It's a Theory

The Benefits of Cannabis with Dr. Rob Sealey

Melanie Nicholson welcomes Dr. Rob Sealey, Cannabinoid Medicine Specialist, to the show to discuss the benefits of cannabis in a medical use capacity. Dr. Sealey breaks down misinformation and differentiates between recreational and medicinal cannabis use for listeners.  Dr. Sealey recounts how he was initially a GP but found his way into cannabinoid medicine through the encouragement of a particularly challenging patient who wanted to be the first to use cannabis medically in 2001. Through his experience advocating for her, everything he learned about cannabis and the benefits he witnessed in his cannabinoid patients, he eventually  left his family practice to focus on cannabinoid medicine full time. Dr. Sealey explains how cannabis can work with the body’s endocannabinoid system to help with receptors otherwise overloaded or unresponsive, thus shutting down pain from various ailments. He clarifies the many differences between rfull-timeecreational cannabis and medical cannabis and discusses how cannabinoid medicine can assist with arthritis, chronic pain, epilepsy, and a host of other issues. He is informative and passionate about how far research into cannabis can go in helping people manage pain. “And we're starting to look at the endocannabinoid system, when it breaks down, it's implicated in fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, PTSD, asthma, osteoporosis... The list is going on and on. We're finding out that the missing link of why we're unable to manage a lot of these conditions is endocannabinoid dysfunction. It just goes haywire or it gets depleted. And that's why the opportunity to use cannabis in a variety of conditions is there.” - Dr. Rob Sealey About Dr. Rob Sealey Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Dr. Robert Sealey, B.Sc, M.D, attended the University of Nebraska on an athletic scholarship where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. He then returned home to complete his medical degree at the University of Saskatchewan followed by a rotating internship in Akron, Ohio. Since 1991, Dr. Sealey has had a full service family practice including hospital and long term care facilities in Victoria, British Columbia. Besides his work in General Practice, he has volunteered his services around the world including South Africa, Kenya, Vanuatu (South Pacific) and the Dominican Republic. He was also co-host of the nationally syndicated radio program “WiseQuacks” for over eight years.  As an active member of the peer sharing group Physicians for Medicinal Cannabis along with the Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids, the International Cannabinoid Research Society and the International Association for Cannabis, Dr. Sealey has been involved in both the clinical and research aspects of Medical Cannabis since 2001. With this background, he is acknowledged as an expert in cannabinoid medicine and accepts referrals from other physician colleagues including general practitioners, nurse practitioners, pediatricians, nephrologists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, respirologists, oncologists, neurologists, rheumatologists, physiatrists, orthopedic surgeons, pain specialists, addictionologists, psychiatrists and geriatricians.  As well, sensing a void in knowledge among his peers regarding the use of Medical Cannabis in clinical practice, Dr. Sealey has travelled extensively around the world as one of the few instructors in this field of medicine. With the legalization of recreational marijuana across Canada in 2018, he is also an invited keynote speaker at public and professional events for his opinion on the potential implications of this ground breaking decision. Dr. Sealey resides in Victoria with his wife Lana. __ Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.  * Website: MelanieLynnCommunications.com [https://www.melanielynncommunications.com] * Instagram: MLCSocial [https://www.instagram.com/mlcsocial/] * Twitter: MLCSocial [https://twitter.com/mlcsocial] * Facebook: MLCSocial [https://www.facebook.com/mlcsocial/] * Email: info@melanielynncommunications.com [info@melanielynncommunications.com] Contact Dr. Rob Sealey * Website: DrSealey.com [https://drsealey.com/] __ Transcript Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Hey, everyone, and welcome to It's A Theory. I'm Melanie Nicholson, and I'm taking you inside the world of leaders and entrepreneurs who are taking ideas and concepts and putting them into action. What really happened when they put theory into practice? Today we're talking about medical cannabis as a method of harm reduction with Dr. Rob Sealey. Harm reduction is an evidence-based strategy focused on safer use or managed use of drugs or substances, meeting people where they're at and not necessarily requiring people to completely stop using a substance. Dr. Sealey has been involved in both the clinical and research aspects of medical cannabis as a substitute for opioids and other substances since 2001. He's a big advocate in tackling misinformation regarding medical cannabis in clinical practice, and he currently practices in Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island. Let's chat with Dr. Sealey. Thank you for joining me today, Rob. I want to start with a bit of your background. I love your story. How did you end up specializing in medical cannabis?   Rob Sealey: [00:01:10] This is a question my mom asked me all the time. She said, what the heck happened? You took a wrong turn somewhere in the back. But, you know, I started out as a GP, so I trained over 30 years ago, went through the usual, you know, medical school and all the rest of it and set up a family practice. And I was doing that for probably about five, seven years before I came across a patient that challenged me. And not that I didn't have a lot of patient challenges, but this one particularly stood out because she was a patient that had chronic back pain and she was on disability. And there became a time when my only function was basically seeing her every couple of months to refill her opiates and she was on high-dose morphine, getting all the side effects related to it. She wasn't eating, she was nauseous. And the other aspect that I was doing was just simply filling out her insurance. And I knew that my role was pretty limited and I was pretty discouraged. And she certainly was as well. But one day she came to me back in 2001, maybe it was late 2000, and said, you know, Rob, Canada is going to have this incredible opportunity to be one of the first countries to allow cannabis for therapeutic purposes to be legal. And I went, Oh, okay, well, that's interesting, but I don't know what that has to do with me. And she said, Well, I want to be one of the first patients, if not the first patient in Canada, to go through the process. And I thought she was joking because I didn't know anything about cannabis.   Rob Sealey: [00:02:37] And I, you know, I still had the stigma growing up, you know, hearing about Cheech and Chong and going to the movies and all the rest of it. You know, it was an illegal substance and we were afraid of it. And we certainly didn't know much about it in the medical world. But she had sort of dabbled underground at that time and was having some success. And she wanted to come out of the shadows and become this patient, this advocate for others. And I said, well, you know what? I have no idea what you're talking about. I have no experience. And she said, Don't worry, Rob, I'll teach you. And I thought, Wow, that was pretty interesting. I mean, she said, I'll come along the journey with you and we can learn together. And I still put her off, you know, for a couple more visits. And she was very, very persistent. And she, you know, got the application in front of me. It took major hurdles, took nine months. We had to get second opinions. We had to get a passport photo. Anyway, she did become one of the first patients. And I was amazed at her response to using cannabis for her back pain was able to get her off of her opiates and get her back to work after she was off work for over six years at that point in time. And this was very, very unusual when a person's been on that long of a disability. So anyways, I did learn from her and after that point I kind of tried it in a few other patients here and there, but I stayed pretty underground.   Rob Sealey: [00:04:02] I didn't want to be that pot doc that, you know, my colleagues would frown upon. And so I kind of quietly did it underground for a while. And then some of my colleagues started to hear that I was doing this and some of them actually complained to the college, thought I should have my license taken away. And I continued to persevere, though, and more and more of my patients were starting to get some benefits. And I started to have some of my colleagues send me their patients. And so I did this kind of referral basis while still trying to keep a family practice going at the same time. So I was sort of seeing patients end of the day or weekends for cannabis, and it became a point where I had such a huge demand. I mean, this is, you know, in the last five, seven years ago that I decided, you know, I can't do both. I'm going to do just cannabinoid medicine. So from there, I'm full-on cannabinoid specialist in regard, there is no such thing. I make it up. I'm probably the only cannabinoid specialist. I've decided that it should be its own specialty. And so I take referrals from all sorts of other physicians and nurse practitioners, whether it be for pain management or addiction medicine. Even the oncologists are sending me some of their patients. So it's become a really interesting field of medicine that I kind of found this niche all because of this patient who really challenged me. And I was very, very thankful that she did that in the first place.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:05:30] And when you think about across the country, like is this specialty still just very, very tiny?   Rob Sealey: [00:05:37] It is. There's a number of cannabis clinics where physicians, nurses, counselling staff will gather together and they'll help navigate patients through the system and coach them on dosing and administration methods and that sort of thing. So there tends to be those aspects of clinics that exist, but there's not too many that I know of standalone cannabinoid medicine specialists. There's a number of my colleagues, there's still not a great number, but you know, a number that will be anesthetists or pain medicine specialists or rheumatologists who will also see patients for cannabis medicine. But this is my full-time gig and I believe I'm one of the very few that does it that way. And again, it's very, very rewarding. But I kind of put all my eggs in one basket to do just that as a specialty. And again, it doesn't really exist as a specialty, but in my world, in my mind, I think it should be, yeah.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:06:39] What's the difference between medical cannabis and recreational cannabis for someone who's struggling to stillphysicians' see the difference?   Rob Sealey: [00:06:47] Well, you know, that's so interesting because even physicians at this point in time, I mean, again, cannabis has been around for 5000 years. We know evidence that it's been through various cultures and various archeological digs that it's been around and purported that it works for this, that and the other thing. But in physicians minds, a lot of them still think it's fairly new. And I think that they believe that because it was legalized recreationally five years ago, just under five years ago, that they believe that was the moment that, okay, now it's legal, we can talk about it. But again, Canada sort of took the bold step way back in 2001. The difference that I see is intent, right? What are you trying to achieve? It's the same plant, but are you trying to use it for fun and for recreation? Much as you know, people would socialize? Versus are you truly using it as a medicine, as a therapy where you want to know a predictable outcome? You don't want surprises. People experiment with recreational marijuana, but when they're using it as medical cannabis, so different terminology, you're looking for a consistent, precise response. Very predictable. No surprises.   Rob Sealey: [00:08:08] I feel bad for a lot of patients out there that don't get the support that they should have from their physicians. And that's for a variety of reasons. A number of physicians still don't feel comfortable with understanding the plant and the different components and dosing, etcetera. And so they'll just say, well, you know, it's legal. Why don't you just go down to the local store and get some? You don't need me. You can just go ahead. But in essence, people end up fending for themselves. And this is not a, you know, necessarily a good thing, especially in seniors with arthritis going down to the local store. And if they're given a product that might actually have more risk of side effects, you know, that's not how we should be doing medicine, really. Like we wouldn't say to people with hypertension or asthma, Well, you know, you can go down to the pharmacy and see what they've got and, you know, treat yourself. So why should we feel the same way just because it's legal recreationally? We should give better guidance when we're using it as a therapy.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:09:13] You mentioned seniors. Is that one of the primary demographics that is using medical cannabis? I think...   Rob Sealey: [00:09:20] It is, yeah.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:09:22] So I wonder, is there a disconnect there that people don't realize that we're talking about my parents' age and forth, pain and arthritis.   Rob Sealey: [00:09:31] It's the number one driving demographic for using cannabis for medicine. Seniors have been around the block and more and more they're not able to get there as fast anymore. With arthritis and aging and all sorts of things that happen to us. And, you know, seniors have tried the various pharmaceutical medications and have either had intolerable side effects or ineffectiveness, and they might have kind of been exposed to cannabis previously and said, Well, you know what, my friend uses it. We talk about it over bridge and there isn't many good treatments for run-of-the-mill arthritis, for instance. Osteoarthritis wear and tear arthritis is pain management. And so more and more rheumatologists and the Arthritis Society of Canada says, well, maybe cannabis might be an option that's better than anti-inflammatories. It can upset the stomach, get bleeding ulcers or, you know, cause renal damage, kidney damage, increase blood pressure. So maybe cannabis might be an alternative option as an analgesic, as an anti-inflammatory in a safer manner. And those seniors with these types of conditions, again, are the number one demographic in, I live in Victoria on the West Coast where people come to retire and I like to say live with their grandparents, like it's a very, you know, we're a prehistoric society on the West Coast here, and there's a lot of individuals that develop arthritis. And so I've got kind of a biased practice on the West Coast because most of my patients are seniors. My oldest patient's 102, but my average-age patient is probably 80. And again, most of those with arthritis and chronic pain.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:11:19] The theory behind harm reduction is that you're sort of meeting people where they're at when it comes to that pain and not necessarily pushing them to stop a form of treatment, like they may be on opioids or something like that, but to give them the alternatives. You mentioned the doctors sometimes there's still a little uneasy on that. There's still a lot of mixed views on harm reduction in general, which medical cannabis falls into. Do you have any thoughts on that?   Rob Sealey: [00:11:50] Oh, don't get me started.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:11:53] We have so many minutes.   Rob Sealey: [00:11:54] We have three, we have three hours. Harm reduction, I think, is a fascinating topic with this. I mean, we used to think of, again, stigma. Cannabis or marijuana was a gateway drug. Right? Oh once you start down the slippery slope, you're going to end up on the street with illicit substances, etcetera. We're now using it the opposite way as an anti-gateway drug, not only from substances that could be, you know, harmful, and, you know, we're even looking for alcohol, tobacco, street drugs, using cannabis to intervene, basically help people feel better through their brain chemistry. And they're not looking for other substances to, you know, give them that feeling. But also there's a huge opportunity for cannabis substitution and polypharmacy. So, so many individuals get stuck into this system where, and again, I was guilty as charged as a family practitioner, a person comes in with, for example, pain. So what do we tell them? Well, Tylenol or Advil, you know, ibuprofen, if that doesn't work, we've got prescription anti-inflammatories. If that doesn't help, perhaps we might go the opiate route. And now people are getting upset stomach or nausea, so we give them an antacid. Wait a minute, the pain is so bad you're not sleeping so let's give you a sedative and maybe a muscle relaxant, you know? So you get into this system of having polypharmacy and every drug has a potential side effect.   Rob Sealey: [00:13:28] Now, put 7 or 8 together, not only their additive side effects, but their drug interaction possibilities. So you can clean up the medicine cabinet by using cannabis for a variety of those symptoms at the same time. And I think that was the big mystery. And I think that was what challenged us as physicians for years, is when people said, I use it for migraines and I use it for epilepsy, I use it for my Crohn's disease. It was almost like, wait a minute, you have an ingrown toenail, does that work for that too? Like, it's like too good to be true? It's snake oil. It's a travelling salesperson. Here we go again, right? Because there was not the evidence of how, you know, this worked. And then the code started to get cracked by scientists in Israel. And in their process of trying to figure out how cannabis interacts in our body, they uncovered a completely unknown system in our body. They discovered for the first time in the 1990s that we have a system called the endocannabinoid system. And I like to geek out and describe it a little bit because if we understand how important the system is, we understand how cannabis interacts with it, all of a sudden it makes sense why we can use cannabis for a variety of symptoms and conditions and again, why people will say they have success with it.   