navigates the world of local philanthropy – SVP has invested more than $1.5 million in local “investees,” as they call the organizations they fund – Craig is educating her in the finer points of Canadian culture. Her father-in-law, meanwhile, gives her books about hockey. (Gartner has already joined the Flames faithful, itself an act of charity.) But it is a northern brand of philanthropy that most intrigues her. In the United States, the struggle is to get government to support non-profits. In Canada, the government is by far the biggest investor in the sector. The challenge for Canadian non-profits, then, is to attract private donors, those people and businesses that can make an impassioned and personal commitment to a cause – not to mention bringing in serious dollars. NEXT PAGE

He’s the guy you hardly ever notice. If you passed him on the street, whether it’s outside Lucas Oil Stadium after a home game in Indianapolis or walking down South Railway Street in his hometown of Medicine Hat, you might think he was your boss’s son, or that guy you went to high school with. Whatever happened to him? With his bouncer-like physique – broad shoulders, tree trunk neck, legs the girth of a small child, impressive stomach and youthful oafishness – Daniel Hubert Federkeil’s extreme ordinariness is his biggest asset. That and his size.

As offensive tackle with the Indianapolis Colts, D-Fed’s job, or part of it, is to blend in. If quarterback Peyton Manning is an army general, then Federkeil is one of his foot soldiers. He’s the guy who might influence the outcome of a game but won’t get the credit. Manning has his own website, peytonmanning.com; Federkeil has a page on the Colt’s domain with a few stats and a headshot that looks like a bad driver’s licence photo. Manning has a wiki with enough information to create his very own annual report; Federkeil has a two-line entry on Wikipedia. Federkeil may watch Saturday Night Live; Manning hosted SNL in an appearance that brought in the highest household rating in almost a year. During his short career – the average career of an offensive lineman is four years – Federkeil will rarely, if ever, touch the football, but if he does his job well, Peyton Manning will take those touchdowns all the way to the bank with sponsorships and an eight-digit salary.

The relationship between a quarterback and his offensive linemen is built on trust and devotion. Like a CEO, the quarterback calls the shots, barking out the plays as his 10 other offensive players – his subordinates – toe the line. Quarterbacks like Manning identify where defensive rushes will come from and hand out line assignments to the 11 offensive and 11 defensive players to protect against the rush.