Rob Sealey: [00:14:50] So the endocannabinoid system is the chief operating officer of our body. That's a good way to think about it. We think about the cardiovascular system and the respiratory system and the neurological. All the organs belong to a single system, but the overarching endocannabinoid system - which again was not discovered until 1990s and is only now being taught in medical school, it's that new - its whole job is to make sure all the other systems are working properly. And how it does that is through a system of receptors that are everywhere, whether they be in the brain, the spinal cord, the gut, the heart, lungs, even our skin. These receptors kind of sense the local environment. And if everything's working properly, the receptors are quiet. Everything, everybody is happy. But if it senses that there's pain, there's arthritic pain in the left knee, those receptors will light up and they'll send a message that we need to protect ourselves. We need some help over in this area. And our body responds by producing what are called endocannabinoids, which are neurotransmitters or chemical messengers that rush out to those receptors, attach and shut the door. It shuts the gate on signals that are trying to harm us, like pain, inflammation, anxiety. Well, you can imagine arthritis doesn't just stop there. It's a progressive disorder.   Rob Sealey: [00:16:16] So we keep knocking on the door of the endocannabinoid system to say, help, help, help. And we're trying our best to protect ourselves and produce these endocannabinoids. But eventually we get pooped out. We can't produce enough, our supply gets depleted and in comes, the door breaks down, in comes pain, inflammation, insomnia, anxiety, all the symptoms that happen with chronic pain. Well, where does cannabis fit in? Well, it turns out in the cannabis plant, there's over 500 ingredients of which the most active ingredients are called phytocannabinoids. So plant-based cannabinoids, they kind of have the same size and shape, they interact with the same receptors that we have inside our body. So if our receptors are saying we have a problem in our left knee and our own body can't protect ourselves, we can isolate cannabinoids from the plant and basically supplement, shore up the defenses, and shut the door and signals that are trying to harm us. Well, if you can imagine if those receptors are lighting up in various parts of our body, those cannabinoids can help out in different areas. And that's why it can be useful for everything from epilepsy to migraines to even skin problems. It's that aha moment is if we have a system that basically needs help, we can supplement it with cannabinoids from the plant. And it's funny because people hear about THC and CBD and those are only two of the Phytocannabinoids.   Rob Sealey: [00:17:52] There's 144 cannabinoids. So there's other parts of the plant, you know, terpenes and flavonoids, and they all do a delicate dance. We're starting to learn more and more how they interact. It's an extremely complicated science, but so is the endocannabinoid system. And we're starting to look at endocannabinoid system when it breaks down, it's implicated in fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, PTSD, asthma, osteoporosis... The list is going on and on it. We're finding out that the missing link of why we're unable to manage a lot of these conditions is endocannabinoid dysfunction. It just goes haywire or it gets depleted. And that's why the opportunity to use cannabis in a variety of conditions is there. And if we understand how it interacts in our body, all of a sudden it makes sense. It's not just try this mango-pineapple gummy, it tastes great, try a bath bomb, go off in all directions and fend for yourself. That's experimenting. If we actually make it boring, make it predictable, we can isolate the cannabinoids from the plant and basically help out, wait a minute we need help in this area, this is what we would do. That's how medicine works. It's not just, like I say, well, this one's on sale, let's try it. Let's try this one, it's sugar-free. You know, that's too much experimentation and recreational.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:18] Is it challenging for people to see it because the science is, I guess in the grand scheme of things, relatively new?   Rob Sealey: [00:19:27] I think it is. A lot of physicians still, like I do a fair amount of lectures and I'll go out and I'll ask, what's one of the questions I say, Okay, put your hand up if you've heard of the endocannabinoid system. And five years ago, no hands would go up. And still at this point, I would say more patients know about the endocannabinoid system because they Google. They have this thing on the Internet called Google.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:48] I've heard of it.   Rob Sealey: [00:19:49] Yeah. No, it is. It's amazing.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:51] It's fascinating.   Rob Sealey: [00:19:52] Not everything, by the way, is true on the Internet. I just found that out, too. Yeah, somebody told me that yesterday. But apparently if you type in endocannabinoid system, so people when they're researching for their, when they're advocating for their own health, and they've heard from their neighbor that, you know, I take CBD and that and they'll start to research and they'll read about the endocannabinoid system and start going down that rabbit hole. I find more patients do that. Physicians don't necessarily have the time to go down the rabbit hole, so they're listening, you know, they're reading as much journals as they can. And this is still relatively new. Again, not being taught in medical school. So patients will often be further ahead in understanding the science of it than my physician colleagues, for instance. So that's a challenge, right? That's a real big challenge. Yeah.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:20:42] Practically speaking, you write a prescription, do you write a prescription for a patient?   Rob Sealey: [00:20:50] Practically speaking, you would think so, but it's actually not. So technically so, it is not called a prescription. It's called an authorization. And the reason that is, is because it's plant-based. So most of the cannabis that I'm talking about comes from a plant and it's isolated, these cannabinoid ingredients. I mean, there are some prescription synthetic cannabis, but for the most part, what we're talking about when you go down to the store or you have a cannabis oil, CBD oil and that sort of thing, it's plant-based, right? It's isolated from the plant. Because it's plant-based, under the system it does not have what's called a DIN, which is a Drug Identification Number. Those are what pharmaceuticals have. So they, every drug, every blood pressure pill, antidepressant, opiate, all have a DIN. That's an assigned number, makes it very specific. Because it's plant-based, there is no drug identification number and therefore it's not considered a prescription. It's technical terminology, but it's considered an authorization. So if a patient wants to use cannabis for therapeutic purposes, they are supposed to get an authorization from a physician. It's like a valid certificate, which then allows them to purchase cannabis from a medical licensed producer. Now, the vast majority of patients do not do that. 72% of patients just go directly to their local store. But again, you're kind of fending for yourself.   Rob Sealey: [00:22:28] And I'm not throwing shade at the local stores. I mean, it's a good access place. Easy. You don't need a physician. You don't need this authorization paper. You can just go down and see it and talk to the local person. But here's where it gets a little bit murky. The local person is working in a recreational dispensary. So think of it this way: If you had arthritis and you were 85 years old, would you go down to the liquor store and ask them which bottle of Merlot would help with your inflammation? Right? It's the same thing.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:23:06] 100%.   Rob Sealey: [00:23:06] So the other part of that equation is these individuals that are working in the recreational dispensaries don't necessarily have a lot of background in the use for therapy in medicine. They're not healthcare professionals. They, again, are akin to working in a liquor store. Now, some of them know quite a bit. I'll give them that credit for sure. But here's where they're shackled. Under Health Canada rules if a person goes into one of these recreational dispensaries and said, Can you help me with my arthritis and that individual behind the counter, the budtender, says, Oh yeah, take this and take that, they could actually lose their license.   Rob Sealey: [00:23:46] They're not supposed to give medical advice. So again, this is the challenge of when a patient's fending for themselves, they go to the local store where they may or may not get advice. They're not supposed to get advice and who knows what the advice is like. And I've been a fly on the wall in some of these places, and the advice is very variable if it's given at all. So again, the route that patients are supposed to go, and I think works well, is being under the supervision of a physician who can help manage their care, much as we do with asthma, hypertension, diabetes, etcetera. Why not have a health care professional monitor, you know, your care and give you suggestions as required? But I think that people don't understand. Physicians don't understand. A lot of them still will say, well, it's legal, you can, again, just go to your local store. They can help you out. That's not actually the way it should be done. But I think a lot of people still don't understand that you can go through this other channel under a physician or a cannabis clinic and get the authorization, get it from a medical supplier, and be very precise with no surprises.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:04] Do insurance companies understand what the authorization paper is versus a prescription? Like can I, if I'm paying out of pocket for medical cannabis for a treated illness or injury, can I submit that to insurance?   Rob Sealey: [00:25:20] That's a great question. So probably only 5 or 6 years ago there were no insurance companies in Canada that would consider the coverage of medical cannabis. That's changed. There was one insurance company that made the bold step after lots of pressure from its members to say, We will cover it under certain circumstances. And then it became a domino effect. Right now, there are 17 different insurance companies in Canada that will consider it under exceptional circumstances. Even insurance, like we have auto insurance in British Columbia, you know, WorkSafe or worker's compensation, they're covering it under certain circumstances. So the world is changing. But when you say exceptional circumstances, there can be some challenges there.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:26:05] What does that even mean?   Rob Sealey: [00:26:06] What does that mean? Some of the insurance companies will come back and say, Give us the DIN. Give us that drug identification number.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:26:13] Great, here's the plant.   Rob Sealey: [00:26:13] Knowing full well that it doesn't have a DIN.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:26:17] Right.   Rob Sealey: [00:26:17] So they'll say to patients, You can provide the DIN, we will consider covering it. Most of them will consider covering it under certain circumstances where nothing else has worked. So you kind of got to go through the hurdles. So, for instance, chronic pain. So if individuals have tried this, that and the other thing and again, either ineffectiveness or intolerable side effects, and you've proven that they've tried all these things and that they've had a positive response to cannabis, that's usually, you know, an avenue that it will be covered. The other aspects of the insurance company to look for is, they say, level of evidence. They'll say, you know, cannabis is used for all of these things, for instance, sleep and anxiety. We know a lot of individuals, I'm sure you've talked to people say, it works for my sleep. It calms me down for anxiety. Right? We've heard this.   Rob Sealey: [00:27:11] But if you actually look through the literature and say, show me the double-blinded, randomized clinical trials with placebo, we don't have that for sleep. We don't have that for anxiety. So a lot of times the insurance companies will say we need the best quality evidence before we're going to consider covering this. Where does the best quality evidence lie? It happens in four conditions, and these are the ones that insurance companies will usually cover, again, if you've gone through all the other standard therapies. Chronic pain, that's by far the number one, especially nerve-related pain. chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. So people undergoing chemotherapy and they're sick, we've got great evidence about how cannabis can be useful for that. Spasticity and multiple sclerosis. Again, lots of evidence. And most recently added are specific types of epilepsy. Some of these childhood epilepsies where no other medications will work, we're seeing better benefits with the use of cannabis. So those are kind of the ones that insurance companies usually, that's what I get, people send me a form and say, my insurance company said, if you fill out this form, they'll consider it. Well, again, they sometimes just say, what's the DIN? Which tells me right away, No. Or they'll say, does the person have one of these four conditions? And if so, what medications have been tried previously? At the very least, patients can keep their receipts as a medical expense on their tax return. If they go through the channel of getting the authorization and purchasing from a licensed producer of medical. Not if they go down to the local store. The CRA kind of frowns on the mango-pineapple chewies. They want to see the medical stuff before they consider it an expense.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:29:04] Where do you go now? What is the next five years look like for this, for this space in terms of education? Is it more research, more science? Like where do we go now?   Rob Sealey: [00:29:16] All of the above. All of the above. I'm so, as you can probably gather, I'm so excited about this field. Every day there's new, interesting research. And I think that's the part, the missing link again it's been the science, and you hadn't had the opportunity to research. It was illegal to research. And in still many countries it remains that way. So the research that we are getting is starting to happen. And so it's basically proving what we thought, which is kind of nice, is we were on the right track and I get together with some of my, I like to call them cannabinerds, and these colleagues around the world. And we basically blog or we share our thoughts or we might have an online webinar, do some research papers together. And it fascinates me that in places like Australia and Israel and Germany, even though we're spaced so far apart, and we're kind of doing it where there's only a few of us in these places, we're on the same path. We're seeing the same things and we're sharing it. It's really exciting to see that, yeah, that's what I see, and that's what you're doing. And this is of course, this is why we do it. And it's nice to have that sort of backup and that reassurance that we are on the same path. But I think the research is only going to get better. And I think what's exciting is, again, we only talk about THC and CBD. If there's 142 other cannabinoids, you're going to start hearing about, if you haven't already, CBN and CBG and CBC, not just the network, but these are all cannabinoids that have their own aspects of how they interact with those receptors.   Rob Sealey: [00:31:00] And we're looking at specifics. What about CBG on the prostate? And so we're getting more pinpoint as far as which organ has these types of receptors and then the fascinating world of the endocannabinoid system and again, unlocking the potential there. And it might not just be cannabis, by the way. The more we understand endocannabinoid system, there might be a better way to alter, or help, or supplement the endocannabinoid system, might be enzyme blockers. And this is what the pharmaceutical companies are looking at. They say, well, cannabis works, you know, but it's kind of a shotgun approach. Can we be more precise and work at the enzyme at this level in the endocannabinoid system? So I think that's exciting. But the future is unlimited. Then there's even looking in petri dishes in the lab, you know, what is it doing to cancer cells? Well, we know that certain tumors have a lot of these endocannabinoid receptors. And so the National Cancer Institute is using cannabis to see what happens. And we're seeing some pretty interesting stuff in the lab. Then we're seeing it in animals. We haven't taken it full, you know, protocols in humans yet, but we certainly are hearing that humans are using it and getting some interesting results. So I think the future is unlimited. I think it's very, very exciting. And I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow because I think it's just happening that fast. Anyways, don't get me, don't get me going.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:32:39] Well, and congratulations for being on the forefront of this space. I mean, you've really been involved from the beginning. You've led the charge. And I think, I can imagine it's so exciting and interesting to see how it's going to progress. So thank you so much for sharing today and helping educate because I think, I mean, I'm a huge proponent of education and information. And I think the more we know, the less scary something might be. And hopefully this helps with that, too.   Rob Sealey: [00:33:07] Thank you very much. That was great.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:33:12] Such a fascinating conversation. And I love hearing about the research that's happening around medical cannabis and also how there's different things coming up. And then we apply it in a different way. And I think we sometimes forget that pharmaceuticals like Tylenol and Advil that we're all so comfortable with, they were there, too, and they started through this process. And it's an important process. Research and science, it's all rooted there. So important. Thank you, Dr. Sealey, for joining us today. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe and consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We'll catch you next time on It's A Theory.

Solving the Crisis of Homelessness with Sandra Clarkson

Melanie Nicholson addresses the big topic of homelessness with guest Sandra Clarkson, Executive Director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre, in this episode. Sandra is focused on creating opportunities for long-term systemic improvements for Canadians in need, and paints a clear picture of what is being done and why so much more is needed.  Sandra started her career in the nonprofit sector doing frontline work with sexually exploited minors which made her realized she loved working with vulnerable populations. That led to a journey of working with issues of homelessness and marginalized populations throughout Canada and the US before starting her own consulting company and eventually winding up at the Drop-In Centre. Sandra is very clear that there is no one type of person experiencing homelessness. She describes people from 18 to 90 years of age, women, men, non-binary, Indigenous, refugees, and so many more, all people who access the DI’s services with various needs. What Sandra provides Melanie is a very thorough picture of what housing means to homeless individuals, how the right house is as important as just having a house, the importance of interconnected support systems, and what everyone can do immediately to start viewing affordable housing and homeless individuals as neighbors instead of ‘other’. It’s a vital conversation on shifting the homeless dynamic of our cities. “You know, we hear a lot of talk and words around inclusive communities and community for all. They're really just words, I think, when you look at the amount of nimbyism that comes up for any development that even mentions affordable housing. There's so much stigmatization and mythology, quite frankly, around who needs affordable housing and what what affordable housing would bring to a community. And I think what we really need to focus on is moving from nimby to yimby so that communities are saying, Yes, in my backyard. We want to have diverse socioeconomic statuses in our neighborhood. We want people of all shapes and sizes and abilities in our neighborhood.” - Sandra Clarkson About Sandra Clarkson Sandra Clarkson is the Executive Director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre. With 25 years of experience working with vulnerable populations, Sandra brings a wealth of experience as an advocate for marginalized Canadians, a champion of community collaboration, and an expert in operational excellence. Sandra’s vision is to create opportunities that result in long-term systemic improvements for citizens in need.  In addition to serving on several non-profit boards, Sandra has provided strategic planning, assessment and other management consulting services to non-profits through her own business, MSH Strategies Inc. Resources mentioned in this episode: * Calgary Drop-In Centre [https://calgarydropin.ca/] __ Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.  * Website: MelanieLynnCommunications.com [https://www.melanielynncommunications.com] * Instagram: MLCSocial [https://www.instagram.com/mlcsocial/] * Twitter: MLCSocial [https://twitter.com/mlcsocial] * Facebook: MLCSocial [https://www.facebook.com/mlcsocial/] * Email: info@melanielynncommunications.com [info@melanielynncommunications.com] Contact Sandra Clarkson * LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-clarkson-40233815/] __ Transcript Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Welcome to It's a Theory. I'm your host, Melanie Nicholson, and today is a big topic. We are talking about the theory behind ending chronic homelessness in a city. Sandra Clarkson has been with the Calgary Drop-In Center since January 2017 and is committed to ending chronic homelessness in the city through the power of collaboration, transparency and accountability. Sandra is also co-chair of the Canadian Shelter Transformation Network with a focus on propelling the movement to housing-focused emergency shelters as the standard for front-line homeless service across Canada. Above all, she's focused on creating opportunities that result in long-term systemic improvements for citizens in need. Sandra has a theory and a clear vision of where communities can go when we're talking about housing-focused emergency shelters. We get really candid and frank about this issue, and it really demonstrates what can happen when you put theory into practice. Let's talk.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:05] Sandra, welcome to the podcast.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:01:07] Thank you. I'm happy to be here.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:10] I'm really excited for this conversation. I think it's such an important conversation to have and I want to start a bit with your story so people who don't know you, how did you end up at the Drop In Center Calgary? Everyone knows it as the DI but for people listening outside of Calgary, how did you get there?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:01:28] Well, it was a long journey. You know, I started my career in the nonprofit sector as doing frontline work with sexually exploited teens or minors. And that was really kind of my first foray into frontline work and exposure to, you know, working with really vulnerable populations and absolutely loved it. And then I ended up leaving that work and joining a group of anonymous donors that were granting their funds throughout Western Canada and the Midwest, US. And they were looking for somebody who was networked in the nonprofit sector in the city of Calgary. Somehow I landed that, spent the next 16 years of my career working with that group, learned a lot around issues of homelessness, vulnerable people, marginalized populations throughout both Canada and the US. From there, I started my own consulting company called MSH Strategies and really focused on the nonprofit sector, worked on building capacity, did a lot of strategic planning pieces, a number of interim executive director roles, really, you know, problem-solving, troubleshooting and did a lot of work with a great colleague of mine, Dr. Susan McIntyre. We did a lot of partnerships together. And from there, the former executive director at the Calgary Drop-In Center, Debbie Newman, had approached me to see if I was interested in coming on as associate executive director as part of her succession planning.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:03:12] And, you know, I never thought I would be an employee again, having my own consulting gig. But what intrigued me about the work at the DI was, you know, the size and the scope of the organization and the reach and the potential that it could have. I knew I was not going to get bored anytime soon and that there was lots of amazing opportunities for the agency in terms of really expanding its reach, its breadth, its depth and its impact. And so that is what brought me to the DI. I think, you know, throughout all of my career, I've been really focused on marginalized populations, even as a funder, you know, homelessness was one of the areas of my specialization through those portfolios. And just have always been drawn to working with populations that traditionally have not really had much of a voice. And it's just, it's something that's really, really important to me. And so that's how I got here.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:04:26] You talked about the size of the space, and I want to talk on that. The DI was labelled the largest shelter in North America. Is that notoriety that you want to have as a shelter? Is is, is that good? Is that bad? What does that look like when you're coming into a big space?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:04:42] You know it, I believe, it currently is the second largest in North America. There is one other that has a bit higher capacity. I think, you know, ideally we want to be known as the most effective housing-focused emergency shelter in the country and North America for that matter. So I think, you know, the size, there's certainly economies of scale that come with the ability to shelter a thousand people on any given night. Is it ideal? No. You know, I think we've worked really, really hard to house a number of our long-term shelter stayers to get our numbers down. And, you know, now right now, we're averaging around 450 individuals on any given night. On any given 24-hour period, it's closer to 700 because people do access services here that don't sleep. But I think, you know, if we could do it all over again, probably would look at doing it differently. You know, large, crowded congregate settings are really difficult to make personalized individual connections with everybody. So I think we do a great job working with what we've got at the moment. But, you know, I think as we look future-focused, I think we have to ask ourselves, Are there better ways? And I think that there are.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:06:09] And I want to talk about that. But before we do, what I'd love for you to do is give us a sense of who these people are. I think so often when you read about the social sector, if you're not in the social sector - it's the term, I mean we use it, I use it too - individuals and people, and it's a very high-level term as opposed to this is the actual story of these people. Can you give us a sense of the type of people and maybe some specific examples of who's coming in there? Because I think that there's a misperception of everyone's an addict or everyone's this or everyone's that. Who is using the drop-in center?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:06:48] Well, I mean, I wish I could answer that question in a concise way. I think, you know, you're exactly right. People in general, I think, think of homelessness or individuals experiencing homelessness as this like homogeneous group that have a lot of similarities. Well, I can tell you it's extremely diverse. There is no typical person that accesses our services. We have people of all different age groups over the age of 18 up to, you know, we've had people in their 90s come to us. There are, gosh, if you were to like really look at the sort of the sub-sections of those using the services, I mean, there's at least 10 to 12 different types of groups of people that all have very different needs. Right? We've got men and we've got women. We've got, you know, like I say, all the different age groups. We've got non-binary individuals, we have Indigenous folks, we have refugees, we have, you know, new Canadians. There is no typical scenario. One thing that is important to note that, you know, a vast majority of the people that access our services are in and out very quickly. Most of them are able to self-resolve their experience with being unhoused. We're here to provide a soft landing pad, ability for them to regroup, get their bearings back straight, and get back out into community.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:08:30] But then there is, you know, 20% of the population who are much more complex. We do see a lot of mental health, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed untreated mental health issues. With that often comes some pretty acute and chronic addiction issues. I think one of the things that is, I feel confident in saying, is a common theme for those that are with us for any length of time is experience with some pretty significant trauma. So I think if there was going to be one sort of common theme, I think honestly it really comes down to experiencing trauma, whether that be, you know, childhood neglect, abuse, sexual abuse, experience as a child soldier, you know, violence, all sorts of different experiences that are really impactful on people. And when you have lost your support system or didn't have a strong support network or system in the first place, it's really hard to do that on your own, to work through that trauma. So we're here to help guide people on that journey as best we can. We can't be everything to all people. So we really rely on our partnerships with other organizations who can provide some of that more professional assistance where needed. But there is no typical picture of people that walk through our doors, and it's different on any given day.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:10:20] Which is challenging to deal with because you can't just take a cookie cutter solution and move it forward. So then if we talk about the concept of ending chronic homelessness, cities have said they've done it before and then they end up back. How, when we talk about, we're talking about taking ideas and theories and putting them into practice, how do you end or at least mitigate this chronic homelessness when we're dealing with trauma and we're dealing with these mental health challenges, what's the approach?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:10:50] Well, the approach is housing first and foremost. You know, cities and communities need to be willing to support and accept deeply affordable housing. To support, fund, and accept the support services that need to go along with it. To support, fund, and accept the health services that need to go along with it. All with the aim of helping people exit their experience of homelessness. If there is no housing available, you will never solve homelessness. It's actually a very simple concept and often gets, you know, people aren't looking at it as what has to come next. Right? So I think, you know, deeply affordable housing and affordable housing is the number one, should be the number one strategy.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:11:44] When you look across the country, I mean, that's the problem everywhere.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:11:48] Yeah. And it's just getting worse. And then, you know, people complain that homelessness is becoming more visible as cities become less affordable. Well, I'm not sure what you expect.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:11:59] Absolutely.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:12:00] Right? Like it's really not rocket science. Sorry to sound a bit condescending, but it really is... It's... Homelessness is a very complex issue, but there are pretty simple solutions to it and it really comes down to a lack of affordable and deeply affordable housing. Now, some people will always need extra supports that go along with that, right, in order to help them maintain their housing. Say, for instance, you know, people with brain injury may need to be in a long-term care setting. So it's not just a matter of giving everybody keys to a home and you're done. It is more complicated than that for some, but for many, all that's needed is assistance with some financial barriers that they've encountered and their, you know, rapid rehousing works. And yeah, the answer ultimately comes down to housing.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:03] How do we move the needle there when we talk about, and not just in Calgary, but when we talk about, let's talk about nationwide. You're dealing with cities of different sizes and scope, but it's all, as you've articulated very well, it's the same problem. So how do we start? Does it start with the community getting a better understanding? Does it start with more advocacy? How do we start to move that needle and help people understand the greater issue?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:13:32] Well, if I had that figured out, wouldn't that be great?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:36] Right?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:13:38] But I think, you know, from a community perspective... You know, we hear a lot of talk and words around inclusive communities and community for all. They're really just words, I think, you know, when you look at the amount of nimbyism that comes up for any development that even mentions affordable housing, here's so much stigmatization and mythology, quite frankly, around who needs affordable housing and what what affordable housing would bring to a community. And I think what we really need to focus on is moving from Nimby to Yimby so that communities are saying, yes, in my backyard. We want to have diverse socioeconomic statuses in our neighborhood. We want people of all shapes and sizes and abilities in our neighborhood. And how we do that, I'm not sure yet, but I think we just have to keep talking and we have to keep sharing positive impact on the community as a whole. When people are living in their own homes as opposed to in tents, on the street, or in a shelter.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:06] It changes the entire dynamic.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:15:08] 100%.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:11] Can you share with us? I imagine over your experience in years, you've worked with people that have been in this state of struggle and have found their way into housing and how their life has changed. Can you share with us some of those so people can start to grasp their, wrap their head around what that can look like for someone and how it can change their entire trajectory?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:15:35] Wow. Well, there's, you know, there's lots of great stories. There's one individual in particular that always comes to mind for me. This individual had, you know, I'm not even going to call them a shelter stayer, they, you know, the DI had become their residence, had become their home. He had resided here in shelter for many, many, many, many years. And he is a very gifted, talented, articulate, smart man. He's an artist. He's a carpenter. He's a beautiful soul. And I first met him actually, was long before my tenure as an employee here at the DI. He came and did some carpentry work for me at my home just through some connections that I had and got to build a relationship with him. And, you know, he knew my kids and made art for them, made, you know, paper, you know, art paper. Yeah. Just beautiful, beautiful stuff. He's a writer, musician, like you name it, he can do it. And, you know, his struggle was really an issue with alcohol. And it really held him back in a lot of ways. And I think until we made our shift to be a very housing-focused emergency shelter, we really worked very intentionally with those people who had been here for a long time to get them housed. He'd given up on the idea of even thinking he would ever have his own place, like it just wasn't in the cards for him.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:17:22] This was as good as it gets, and I guess I'll be happy with it. You know, we really pushed him to move into his own apartment. You know, he needs, he has supports that come along with it. But the level of alcohol consumption has gone down considerably. He has set up a little artist studio on his balcony. He still plays music. Pre-COVID there was a piano, a public piano downtown, and he would go every morning and play the piano as people were entering the office buildings to go to work. And that was one of the things that he loved doing. But yeah, he's thriving. He's thriving in his new place. He still, we still stay in touch. We text each other every couple of months just to check in and say hello. And you know what? He is really, truly my inspiration in many ways to keep going because this work is really, really difficult. I think it's probably some of the hardest work that there is. And I think of all it takes is one, all it takes is one to keep you going. And we have, certainly have many more than one.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:18:41] Well. And if the focus of the DI has shifted to that housing focus model, then hopefully you see more and more and more and more.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:18:51] Yeah, I think, you know, since we made our shift, really in 2018 was when it really started to pick up some steam. And, you know, we've housed over 2200 people since that time and our return to shelter rate is less than 5%. So.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:08] That's amazing.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:19:09] Yeah, it's phenomenal. And that's a real testament to the work of the frontline staff who are working with individuals, getting to know what their personal needs are, what their personal desires are, and really taking the time to get to know them, to match them to the right housing program or in community so that they have the opportunity to thrive. It's not just about getting people out and into a house. It's about--   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:35] It's the right one?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:19:36] It's the right one. And you know, for us, getting someone housed is, it doesn't stop there. What has to happen once they're housed is they need to integrate into their new community. So they need to have, you know, a medical home. They need to have a family doctor. They need to know what amenities are in the neighborhood. You know, ideally help them to connect to volunteer opportunities so they can meet more people in the neighborhood and really encourage them to access the services that are available where they are now, not come back to the DI to get what they need. That's not helpful. What they need to do is work within their new community to establish their roots, just like you or I do.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:20:26] I was just going to say, just as anyone, you move into a new neighborhood, so how do you feel more settled into that community? What's the wrong, I think this is important for people to understand that it's not just, it's not good enough to just say, here's a house, let's put anyone into the house, the right house matters. What is the wrong house for someone or housing option for someone, where things can go wrong and people don't follow that?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:20:54] Well, I think, you know, where I mentioned, you know, some people that come through have some really complex needs that, you know, that they're not able to live independently without supports. So, you know, there's there's waiting lists for those, that type of housing. And that's just the way it is. But I think it's about making sure that, you know, whoever that operator is or service provider is in that housing program, has a really clear understanding of what the needs are for this person and that we make sure that like, staying in shelter is not ideal. But I would much rather that we waited for the right placement and the right program rather than set people up to fail and have to come back again.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:49] So it's more sustainable.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:21:51] Yeah. And you know, we work with, you know, other housing providers and we'll, we want to do warm handoffs and make sure that that continuity of care is there. And, you know, quite frankly, the reality is also that there's types of housing and programs that are needed that just don't exist right now. At the drop in center, we really are the catchall of really all the failures of numerous systems converging together. We are the catchall. And so we've got some really, really challenging folks here. But we do what we can with what we have to try to meet their needs. There's certainly... You know, some days I really think of the DI in some ways as a de facto psychiatric institution without the appropriate supports and care that people deserve. And we can do, we're continuing to advocate for, you know, closing those gaps and those housing programs that don't currently exist or that there aren't enough of.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:23:01] What's one that doesn't exist that you'd like to see exist, that could exist, if the, I mean, obviously anything can exist with resources and the right people at the table. But if you could pick one that doesn't exist right now in our community that could, what would you like to see?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:23:19] Well, I think one thing that's really missing is that really high needs intensive supportive housing where there's 24-hour supports on-site. Yeah, that's a big gap. That's a big, big gap. And you know, with the appropriate, like, mental health supports and physical health supports and social supports, emotional supports, spiritual supports, you know, there are, we've got probably 150 people that we're aware of that currently could use that type of housing here at the DI.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:24:00] When we look at systemic improvements across the country, can Calgary be a leader here?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:24:08] I think we already are. To be honest, I think, you know, one of the great things about this city and this nonprofit sector is the level of collaboration, information sharing, open sourcing of resources. It's unlike I've seen in other cities. And, you know, as I mentioned in my previous career, I've been in a lot of different jurisdictions dealing with this type of issue or these types of issues. And Calgary is really unique in terms of the spirit of collaboration and putting the client first, not about the agency, it's about the client. And, you know, many of us share the same people. You know, people will often be referred to as a DI client, but rest assured they are also accessing services in many other organizations. They just happen to rest their head here.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:02] Right.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:25:03] So I think that we are on the forefront in that way. And I think, you know, with the DI being, quote-unquote, one of the largest homeless shelters in North America, our shift, our transformation to being housing-focused, I have to believe, has played a part in Calgary being one of the only cities in the province of Alberta that's actually seen a decrease in the numbers of homeless people. At that point in time count this year.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:36] Well, congratulations on the work you've done. It's incredible. And I, it's a story I've followed. And one I continue to want to follow because I think it's so important as a greater community that we know how we can support and what people can do. So that is how I'd like to end. My question to you is what can people do today? Not necessarily people working in the sector, but general population of Calgary? How can we as a community help with this challenge? And whether it's learning more or advocating, what can we do to help our collective neighbors succeed?   Sandra Clarkson: [00:26:13] Well, I think, you know, of course, there are the first things that come to mind about, you know, share your time, share your talent, share your treasure, donate, volunteer, get involved with the community-based organizations that are of interest to you. Those things are always welcome and much needed as it's an under-resourced sector. But I think I would also challenge people to don't just walk past someone. You know, say hello. Engage. Connection. Connection is key. We need to start seeing everybody as human beings and not looking at the unhoused as 'other'. Or 'those people'. That's something that doesn't cost anybody a thing and is really impactful. I think, you know, get to know if there's developments going up in your neighborhood and there's affordable housing, get to know the provider, ask the questions. Don't just blanket no, no, no. Think about how those developments can actually enrich and add to your community. Yeah. Learn. Learn to say yes more and no less, I think, are some key pieces. And if we want to have and be inclusive communities, then we have to just stop saying the words and put action behind it.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:27:51] And inclusivity starts with saying yes.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:27:53] Yes, it does.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:27:55] Perfect. I think that's such a beautiful place to end. Sandra, thank you so much for this conversation. It's so important. I'm such a big believer of education and the more you know, the more you feel informed and can then make more educated decisions. So this is what these conversations are about. So thank you so much for participating.   Sandra Clarkson: [00:28:15] My pleasure. It has been a real treat to have this conversation with you today. Thank you.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:28:23] Affordable housing and looking at people and remembering that they are people, so important. My mind is whirring from that conversation. So many profound pieces of insight from Sandra. Sandra, huge thank you for joining us today. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, and consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We'll catch you next time on It's a Theory.

Repairing Workplace Culture with Michael Sondermann

Melanie Nicholson welcomes workplace investigator, educator, and trainer Michael Sondermann to the show to talk about repairing toxic workplace culture. Michael has more than 20 years of senior management experience and he helps organizations identify, investigate, and respond to workplace conflict. He discusses what that looks like.  Michael Sondermann identifies toxic workplace cultures as being dysfunctional, containing harassment, abusive, and unethical but also points out that a place does not create the culture, the people do. A workplace culture is the collective behaviors of individuals in an organization. He describes to Melanie how that guides his work in repairing the environment. Everyone has to be involved in identifying the root causes of the toxicity. It can often be from the top, the leadership level, but that isn’t always the case. Michael investigates all aspects of a workplace culture, from the public-facing sides to the interactions nobody else ever sees, and then works to get everyone communicating and creating solutions. This conversation is a valuable aspect of toxic workplaces that is often overlooked when addressing the identification of toxicity - namely, what happens next? How can that toxicity and negativity be repaired?  “I think there's a way that you go and you resolve all of your problems, but it requires a lot of trust and faith in each other in an organization to do it. And one of the major ways that you do it is you put aside those prototypical job expectations that don't exist on paper in your job description. So no one at a company is expecting a boss to be a bulletproof, genius, ascendant, flawless human being. No one expects their boss to know everything. So get rid of that. Open yourself up to the possibility that you have created some things or done some things that have prevented your organization from being where you want it to be. And then open up and ask the people in your place what the problems are. And more valuably, ask how they can be repaired.” - Michael Sondermann About Michael Sondermann Michael Sondermann is a dynamic leader with more than 20 years of senior management experience in law, business and higher education. As a partner at Method Workplace Investigations, Michael helps organizations identify, investigate and respond to workplace conflict. With a people-first approach to health, safety and wellness, he works to empower employers with the training and tools they need to effectively investigate and resolve workplace issues that affect their business. Michael has spent over a decade in a variety of strategic leadership roles at higher education institutions. From Legal and Risk Management Coordinator to Associate Registrar and Director of Student Services, he focused on developing an empowered and respectful workplace by conducting more than 400 investigations of student and staff conduct. During this time, he also restructured and improved policies and procedures, and led several committees to achieving success on a myriad of complex issues. __ Resources mentioned in this episode: * "Trauma-Informed Care in the Workplace with Jennifer Berard" [http://trauma-informed-care-in-the-workplace-with-jennifer-berard] __ Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.  * Website: MelanieLynnCommunications.com [https://www.melanielynncommunications.com] * Instagram: MLCSocial [https://www.instagram.com/mlcsocial/] * Twitter: MLCSocial [https://twitter.com/mlcsocial] * Facebook: MLCSocial [https://www.facebook.com/mlcsocial/] * Email: info@melanielynncommunications.com [info@melanielynncommunications.com] Contact Michael Sondermann * Michael Sondermann on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-sondermann/] * Method Workplace Investigation Law [https://workinvestigations.com/] __ Transcript Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Hey, everyone, and welcome to It's a Theory. I'm your host, Melanie Nicholson and today we're talking about repairing broken workplace cultures. There has been so much conversation around toxic workplaces, bullying, harassment at work and more. So somewhere is identified as toxic. Great. Well, then what? What happens to actually deal with the problem? Today we're talking with Michael Sondermann. Michael is a dynamic leader with more than 20 years of senior management experience in human resources, law, business, and higher education. As a workplace investigator, he’s helped organizations identify, investigate and respond to workplace conflict. Michael is currently the manager of human relations at the Tsuut’ina Nation Police Service. And while this conversation does stand on its own, I really encourage you to also listen to our chat with psychologist Jennifer Berard where we talk about the impact of trauma at work and the opportunity for employers to be more trauma-informed. These two episodes together are invaluable for anyone who has a team of people that they're responsible for. Today, Michael is sharing more about what it's like to walk back into a broken work environment and how they work to slowly put things back together. Let's dive in.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:28] Michael, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here today.   Michael Sondermann: [00:01:32] Thanks for having me, Mel.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:33] This is an interesting topic, and I've always been curious about the theory behind repairing broken cultures. So we hear about them being broken, getting broken. But I think we hear less about coming out the other side. And when we're talking about a toxic workplace, we're talking about one that's disrespectful, non-inclusive, abusive, unethical. I've seen cutthroat in the mix. But I was reading a poll recently on fortune.com that said 64% of respondents have experienced a toxic work environment and 44% blamed the entire leadership team. It sounds low.   Michael Sondermann: [00:02:14] So 64 and 40 does seem low to me, but I'm not particularly surprised at and I think a lot of it is because where we start off in our lives, right? So we generally as teenagers or young adults start off in minimum wage service jobs and those tend to be really toxic by their nature. So, you know, I think that that's where some of those bigger numbers come from. It's not always the case that as we get older and get into our real jobs in the real world, um, that things are as bad as they are necessary. That's part of the reason why people talk about, why So many people talk about having been in a toxic work culture at some point.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:03] Yeah. I mean, I would argue everyone has in some way, shape or form at some point in their career working.   Michael Sondermann: [00:03:10] Yeah, because because of what the nature of what workplace culture is, right?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:15] Absolutely.   Michael Sondermann: [00:03:16] And, you know, you've framed this those numbers in this conversation in a really interesting way because those things that you talk about, you know, dysfunction, toxicity, harassment, all of those things are elements of a larger culture that allows those things, that propagates them, that allows them to continue, that oftentimes rewards people that do those sorts of things, right? So lots of us have been in terribly dysfunctional cultures, but we may not have experienced those things, those elements of those cultures. But, you know, the fact that people are taught to that degree, talking about those kinds of culture, things that destroy us as individuals, is pretty disturbing about work, right? Because, you know, one of the things that we know, for example, about work is that the bad things that happen to us at work have a greater impact on our lives outside of work than those terrible things that happen outside of work have in our work lives, right? So once you begin to have that toxicity at work, it begins to destroy us as human beings too.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:04:32] It's fascinating that it's not reversed.   Michael Sondermann: [00:04:34] I know I was surprised by that too. And one of the things I think is because work is oftentimes viewed as a safe haven and a place to go to escape those stresses and pressures of life. And as you get older, you know, life is full of so many stresses anyway. If your work is not one of those places you can escape then, you know, you get caught up in this terrible cycle where you begin to really question yourself and really begin to traumatize us into damage. And there is, I think, something too about the nature of work that when we experience high levels of toxicity at work or abuse or harassment, it begins to eat us as individuals. Right? And that is something that we take into other relationships outside of work.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:05:23] You're going into these workplaces when there I would say at the lowest of lows, they've realized they have a problem there. They're bringing in support to help fix a problem. Can you describe for us what that mood is like when you first get there? I know you've worked with first responder organizations, municipalities and large-scale organizations. When you first arrive, what's the mood like?   Michael Sondermann: [00:05:50] Uh, that completely depends. So it depends on who I'm dealing with. Generally speaking, the mood of the people who are retaining me. So your executive director, CEO, president level, head of HR is hopeful, um, sometimes panicked. Um, you know, it's interesting to walk in or have a conversation with somebody who leads an organization who has just found that people in their organization have been tremendously damaged. It's an interesting eye-opening experience. Sometimes, most of the times it's hopeful, with the people that I'm interacting with that I've been retained with. Another emotion, once you begin to talk to the people who have been damaged is that there's oftentimes a feeling of hopelessness. Um, there is a really palpable sense of the damage to individuals that has been done at work. It's amazing how often people I speak to cry within the first five minutes of meeting me, and it's not anything to do with me, I don't think. Someone said to me not long ago, you know, you're a heck of a good guy and I hate talking to you, which is a good thing, right?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:07:08] Right. No kidding.   Michael Sondermann: [00:07:09] And then, you know, if, you know, depending on the nature of the contract that I'm there for, and the nature of the interaction, once you begin to talk to people who have been accused of contributing to the environment, you oftentimes get defensiveness or aggression. That's, I think, a fascinating sort of dynamic as well. When you begin to talk to those people who have contributed to the dysfunction in an organization, who will remain, um, that's really where the plot of work is.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:07:51] And the theory is that cultures can be repaired. You can get an organization back to some place of a safe, positive working environment, correct?   Michael Sondermann: [00:08:04] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you have to go back to first principles. So what's a workplace culture, right? A workplace culture is simply the collective behaviors of individuals in an organization. So first of all, let's get rid of the notion that there is a culture at Tesla or there's a culture at Amazon. We remove the people and the culture will be completely different. Okay? So what we're dealing with are personal interactions, and we know from our personal lives that we can go down bad roads with personal relationships, we can go down bad roads with our working relationships too. And if workplace culture is a product of the behaviors of people in your organization, those things can be repaired. I think one of the theories about workplace culture historically has been that they can't be repaired while retaining all the people in an organization. So, you know, there's lots of scholarly articles about the impossibility of repairing a culture without firing the boss, for example. Right. But that's...   Melanie Nicholson: [00:09:19] Which you don't hear about very often. You often, I mean on the more public-facing ones, you often hear about the CEO stepping down.   Michael Sondermann: [00:09:27] Yeah. And, you know, being invited to step down and encouraged to step down. Right? And that's a completely valid thing. If the dysfunction in the toxicity in an organization was caused, allowed, not stopped by that individual. Right? But, you know, one of the other first principles, I think, and one of the ways that the views of workplace culture are changing is that workplace culture is not the product of the boss. Right? The workplace culture is created by the behaviors, thoughts and actions of everyone in an organization. So if you go in to an organization and you look at the culture without looking at every level of the organization, and you don't do any work on trying to figure out what the root cause of the dysfunction is or what the root causes and the foundations of the culture are, then you will never be successful in remediating the culture because you don't know what the problem is. Right? So where in an organization is the problem? And oftentimes it's at the top. If you're a sports fan and your team is not performing well, well, who do you get? Who do you get after? Who do you cut? You get rid of the boss and you assume everything will change over that. But you don't know what the components of that culture are privately and behind the scenes that you don't see. Right. And that is another aspect of culture that we forget about. You know, and one of the things that people like me spend a lot of time trying to figure out.   Michael Sondermann: [00:11:16] So, you know, you and I could walk into a building across the street and we could stand there and talk about what kind of place is this just by the feeling we get. Is it an architectural beauty building? Is it ostentatious? Is the art on the wall the drawings of all the kids in the company? It's a great company in Calgary that features children's art, right? Or is this something that's been bought, a gallery? How do people dress? Do they address each other by their titles? So you've talked about the work that I've done in uniformed services, right? It's very common to walk into a place and say, Chief Inspector, you know, whatever. So we gather these things and these are the public elements of the culture. We also look at things like websites. So websites look like a modern audience. That's not really what, that doesn't tell the whole story. The culture is like an ice, like so many things, is an iceberg. What are the unwritten rules? Right? So, you know, if I call the, if I call my boss 'chief' and he refers to me as constable or firefighter or whatever, that gives us an idea of public culture. But what if what I don't know is what happens if he's in a meeting and says something I disagree with? And I get up and walk out? That says an awful lot about the culture too. You and I never see that.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:12:46] Right.   Michael Sondermann: [00:12:46] What's the culture about acknowledging each other as humans? Do we talk about our personal lives? Is that off the table? How are performance reviews handled? Do you say hi to me when you walk by me in the hallway, or do you just keep going? These are the kinds of elements of culture that we forget about sometimes. And those things are reciprocated, right? I mean, I've seen enough instances where a very senior person walks in and is completely shunned by staff. That's an element of culture, too. So removing that individual doesn't change the culture because those individuals who shun that leader are doing this. What's to say they aren't going to shun the next one?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:30] Right. And it's, they as a collective could be that root cause and the other person could be delightful.   Michael Sondermann: [00:13:38] Right. And we've seen that happen where people are constructing, in some cases, an alternative reality in order to achieve an end benefit. You know, and one of the easiest ways to do that is you allege your boss as a harasser.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:56] So how do you go through that process to repair conversations, figuring out the root cause? How can an employer have faith that there is an opportunity to repair? Like, what do you actually do to create bridges and remove some of these problem gaps?   Michael Sondermann: [00:14:17] Um, it's really strange to say because you're going to wonder why I get paid to do this. But, um, so often the root cause is that there is no communication between.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:14:28] And people wonder why I have a job.   Michael Sondermann: [00:14:31] Whoa. I know. I once explained, you know, we were sort of joking before, I guess we call it off camera, right? Sort of joking before this about my 22 year old said about what I do for a living, or doing this podcast, rather, and once I explained to him what I was doing with the group and he goes, Dad, like, are they all in grade four? Right? So, you know, but we forget sometimes the basic foundational things about how we communicate and we also find ourselves, I think, in ruts about how we communicate things and we find ourselves just completely going by rote sometimes and not listening and not paying attention. And sometimes it's as basic as getting back to those foundational things about communication. But, you know, the question that you ask me, I don't know, like we have four days to record this, right?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:23] Yeah.   Michael Sondermann: [00:15:24] Oh, great. Awesome.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:25] It's an eight-series episode.   Michael Sondermann: [00:15:27] Okay. I'll be in six more of those. You know, how do you repair a culture? Well, it depends what the problem is, right? So once you do that root cause analysis, you start chipping away at what those root causes are. So what causes the dysfunction? Now, sometimes one of the things that you have to ask yourself is, can this be done? Should it be done? You know, if you have a situation which someone very close to me was dealing with, where they essentially found that there was a group of individuals creating an alternative reality that was demonizing someone at work, you know, why are you, like, do you spend any time repairing that or is this or is the repairing of that the severing of the employment relationship? Right? So people have to leave. One of the things that we make sure that we talk about if we're doing investigations, for example, into those kinds of things, is to ensure that whoever's remaining, that there's work done with them to to get them back because so many people who have been damaged at work are now gun-shy. So managers, if they've been abused are gun shy about managing anyone. You know, if you've been abused throughout a performance management process or with a boss, what is your willingness to work collaboratively and cooperatively with your next boss? So these are the reasons why getting to these root cause issues is really important, because if you don't address the root causes, you don't identify them. And then the issue will continue. And you can't repair someone in a workplace. So sometimes what we do is we'll remove someone from a workplace. But that doesn't mean the damage stops at that point.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:17:21] Because people feel broken and defeated and, I mean, having been in some of those environments. But I want to go back just because I'm a communications person, you were talking about communications, and one of the things that I think people forget as organizations is in this world of being terrified of something going on social media or getting out before they're ready to talk, people automatically go to cold statements and facts. And that's important but I think it's also so crucial from a risk management perspective, from a workplace culture perspective, is that compassion is in there as well. And empathy and understanding in your communication before you start listing the bullet points of this is what happened and these are the facts. I think there needs to be some semblance of connection because from my experience, when people are communicated, when I'm expressing concern and you're responding to me with a list of facts, do I feel heard? Not necessarily. And I think that's partly where the communications becomes a really big challenge in a culture that's already broken. And then you get that level of communication.   Michael Sondermann: [00:18:43] So, you know, you and I've talked about this in the past, right? You and I, if my recollection is correct, worked on some of these kinds of responses. Look, here's part of the problem. Who are you, if you're a communications person - so I'll speak to you and I'll speak to those people in your audience who are part of communications - I think that people who work in an organization where an event happens and let's say it becomes public, they would read a holding statement. Uh, and they would call bullshit on it regardless of the content of it.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:27] Absolutely.   Michael Sondermann: [00:19:27] But, and then, you know, so many holding statements or the, 'I'm sorry, but we can't comment on matters before the courts or in litigation' or something like that, 'We are aware of a complaint, we are working diligently', you know, whatever the statement is. But you hit the nose on the head or the, you hit something.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:47] Nail on the head? Nail on the head?   Michael Sondermann: [00:19:48] I'm not. I'm not into my idioms today. Um, listen, you had ultimately, you know, the way to have a really good workplace culture is to be empathetic all the time. Right? To understand that people in your organization would be different to you, they are allowed to think and feel differently about things so long as you're pulling in all the same direction. You really care about what your person's religion are or what their approach is to certain things. Right? Assuming those approaches are within workplace boundaries. But ultimately speaking, if you begin to create messages and crises without understanding that you're also communicating to those individuals in the crisis, you're missing the point, right? So too often what I find that communications professionals do wrong is they're communicating to the wider world without communicating to the people that are most impacted by what's...   Melanie Nicholson: [00:20:55] Absolutely. Because I think there's such a paranoia now about, well, I need to make sure that the wider world knows my holding statement. And there's more concern about that than let me talk to my person in the room and make sure they're okay and that they understand what's going on. And to me, that's become a huge problem from a communications perspective that's directly impacting these cultures.   Michael Sondermann: [00:21:20] Absolutely. And, you know, here's the problem that you, I think, and all other communication professionals know as well: You can be perfect in your communication and it's still misunderstood by people.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:32] I mean, that's the world we're living in. You live in a group of people and I say one sentence to ten people with the best of intentions and everyone's going to interpret it differently. And that's okay. It's just being open and understanding that that's going to happen.   Michael Sondermann: [00:21:46] Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is, you know, if you were to lead with a statement, for example, you know, 'Acme Widgets Corp puts safety and health of its employees before all else we are aware of' and then you go on to the rest right? Listen, if Acme investigates, does whatever they're going to do, and it doesn't go with what person ABC wants, person ABC will go, Well look at the crap that they're putting out, they don't really care anyway, right? So I think, so I think, you know, communicating - well, you know this - is almost impossible to communicate effectively to the right people. Not everybody is really happy about what they are being told. They're not happy with the outcome. You know, and you asked earlier about how do you repair culture? One of the more difficult things is when you go into a place where there's very little willingness based on unhappiness with change. Right? So, you know, one of the things that we have to be really attentive to is what is the willingness and the receptiveness of our audience.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:22:59] You mentioned change. How of all of the investigations and reparations that you have done, how often is change one of the root causes of strife in an organization? Where people just struggle with change, like does that come up a lot?   Michael Sondermann: [00:23:18] Yeah. Yeah, it does. And, um, you know, when I think it's a, for me anyway, what I've noticed is it's a little bit of an age-related and tenure-related thing that the older person has. The longer they've been in an organization, the more resistant they are to change and the more impactful change is on them. I think that younger people are a little bit more resilient in terms of change, largely because they drive so much of it. And I also think that younger generations are more comfortable living in a world of change, just simply because of the rate of change that they've experienced throughout the course of their lives, right? Whereas people...   Melanie Nicholson: [00:24:00] So different.   Michael Sondermann: [00:24:02] Sorry, people, you know, your older age, you know, it's a little bit slower back then. Right? And so, you know, I think that change is one of those fundamental things that people don't like. And there's a lot of elements to change, too, right? So is it, um, you know, we changed and I didn't get the job I should have gotten that I was entitled to? Is it oh my God, I'm worried about my job because of artificial intelligence? Is it change just because I just can't handle change at all? And you know, you're not at this point yet, but I'm going to tell you that, you know, once your kids become older and become adults, you know, this rate of change, you know, you become immersed in this rate of change and you can't escape the rate of change at work. And you're going home to deal with these teenagers and adults like just change all around you. And that's really stressful for some people. So it is the cause quite a bit of what we run into this as being root cause problems, of challenges to culture and workplaces.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:07] What can employers do right now if you were to give them 1 or 2 tangible things to do at their workplace so that they can avoid getting to the point where they need to have someone come in and investigate and rebuild? What is something that someone could do, change today, at their organization to rebuild a breaking culture?   Michael Sondermann: [00:25:33] So one of the things that I have been hugely impressed by is the number of leaders that I run across who aren't afraid to tackle that real issue and how many are not welcoming but are open to the possibility that some of this comes from them. Right? So first thing you should, well, the first thing you can do, ask your people what the problems are. Now, this is going to tell you a lot about your culture, because if you have no psychological safety, ain't no one telling you anything.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:26:15] I was just going to say, so if you get zero answers and everyone says things delightful, then you have a big problem?   Michael Sondermann: [00:26:23] Yeah, you have a huge problem. Listen, I think I have a way to develop this, right? Like, I think there's a way that you go and you resolve all of your problems, but it requires a lot of trust and faith in each other in an organization to do it. And one of the major ways that you do it is you put aside those prototypical job expectations that don't exist on paper in your job description. So no one at a company is expecting a boss to be bulletproof, genius, ascendant, flawless human being. No one expects their boss to know everything. So get rid of that. Open yourself up to the possibility that you have created some things or done some things that have prevented your organization from being where you want it to be. And then open up and ask the people in your place what the problems are. And more valuably, ask how they can be repaired. And in fact, you know, now that I said all of that, forget asking about what the problems are, just ask how they can be repaired, because everybody sort of knows what the problems are. Although some leaders don't, right, like if you know everybody's sort of on the same page, just say, listen, how are we going to get through this?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:28:05] And ultimately that's communicate with your people.   Michael Sondermann: [00:28:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm working with a client at the moment where things have gotten off the rails. So thankfully I'm working with people that have no ego, so they're like, We screwed up, I don't know how we got here. How do we get out? So what we're going to do, relatively small workgroup in a large organization, but it's nine people, so it's fairly substantial. I've done this with up to 117 people. We're going to spend a day and we're going to sit around a table and we're going to ask some very detailed, pointed questions. And what the leader has committed to doing is that the product at the end of those days is going to be the direction of that moving forward. So what have I just told you? I've just told you that the leader at the end of this - and the leader's taking part in this conversation, right, because everybody is an employee, everybody has the right to speak. The leader never has to get buy-in for this because it's the ten of them together that have created their future. Right? So, okay, everybody, what are the, where is the way forward? What are we going to do tomorrow and next week and then next month to fix where we're at, to improve where we're at? We're going to spend the day talking about this in a really collaborative way. They will co-create this future for themselves. You never once have to get buy-in. Right?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:29:54] That is amazing.   Michael Sondermann: [00:29:54] One of the strongest things that you can do. But in order to do that, a leader has to give up some control. Although I say to every leader, like I've been through this a lot, I've seen what workgroups come up with. Some really inventive kinds of things. Never have before has a group said, Well, we want the boss fired and we as a collective want to make every decision from here on in. Right? Everybody, everybody understands that boss is there for a purpose. Everybody understands, too, because we do some prep work to get them here, everybody understands, too, that there's an external environment around us that limits what we can do, creates that playing field at work. So we just can't say we need 64 more people. We can't conjure them out of thin air. So let's talk about what the playing field is, the boundaries of what we're doing, understand what's possible and in those boundaries co-create the vision for the future and what's the vision for the future? It's how do you want to be. It can be how you want it to be organized? How do you want to interact with each other? How do we, know what is the job function that each of us will do? And it's different for every engagement that I do because the problems are different every engagement. But you can sit down together as a collective and talk about this because ultimately your workplace is your workplace, regardless of what your rank is, what your title is, what your position is, and you should have the ability to contribute to that.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:31:29] And co-create a vision for the future. I love that so much. We started with when you get to a broken workplace, the mood. When you leave, and I know from talking to you some of these projects you're working on to support these companies are months and months and months, but when you reach a resolution and you get to that place of a repaired culture, what does it feel like, both for you and for the people there?   Michael Sondermann: [00:31:59] So, you know, it depends, right, completely on the workplace. But generally speaking, what you hear and what I can see, I can see the temperature in a room drop. So I had an engagement where when I walked in I sat in front of the staff and heard what the problems were. It was a little bit like I was sitting in a gale-force wind and I was getting blown backwards and it was 150 degrees in that room. It was so uncomfortable. When I walk in there now, it's normal conversation. And even those things that are super passionate about and really emotional about related to work, it's a completely different level. So you can have a palpable sense that the place is just different. Individuals will tell you that they are being heard for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time, that they feel valued. You see conversations happen between different levels of an organization that you weren't seeing before. So, you know, I tell leaders, if I'm coaching someone, for example, you know, you have to talk to your people. You have to talk to them all the time. And sort of a perfect work meeting is two thirds, one third - two thirds business, and then the other third let's talk about hockey, fishing, your kids, you know, flying to Spain, what's the cool things that you've done? Get to know them as individuals. I've walked into some places where, you know, the leaders sit on one side and staff sit on the other and never speak. And so what you begin to see is as the time goes on, they'll walk in together or they'll leave together.   Michael Sondermann: [00:33:55] And they're beginning to have those two thirds, one third conversations. And at the end of the day, what you'll see as a leader from this, are a whole host of things that you probably never would have thought that you would see in terms of being able to quantify. So you're going to get less time off, you're going to have less requests for sick leave, you're going to have fewer people booking off, you know, those days, you know, if you're in a union environment and everybody gets ten sick days, oftentimes what you're going to see is not everybody's taking ten. You're going to see a different approach to work. You're going to see people coming up with solutions on their own because they're going to talk to you about, and they feel safe about, coming up with alternatives. You're going to see that you are more productive. You are going to see that the people in your organization, if it's a workgroup in an organization, you're going to find out that you're easier to deal with, that you get along more seamlessly with those other work organizations. Your clients and your customers are going to see that you are easier to deal with because every day they're dealing with engaged people who feel valued in their jobs. And it doesn't matter what your job is, it doesn't matter what your job title is, people sense if they're dealing with people who are engaged. So those are some of the things that we see as we work with clients and customers. And, you know, we never go in there and say at the end of this, you will experience nirvana. We're not going to dance. We're not going to sing Kumbaya together. But you will see these small moves towards things. And they are small moves because as you said, you know, like some of our engagement are months or years, because very rarely do we get called in to fix something that just happened yesterday. Right?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:35:58] It's been simmering for years, probably.   Michael Sondermann: [00:36:00] Years. So one of the things that I say to leaders, you know, one of your jobs is to when you find out this is happening, is to stop. And if you haven't for five years, part of this is on you and you have to wear it. But, you know, if it's been simmering for five years, you can't change it in five days. Probably aren't going to change it in five months either. Right?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:36:27] But I think the key is that it's never too late to make a change of a culture. And I think that's what I hope people take away, is that we do not have to accept that the workplace is toxic and that's just the nature of the beast. I think we need to get out of that headspace because I've been there too, where we just all were like, Well, this is what it is, which is horrible. And now I look at it very different where it's, it didn't have to be that way. And change can start at any point. So I hope, um, employers can see that. Thank you so much for shining some insights onto this and to sharing some of your stories. And I hope people can take this information and apply it directly. So I really appreciate the conversation today.   Michael Sondermann: [00:37:17] You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Mel.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:37:21] Thank you, Michael, for joining us today. I think the biggest takeaway that employers need to hear from today is that it is not too late. If your culture feels broken or toxic and is struggling, it is not too late to make a change. Michael, thank you so much. I mentioned in the intro, if you're an employer and you haven't yet listened to our conversation with Jennifer Berard about trauma-informed workplaces, I highly recommend you tune into that episode as well. Thank you so much for listening. Please like, subscribe and consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We'll catch you next time on Its a Theory.

Thriving During Trying Times as a Doula with Lindsey Bowns

Melanie Nicholson is joined by Lindsey Bowns, owner of Adora Birth + Wellness and a certified doula, to talk about exactly what a doula is and what a doula does. Lindsey explains the original theory behind being a doula and why having one can be so helpful, as well as how she made her business thrive during the pandemic. Lindsey did not start her career in anything related to birth, she started in marketing for research and development. When she had a doula for her own birth, however, it was so impactful that, combined with the physiology and psychology knowledge she gained about birth, it moved her to change careers. Lindsey and Melanie discuss the impact having a doula can make, including reduction in caesareans, and how the information they give can help cut through all the conflicting pieces of advice available. Lindsey understands what is needed in a birthing situation, the emotional safety required as well as the physical safety, and throughout the conversation, a greater understanding and admiration for the work of doulas is fostered. “You know, even we as doulas say and feel that we need to be doula'd through things because when you are in the medical world and when you are mired in the feelings that come with all these big changes that are happening to you or to your person or to your family, you get so deep in the emotional side and thinking about how it's going to change your life that it can be really hard to navigate. So to have a person in your scenario who can be a guidepost as to making care decisions, knowing all your options, presenting you with additional information that could improve things, I would highly recommend taking advantage of that in whatever form you can access it.” - Lindsey Bowns About Lindsey Bowns Lindsey Bowns is a Certified Doula and Birth Photographer in Calgary. She's also a girl-mom, a self-proclaimed sour candy sommelier, and a sweat-enthusiast. Need proof? She wore running shoes during her own labor, WITH her hospital gown!  Her excitement about birth, parenthood, and genuine friendships led her to doula work in 2019. Her modern, judgement-free outlook makes her feel like a safe place to land as your friend who is cool with discussing placentas during pedicures and breastfeeding over brunch. — Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.  * Website: MelanieLynnCommunications.com [https://www.melanielynncommunications.com] * Instagram: MLCSocial [https://www.instagram.com/mlcsocial/] * Twitter: MLCSocial [https://twitter.com/mlcsocial] * Facebook: MLCSocial [https://www.facebook.com/mlcsocial/] * Email: info@melanielynncommunications.com [info@melanielynncommunications.com] Contact Lindsey Bowns | Adora Birth + Wellness * Website [https://www.adorabirthandwellness.com/] * Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/adoreyourbirth/] * Twitter [https://twitter.com/adoreyourbirth] * LinkedIn [https://www.facebook.com/adorabirthandwellness] * Facebook [https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseybowns/] __ Transcript Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Welcome to It's a Theory. I'm your host, Melanie Nicholson, and I love hearing about entrepreneurs who are not only building a business, but also making waves in an industry as well. Which is why I wanted to talk to Lindsey Bowns, the owner of Adora Birth and Wellness. Lindsey is a certified doula and birth photographer in Calgary. She's also a girl mom, a self-proclaimed sour candy sommelier and a sweat enthusiast. Need proof? She wore running shoes during her own labor with her hospital gown. Lindsey's excitement about birth, parenthood and genuine friendships led her to doula work in 2019. She's built a massive following on Instagram with a modern judgment-free approach to birth and babies and the whole space. Today, we're diving into the original theory behind being a doula. Why it matters and how Lindsey's working to change the game, all through a pandemic, no less. Let's talk. Uh, Lindsey, welcome to the podcast.   Lindsey Bowns: [00:01:07] Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:09] I'm so excited to have you here. I have known Lindsey a very long time. We'll tell you a bit about our cross-parallel stories as we go through this conversation. I want to start, we're talking about the theory behind being a doula, why it matters, some of the work Lindsey's done there. But I do want to start, for people who do not know, what is a doula? Especially when you think about doulas and midwives and the different pregnant support people. What is a doula?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:01:39] In its simplest form, the word doula is of Greek origin and it means one who serves or a woman who serves, so in the context of birth and postpartum, now, obviously that can cover a wide range of topics, and so I like to relate it back to being like a concierge, for myself, more so birth, pregnancy and birth, providing information, providing referrals to practitioners, suggesting things to buy or not buy, helping you with decision making, anything that is feeling mentally taxing on you during your pregnancy or birth experience is something that I would be able to help you with.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:02:19] How did you get there? You were in marketing?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:02:22] I was.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:02:23] In post-secondary, in research and development. How do you go from that space to being a doula?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:02:30] Yeah, that's a great question. And I think before the time of being in marketing, there was always something that resonated with me about physicality. And, you know, I had different aspirations of getting into chiropractic or massage therapy kinesiology. And so that was always in the back of my mind. And then as part of my own birth experience, I had a doula. This was very impactful to my birth story. And between putting together kind of that physiology and psychology knowledge about my birth, as well as working with a doula and knowing how that impacted my story, it made sense to pair those two things together and be able to give this back to other people.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:15] I want to talk about that for a second. You and I were pregnant at the same time. Our children are three weeks apart. You had a doula. I did not. The amount of misinformation, confusion, mixed messages, it is exhausting and it is stressful. I remember one day over the course of four hours, I had two different doctor's appointments because I had two different clinics. That's a whole other story. But in the space of four hours, one of them told me that my weight was too high and one of them told me my weight was too low and they gave over, the whole doctor's appointments, each of them were so contradictory. And so I came home and, well, I stopped and bought cookies on the way home because I was sad about life and I was confused and I was overwhelmed. And I felt like that the whole pregnancy, it can be a very overwhelming experience. Is that where you can come in and help? Like, is that part of where you help that?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:04:15] Absolutely. You know, Dr. Google provides us so much information but also gives us so much incorrect information or leads us down these paths with mommy bloggers and mom Facebook groups and these places that can give us poor information or make us feel bad about ourselves or can validate misinformation that we've already received. You know, from your doctor's appointment, you probably could have gone online and researched that, oh, you were underweight or you were overweight and that wouldn't have left you in any better of a place. So I always recommend to my clients that instead of Dr. Googling and going down the rabbit hole, they reach out to me and we start in a place of evidence and also start in a place of uncovering their feelings about any given topic. Something that was so impactful to my birth experience was that when certain interventions were recommended to me, rather than respond immediately with a like, Oh, that's too bad, or Oh, that's great news, my doula's first response was to say, okay, well how do you feel about that? And that would always recenter me on okay, how do I feel about that? What do I even know about this to shape my feelings about it? And lots of times we haven't even had space to think about that because people start layering on us like, Oh, that's unfortunate. Oh, that happened to me and it was fine. People are putting a tint on the information that we're receiving. So to be able to pull it back and go, okay, what does this mean to me? And is it problematic and something that I want to rectify or like apply some kind of change to, or is it something that I'm happy about, or happy to sit with, that can change things?   Melanie Nicholson: [00:06:00] What do most people get wrong about doulas and the entire profession?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:06:05] I think the most common misconception is that we are pregnancy care providers, that we are someone who comes in place of a midwife and that we provide medical care in the birth space. We do not. You would still have a medical care provider, a doctor, an OB-GYN or a midwife, looking after the medical, the safety aspects of your pregnancy. Is baby safe on the inside? How is their heart rate? How's your heart rate? Blood pressure, rashes, nausea, morning sickness, all these things that come up during pregnancy, they're there for that. We are there for the social, emotional side and more of the logistical learnings that will play into your birth experience and afterwards.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:06:51] But you're still really focused on science and research. And that's one of the things I really want to talk to you about in terms of how you're really changing the narrative around being a doula that, yes, it's that social emotional support, but you have built a business, mostly using Instagram, with science and research at the foundation. What does that look like and was that strategic or was that accidental, how you made that leap?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:07:17] I think it was a little bit strategic in that it is very easy to find that misinformation and be peppered with that. And so to make it equally as easy to find the good information was important to me. To make it bite-sized and accessible, easy to understand. I also find, and maybe you had found as part of your pregnancy as well, that when we go to these medical appointments, people like to talk to us as if we're from the medical field or as if we're doctors. And so they use a lot of jargon. They often don't throw around even the backstory or the statistics. They just give you the recommendation. And because it's coming from a medical practitioner, you're supposed to resonate with that and go like, Oh yeah, of course. And as much as we trust doctors, midwives, care providers, when that information is being thrown at us and on us, as opposed to having a chance to kind of distill it within your own mind and body and go, Yeah, that makes sense, it doesn't feel the same. And so part of me putting out this evidence-based information was to give people that time and space to go through the decision-making or the information understanding process and get to that same point of, Yeah, that makes sense and I agree.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:08:48] One of the things you've talked about quite frequently that I've seen over the last several years is the ability of doulas to reduce cesarean sections, and the percentages are quite high. How does that work? What, how does the support of a doula actually reduce caesareans? Because caesareans, if I recall, are one of the top surgery, the most practiced surgery in our province in Alberta. So how does having a doula reduce that?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:09:14] We can take it quite far back into conversations prenatally about things that are going to come up as part of your birth experience. I have many clients who come to me around that 30 week time frame saying, Well, my doctor says that from the ultrasound, my baby is looking really big. We should schedule an induction or we should schedule a caesarean to make sure that baby doesn't get too big and have an easier birth experience. And the evidence just doesn't necessarily support interventions in that way or through that kind of prescriptive method. And so when we can take it back to, okay, well, the evidence says that if we do X, well, then Y and then Z, and it may lead us - that early, early induction for a big baby - may lead us towards a cesarean. There are things like that that in understanding the evidence and slowing down that decision-making process, giving you latitude to feel like you can say, well, could we wait a few extra weeks to see if I spontaneously go into labor? What actually is the risk of me not being able to birth such a big baby when we can slow that down? That in itself can help us avoid interventions and reduce caesareans. And I think not all doulas have an equal understanding of the physiology of birth, but for those who have kind of a more advanced understanding of physiology and birth positioning, our application of different positions in Labor can make Labor easier and have baby in a better position to be able to exit the traditional way and not through the sunroof. So that is another way that we can support a reduction of caesareans.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:10:55] You launched your business. You had, what? A year under your belt? Maybe two. And then it was a pandemic.   Lindsey Bowns: [00:11:01] Even less, actually. I took my doula training just one year before COVID hit, and I had about three births under my belt before COVID.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:11:11] So they closed hospitals. Extra support staff aren't allowed in. Let's talk about that. I mean, we're talking about implementing ideas. You've got this idea, you've got this business plan and you're ready to roll with it. And three births later, the world shifts, especially when it comes to healthcare access. What was that experience like for you and how did you, not to overuse the word pivot, but how did you pivot your way into being able to continue to provide support in a different way?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:11:41] Yeah. You know, when I launched my business, obviously ahead of COVID and with no context of how that was going to change things, my underlying idea of how this was going to be successful, having a background in marketing and sales a little bit, was that I was going to make this successful by winning the Internet. And once COVID hit, that still was at the core of my business because now everything was on the Internet. So my best play was still to win the Internet, to be the best information, to be the most up-to-date information, the most up-to-the-minute, easily accessible. That was my play. And so when everything shut down, people, everybody was panicked, obviously, we have all felt that sense of panic out of restriction and the grief and loss that came with that. But especially people who are pregnant, they were so fearful for how that was going to change their birth experience. Were they going to be separated from their birth partner, their baby? Were they going to be forced to give birth at home because they had a sore throat? So to be able to take the information we had at the time and be so easily accessible when all people were doing was being tethered to their phone or a screen, and marry that together, that was where we went.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:02] And you walked a very fine line, I would say, in the political sphere during COVID, because the politics was heavy, both nationally, provincially, locally. Everyone was dealing with it in different ways. We had vaccine mandates. There was different perspectives, different opinions. You were trying, and we watched it, walk a very fine line. How do you navigate that? Are you happy with how you navigated that in terms of subtly calling people out? Did you directly call people out? Did you, where did you land there? And how did you, do you feel about where you ended up?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:13:43] Yeah. You know, I think the most direct calling out that I did was actually a bit of an anti-calling out. It was the calling out of the people who were laying judgment upon the other side in one way or another. Part of my methodology in helping people access good quality information, even when the answer is maybe what they don't want to hear, is with kindness and understanding of where they are currently at. And so, for example, when the labor and delivery unit at Rocky View Hospital was exposed due to some visitors like Labor support people coming in knowing that they were COVID-positive and not disclosing that information so that they could come in, rather than just shame that perspective on social media, I actually came out and did a video and presented the other perspective of like, okay, well, you need to put yourself in the shoes of this person who was going to leave their birth partner behind. They were going to miss the birth of possibly their only baby. And it didn't really matter what the risk was to the unit. These are the things that they were feeling, and it doesn't justify their actions, but if you put yourself in their shoes, how does that feel? We can understand maybe why that happened. And so it was always with this overarching leading with kindness and an understanding of the other perspective or allowing you to feel like this complexity of where you were at, Oh, I feel like I'm scared to get vaccinated, but I want to do it because I know it's the right thing, but I'm still scared and I'm stuck in that tug of war. There was a lot of that with respect to who should I see, where should I go, what kind of risk should I take or should I not take? So meeting people where they were at in terms of those big feelings.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:15:45] It's almost like we've lost, as a society, a level of empathy for pregnancy and for mom, because the mother before, who's been through it, and the mother over here who's been through it, and grandma's done it and I gave birth to ten times and over here... and so it's if someone is struggling and if someone isn't sure or feeling emotional, is that fair to say? Like, are you running into that? Like is empathy harder to come by these days?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:16:16] I would say that it is. And there's often this element of smoothing over. I see it in labor rooms all the time that, oh, healthy mom, healthy baby. Oh, I know this isn't what you wanted, but it's the safest choice. I know this isn't what you wanted, but you're okay. It'll be okay. And there's this acknowledgment of what is to come and how that is a negative and how it's not maybe what we wanted, but it must be a good thing, a fine thing, because it's going to lead us to a safe outcome. But physically safe is not the only factor. There's this psychologically safe and emotionally safe perspective as well. So that's also where a doula comes into play, is being the person to be able to slow that down and bring the empathy of what you're feeling in this moment. I very often send clients who have gone as far as getting fully dilated, they push for 2 or 3 hours and we decide that baby is just not coming, maybe we should go to a C-section, I very often send them out of the room with a hug and a like, This sucks and it's okay to feel like it sucks and you're going to be happy to meet your baby. Of course you are. And you're going to be happy that they're safe. But you can also feel disappointed at the way that that went down. So to not just smooth that over and like, yeah, but we have a healthy mom, healthy baby. So you had a successful birth experience.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:17:45] 100%. And I mean, you've been vocal about choice. I think choice is so important. And obviously safety does come to play. And I think making sure mothers know they have choices when it comes to their birth. And I know you're there to help advocate for them. Have you experienced moments where a mom was not listened to when it was safe to continue the direction they were going? Do you run into that? Is it, are we seeing that in certain pockets? What does that look like?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:18:17] I think what more often we see is people being sort of subtly shamed for the choices they have already made. Times that we go to the hospital and someone gives them like a, oh, you know, you're 41 weeks and 6 days. Like, why didn't we see you a week ago for an induction? Oh, well, you're so late-term and there's meconium in your amniotic fluid, of course there is. Maybe we should have come in a little earlier. Next baby maybe we come in for an induction. Next baby, if you haven't had them by 39 and 5. So again, that leads into that smoothing over of feelings of, Well, but we're here now and we're safe. And you should be grateful that we're safe with no acknowledgment of the feelings that led them to make those choices.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:11] Where do you go from here when you think about what you've built so far? I mean, you've built this huge following on Instagram. You've got a very well-respected client base. People come back to you because of their experience the first time around. So where do you go and what does success look like for you in this industry?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:19:32] Yeah, I am in such a privileged position to be fully booked and I don't really have to fight for clients or do much advertising anymore. So that leaves me in a place where obviously I am happy and excited to continue coming back and just doing the work of going to births. But it also gives me more capacity to share the role of a doula with other families. I'm on the board of the Doula Association of Alberta and as part of this position, have taken a closer role with Alberta Health Services in the integration of doulas within their world. And I think there's space for that to happen more on a provincial, on a national level as well. I'd love to pursue some conversations with more insurance companies about having doula services covered. I'd love to pursue conversations about setting up grants or foundations to be able to provide these services to more people who could really use them. Through my training organization, one of the tenets that we have agreed to as being certified doulas is a doula for every person who wants one and I think a doula is still very much, in this time and space and economy of where we are right now today, a luxury service. There are many people who land in my DMS on Instagram saying I would love to work with you, but I just can't afford it. And from the perspective of someone who will, you know, rub your back and take your picture, of course, that's more of a luxury, but from the perspective of someone who can help your birth be more physiological, who can reduce your risk of cesarean by up to 30%, who is associated with better statistical health and psychological wellness of both mom and baby, that feels like something that we should, we as a society should be able to provide to more people. And so I think that is part of my upcoming trajectory, is figuring out how I can make that a reality.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:42] Access.    Lindsey Bowns: [00:21:44] Absolutely.    Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:45] 100%. I love it. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we go?   Lindsey Bowns: [00:21:49] I think just for anyone who is new to the world of birth or even the world of health care, if you're pursuing some kind of personal issue for yourself or your family that feels complex, I would recommend reaching out to a doula or finding some sort of family support advocate who can help slow things down for you in that process. You know, even we as doulas say and feel that we need to be doula'd through things because when you are in the medical world and when you are mired in the feelings that come with all these big changes that are happening to you or to your person or to your family, you get so deep in the emotional side and thinking about how it's going to change your life that it can be really hard to navigate. So to have a person in your scenario who can be a guidepost as to making care decisions, knowing all your options, presenting you with additional information that could improve things, I would highly recommend taking advantage of that in whatever form you can access it.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:23:05] Thank you so much for being part of the conversation today.   Lindsey Bowns: [00:23:08] Thanks for having me.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:23:13] I love hearing how people are taking science and research and applying them into a business space, how they're walking a fine line from a political space, how they are continuing to push through and find different ways. I love Lindsey's focus on empathy and accessibility and really, where do we go from here? Huge thank you to Lindsey Bowns for joining us today. Thank you for listening. Please like subscribe and consider giving us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Catch you next time on It's a Theory.

Setting Up Families For Success with Krista Flint

Krista Flint, Executive Director of Highbanks Society, joins host Melanie Nicholson to talk about how organizations can break the cycle of trauma. Krista speaks about how the research-based model of Highbanks works through education, community support, and the deep dive of staff members in supporting young mothers. Krista notes that Highbanks Society operates differently from traditional nonprofits in the sector due in part to the deep dive of ongoing involvement in family care. Education is a focus in Highbanks because they are ultimately working to break the cycle of trauma and poverty for future generations. Krista and Melanie discuss how Highbanks’ focus on research and academic undergirding gives a very real learning base from which to pivot their model if change is needed. They address how breaking the cycle is effective, the fundraising that Krista spearheads to maintain Highbanks, how leaders who hire for brilliance in others realize success, and the ways in which Krista envisions Highbanks growing. This conversation illuminates how a community-minded approach to support and education with young families can break cycles of trauma and give fresh starts to those in need. “Many of our families come from, you know, situations where there is no consistency, there is no predictability. And so the very sort of bottom line of our model is the provision of emotionally corrective experiences in real-time. So consistency, predictability, those are important. … What happens is it's that daily provision of those experiences.” - Krista Flint About Krista Flint Krista Flint has spent 25 years in the field of asset-based community development and non-profit culture. She is a mom, an advocate, a writer, and a thankful participant in the non-profit community in Canada. She has served as  Executive Director at The Canadian Down Syndrome Society and at Calgary Alternative Support Services, and as Manager of Social Marketing at The Developmental Disabilities Resource Centre. Krista has extensive experience in curriculum creation and facilitation and has created models and workshops for training in the areas of Social Marketing, Social Justice, New Parent Training, and the Power Differential Evidenced in Paid Service Delivery Models. Krista has worked with non-profit organizations across North America to help them create strategic plans, conceptualize civic and economic goals, and has become innately successful uncovering and illuminating the social capital that exists in human service when combined with a compelling narrative.  She is widely published in the non-profit and mainstream literature, and is a founding member of The Belonging Initiative, a pan-Canadian initiative, which seeks to eliminate isolation and loneliness in the lives of Canadians who are often marginalized and face systemic barriers to an authentic community life. Krista has 3 “grownish” boys Oliver, Simon and Charlie – she believes they are the most creative thing she has ever done. She loves watching them blossom into citizens who understand their responsibility to each other, to their communities and to the world at large. __ Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.  * Website: MelanieLynnCommunications.com [https://www.melanielynncommunications.com] * Instagram: MLCSocial [https://www.instagram.com/mlcsocial/] * Twitter: MLCSocial [https://twitter.com/mlcsocial] * Facebook: MLCSocial [https://www.facebook.com/mlcsocial/] * Email: info@melanielynncommunications.com [info@melanielynncommunications.com] Contact Krista Flint * Krista Flint on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/krista-flint-325022b/] * Highbanks Society [https://highbankssociety.ca/] * Highbanks Society on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/highbankssociety/] * Canadian Down Syndrome Society [https://cdss.ca/] __ Transcript Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Hey, everyone, and welcome to It's a Theory. I'm Melanie Nicholson, and I'm taking you inside the world of leaders and entrepreneurs who are taking ideas and concepts and putting them into action. What really happened when they put theory into practice? Let's find out. Today we're talking everything from failing fast to staying motivated through periods of growth and transformation. Our guest today is Krista Flint, the executive director of the Highbanks Society. Krista has spent 25 years in the field of asset-based community development and nonprofit culture. She's a mom, an advocate, a writer, and a thankful participant in the nonprofit community in Canada. She has served as executive director at the Canadian Down Syndrome Society and at Calgary Alternative Support Services and as manager of social marketing at the Developmental Disabilities Resource Center. Krista has extensive experience in curriculum creation and facilitation and has created models and workshops for training in the areas of social marketing, social justice, new parent training and the power differential evidenced in paid service delivery models. Krista has worked with nonprofits across North America to help them create strategic plans, conceptualize civic and economic goals, and has become innately successful in covering and illuminating the social capital that exists in human service when combined with a compelling narrative. She is widely published in the nonprofit and mainstream literature and is a founding member of the Belonging Initiative, a pan-Canadian initiative which seeks to eliminate isolation and loneliness in the lives of Canadians who are often marginalized and face systemic barriers to an authentic community life. Let's talk to Krista. Krista, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.   Krista Flint: [00:01:50] Thank you for having me.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:51] I would like if you could start by telling us about Highbanks. What is Highbanks? Why are you here? And a little bit about the story.   Krista Flint: [00:02:01] Sure. So we actually are 20 years old this year. And we're a small organization. So we're kind of, we've kind of hit our light under a bushel for quite some time. And I think that's changing now. Our organization serves young mothers, pregnant and parenting young women between the ages of 16 and 24 who are leaving situations of violence, poverty and homelessness. And I think what's super unique about our program is that all of our mothers have to be enrolled in school in order to qualify for our program. And that's really because we know that ongoing education is the single greatest determining factor for long-term socioeconomic success. So at Highbanks, we are sort of interrupting that intergenerational cycle of trauma because all of our moms come - certainly in early in life pregnancy is trauma in and of itself - but all of our mothers, you know, again, have additional and pretty deeply wounding trauma as well. So we're currently serving 17 families. We provide them residential support. So we have 17 units, five of which are on-site at our West Hillhurst Sunnyside Building, which we're right with Dairy Lane there. And the other 12 are located in housing developments through our partners like Norfolk, Calgary Housing and Horizon Housing.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:17] And the school thing is interesting to me because in the past, I guess my question is, was the automatic if a young lady got pregnant, then they just drop out of school. And then was that really the first step that always happened?   Krista Flint: [00:03:32] So often and certainly 20 years ago when we first started, and our founder, Bette Mitchell, and her husband, Dr. Phil Mitchell, really sort of conceptualized this program. There was an education program for pregnant and parenting teens, and that is Louise Dene School. So Louise Dene School is it houses the pregnant and parenting program for the Calgary Board of Ed, so it's a public school program and it's located about six blocks from us, which is really sort of helpful. So that has existed for quite some time. But it meant that young mothers who wanted to continue with their education either, you know, felt compelled to or were routed to that particular school. And that's why we're located where we are now.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:04:17] So we're talking about theories. We're talking about taking concepts into execution. Can you talk about the original? I mean, you've touched on it a bit, but what does that look like in terms of actually executing that intergenerational, that break in the cycle in terms of providing that care and support? And where do these girls end up?   Krista Flint: [00:04:39] That's exactly what we're doing. We're working with cycle breakers. You know, we often say to our moms, you know, it stops with you. So, you know, many of our families identify as Indigenous, for example. Those young women, their parents are often folks who are part of the 60s scoop in Canada. And their grandparents actually very often were part of the residential school system that was really in, you know, functioning fully up until 1979 in this country. When we talk about sort of cycle breakers and this theory, our theory was if we help families ensure that their basic needs are met so they have a safe place to live, that they know that there's going to be enough to eat for them and their child, that then we could free up sort of that brain space that they had to focus on, you know, the more, you know, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it sort of helps them focus on education and self-actualization and who they're going to be in the world and that role that they're going to play. So that's really sort of the theory is if we take care of the bottom part of that pyramid and we then provide support to families that include psychological services, then we will be in fact creating that pathway, that change in trajectory for them and that then these young mothers, and more importantly, their children will not be on the social services safety net in the long term. It's certainly important from a social justice standpoint, and it's the right thing to do, but it's also the economically savvy thing to do as a community, to invest in these young lives so that they can become taxpayers and renters and homeowners and contribute economically to community, which is what we want.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:06:19] What was the most surprising thing to you or the biggest challenge that you ran into? Sort of if you think about those early days that forced you to pivot a bit and think differently.   Krista Flint: [00:06:31] Yeah. So I started - I've been at Highbanks for five years - and when I started they had had this already, this really wonderful history of interrupting that intergenerational cycle of trauma. But it was really based on sort of the goodwill and the personality and some of the values of our founding, our founder, Bette Mitchell, and her family, which thankfully, you know, that it did because we've been able to sort of pull that stuff forward. But there was a real lack of sort of research foundation to what we were doing. So we knew it was working because we had these great outcomes and we'd started to track them. But there was very little connection between what we were doing and sort of the academic undergirding of the program. So we created an actual model that connects all the things and it's called Moving The Fulcrum. And that was really our theory, and that's based in the notion of brain science and the traumatized brain. And so we're trying to put more weight or more emphasis on the positive experiences, even if they're few and far between, than the negative experiences, which often are sort of, you know, unbelievably and so many of them. Right? So for me, I guess the biggest surprise was when we started to create this academic undergirding. And we started to really think about the ways in which we were supporting families. All of the academic studies supported what was happening. And so there was this natural alignment as I say, like, we are not a faith-based organization. There's lots of great organizations that are and do wonderful work in this in this sector. That's not us. We want it to be based on research, peer-reviewed, double-blind empirical studies about what interventions worked in the long term. And that's where we came up with the notion of Moving The Fulcrum. And when I started, Highbanks had been through a huge transition. And so most of the folks who had been working there left about the time that I was hired. And so I got to build a team and we got to sort of suspend things and spend time creating the actual model. And I'm not sure that had happened before in Highbanks history.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:08:33] So when you look at that model in terms of the execution of it, is it a time-based model? Is it okay we reevaluate every year or two? Is it a... What do you, I mean, you're dealing with families. So how do you model, how do you manage the model?   Krista Flint: [00:08:51] First and foremost, we are a learning organization. The studies and the research around this information, these trauma-informed interventions, there's so much of it right now. It's very, very sexy in the sector. Everybody's talking about trauma-informed this and that. It's like drinking from a fire hose. So while we were creating this model, we started with the notion that it had to be fluid. And as the research changed and we learned new things about what working with this vulnerable population would look like, we had to be prepared to pivot, to be nimble, to be like, okay, we're going to stop doing that because the research says this is more effective in the long term. So before we even got to sort of creating the real foundation around it, we decided that it was going to be fluid and that we would constantly reevaluate everything from policies and procedures to the actual day-to-day case management and crisis intervention and support that we did for families. So that was really important. And before we created the actual 'this is what we should do' in order to support families, we spent some time thinking about what our guiding principles were. And so what's great about that is we have these 13 statements about the work and the young women we support and their children that capture for us, you know, the broader notion of the importance of the giftedness that these families have to bring to community. And so now even if we get down in the weeds, we can say, okay, is this getting us towards some of those principles that we originally said? And if the answer is no, then we stop and we pivot because it is easy to get down in the weeds on a daily basis with our families, as you can imagine.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:10:27] Yeah. And I was just going to say, how do you stay, how do you and your team stay motivated through that? I mean, change is good. Change is so important, but change can also be exhausting when it's constant and constantly, every day and every hour, it's this reevaluation. How do you keep motivated through change like that?   Krista Flint: [00:10:49] You know, I think for us, we learned a long time ago that change was in our DNA, that, you know, we were being called upon to walk in the lives of these young women and their children and that we were sort of bearing witness to nothing but change. And so the idea is that if we expect that level of change within the families that we support, then it behooves us to also be prepared to make those changes as we learn more. I think the problem often with organizations, especially larger organizations, is we get really tied up in bureaucracy and policy and do we have enough insurance to drive mom to her doctor's appointment? We learn very quickly that we didn't want to be that, we wanted one of our principles is whatever it takes, which is not easy on a daily basis, but it works. And we are also, you know, we are a, you know, we do a deep dive with families. So in other sectors, you know, case management or caseloads might be like 35 to 60 per staff member. We don't do that. We do such a deep dive with families that each of my team, my family support team, they have sort of six people that they work with and that really works. It really sort of works. We teach and build new skills through the development of relationships.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:12:04] Because you're giving them essentially a structure, a social support structure that they would maybe have never had before.   Krista Flint: [00:12:11] Yeah, you're not wrong. Many of our families come from, you know, situations where there is no consistency, there is no predictability. And so the very sort of bottom line of our model is the provision of emotionally corrective experiences in real-time. So consistency, predictability, those are important. And it's not these great big changes that we see happen that all of a sudden, you know, there's this monumental change in their experience. What happens is it's that daily provision of those experiences. So how was your math test? Smelling food when you come into our building, right, on our programming nights. Having, when we appoint apartments for our families, having four plates and four bowls that match, now, you know, they are from Canadian Tire, but they match.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:12:59] And that seems so simple to me. But is that so profound for someone?   Krista Flint: [00:13:06] It is, especially if you've never had a space of your own before.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:13:09] With matching dishes.   Krista Flint: [00:13:11] And everything we do, we try to be really deliberate. So when we have an opportunity to connect with a family on a number of different levels, we are very deliberate about it. So everything we do from the way we speak to the way that we connect with families to the way we appoint their apartments, to how our building smells, sounds, looks... We try to take advantage as one more opportunity to demonstrate the investment that we know that these families are worthy of, and these young women are worthy of, and for many of them, it is the very first time in their entire lives that anybody has connected with them on that level and said, We see you and we're glad you're here and you have an important contribution to make. It's not sexy. It's slow and it's dogged, you know, and sometimes you say, how is your math test? And they don't answer. You know.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:14:03] It sounds like a teenager.   Krista Flint: [00:14:05] Right? But we're there the next day. We're going to ask the same question and we're going to fuss over your baby because fussing over your baby is really, again, fussing over you.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:14:15] And then where have you seen, what have been some of the wins that you've seen then? How profound is it for you then, after providing this level of support and care and resilience building for a young mother to see them graduate, to see them, like, how does that, that must feel amazing.   Krista Flint: [00:14:36] It does. And again, our job is to, you know, I'm not the face or the voice of this organization. It's the greatest privilege in the world to be able to position our young mothers to tell their own story. So there's therapeutic and clinical benefits to being the protagonist in your own story. One of the things that we get to do for families who have an interest in this is position them to tell their own stories to other people. Whether that's other young mothers that are coming along sort of behind them or it's to donors or other members of the community that we're trying to advocate with to change policy. So we have one particular mom who got pregnant when she was 14. We really can't serve a young mom until they're 16 because of the rules around the Residential Tenancy Act in Alberta. But she came to us the day that she turned 16 with this one year old, and she lived on-site for a while and then moved off-site and finished her secondary school through Louise Dean and then went on to do Mount Royal University and just graduated with a degree in physical literacy and not for profit management. I tried to talk her out of it, but so, you know, those are the wins and sometimes - so that's a big win and we get to have a grad and we get to, you know, all of that.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:16:01] Demonstrating the cycle break because she now will go on to do amazing things and her kid gets to watch that.   Krista Flint: [00:16:08] Exactly. Exactly. So that's an important one. But some of the other ones are just, they're smaller and you don't really notice until, you know, sometime down the road to be able to say, oh, that's what was happening then. And, you know, when families first come to us, you know, they often come from situations where they're not sure that there's going to be enough to eat, for example. And so we have like a shared pantry in our main space and our fridge. And I can see sometimes because many of our, all of our, community spaces are we have video surveillance in our community, of course, not in their apartments, but we do that because many women are leaving situations of intimate partner violence, so we're a secure facility. But we will often see women coming downstairs in the middle of the night and filling their arms with canned goods and dried pasta to take up to their apartments and I think, okay, like that's fine because, but here's the thing. Everything in there is yours. You don't have to take it like just come down and take what you need.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:17:05] You don't have to come at two in the morning, you can come at 10 AM.   Krista Flint: [00:17:08] Exactly. But that to me demonstrates this change from a real scarcity paradigm that almost all of our moms have lived with. Whether that's emotional scarcity, connective scarcity, food and basic needs scarcity. But this idea that my life is so chaotic, I don't know what's coming next. I need to make sure that I'm holding on to everything so tightly, to an abundance paradigm, which is what we're trying to create with and for our families. There is enough and there's very little we can't do to help you. What do you need? A couch. We can help you with that, you know? And there's four plates and four glasses that match in your apartment. So it takes a long time for families to feel safe when they first come to us. And that's our job one, when they come to us, before anything else, is to make sure they feel safe.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:17:55] You mentioned donors. How do you connect with donors when you're talking about what some would say is stigmatized?   Krista Flint: [00:18:03] Oh, absolutely.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:18:04] I mean, you're talking about young, pregnant mothers. How do you make that connection and help people understand and get them to understand the theory behind what you're doing?   Krista Flint: [00:18:17] Well, it's not easy because it's a complex issue. You know, it doesn't exactly go on a billboard very well, you know, but for the most part, we don't receive government funding. So we currently have just received a very small grant through family and community social services, which is essentially the province. We're very grateful for that. But 90% of our funding comes from private fundraising. And so we've got a couple of ways that we go about it. We have our Standing Among Sisters Circle that we're very proud of. What we've tried to do is connect with women, primarily, in the community who have a bit of a shared experience with some of our families. So it could be a woman who has experienced an early in life pregnancy who's gone on to become a leader in community. Or it could be another, a different kind of a leader in community, a female, like a woman who has overcome some really significant obstacles. We find that connecting with those women and having them see the value of our work is not very difficult because for the most part they get it because they've been there. But the private and the fundraising, it's a hustle, right? I find the challenge of my role as CEO is because we're so small and we're so nimble, I do things like empty the dishwasher and, you know, change diapers. And I love that. I wouldn't want it any other way. Except that a certain amount of my time has to be devoted to simply telling our story and creating that support in community for it and the interventions that we provide. So I feel it's hard. We are at that moving from a grassroots sort of organization to an organization that has a bit more influence in the sector and can support more families. And as you know, that change from being very small and grassroots to occupying a different space in the sector is wrought with challenges.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:20:00] Talk more about that. What is that? I mean, that's, you've mentioned you're at 17 families now. You're navigating a very big period of growth. So what, how do you do that? How do you navigate that?   Krista Flint: [00:20:12] One of the big things that we do that we found to be most successful is when we're looking at our team and the folks that I have the tremendous privilege of working with every day. First of all, I need to hire people who are smarter than me and surround myself with folks that have a whole host of skills and giftedness. When I think good leaders realize that they don't have to be able to do everybody's job, we just have to be able to recognize sort of brilliance in other people and help position them in a place where they can bring that brilliance to bear every day. We hire for culture, we hire for fit. You don't have to be a mother to understand this work, but you do have to have a sense of sort of nurturing. And, you know, if you can't answer the phone with a baby on your hip, then we're probably not the right organization for you. This is where sort of those 13 cultural touchpoints became really, really important for us. You know, we believe women, which is also something that, you know, it's not my job or my organization's job to investigate the situations that family comes from. We believe them. Whatever they tell us, we believe them. We also, like, we don't stand in our job descriptions, which I think is really important in organizations.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:22] Which people get stuck on a lot.   Krista Flint: [00:21:24] Yeah. We've also invested in some real giftedness in terms of our marketing and communications. We have just recently in the last four months, hired a brilliant young woman who is doing our marketing and communications and has really sort of harnessed the power of social media. You know, I'm, it's not my giftedness. You know, I have really no business doing that. And I did it for a while and it was not good. So, you know, we've learned that the investment in certain parts of our work that maybe we're not as familiar with in our history have become more and more important. And we've gotten more and more comfortable with investing in those kinds of things because we have the outcomes to support it. So fully 86% of our families that we support go on to own their own homes or pay market rent. That's unheard of in the sector.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:22:14] That's amazing.   Krista Flint: [00:22:15] Yeah. And so for us, you know, if people say, well, you seem to be a little staff heavy, you got a lot of people there for only 17 families. We say all I have to do is point to our outcomes and be able to say it works. So this approach of a deep dive with families really works for the long term.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:22:33] You've said to me before impact, scale, and durability.   Krista Flint: [00:22:37] Yeah.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:22:38] Those are your three. So you've got your 13 values as an organization. Those are your three. Why are those your three?   Krista Flint: [00:22:44] So I think because we, like in terms of impact for us, if we're not at the same time as we're supporting families in lots of important ways, we have to also be sort of trying to influence the sector that families exist within. So we've had the opportunity lately to be part of housing tables and bureaucracy and policy influence. We've worked very closely with our MLA around changing and affecting policy in a way that can really change the way our young families operate within community. So impact for us is not just these mums having a change in trajectory for their lives, but it's also we like the idea of influencing sort of the bureaucracy that surrounds them. You know, scale, this has been a big one for us. You know, we need to think about are we scalable? So this growth, you know, so 17 families, the staff component, we have the investment we make in families in terms of their homes and their needs, we've spent a lot of time thinking about how do we grow. And it seems like the most responsible way is not for us to enter into a capital campaign where we make another building. We've had to really think differently about that, you know, and our theory is if we are able to create this whole like what Highbanks does, how we do it, why we do it, all of that from our hiring practices to our programming, and then we could provide it to other communities, other organizations to have them replicate it. So that's, that was a bit of a switch for us from, you know, we just need to support more families, bigger houses, more units, more buildings.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:24:22] Which is the standard way your brain would go.   Krista Flint: [00:24:24] Yeah. And there's days that I still think, Oh God, wouldn't it be nice to have like a huge... But when I think about it, I think the magic that is Highbanks is hard to replicate if you're serving 150 families. You know, it's very difficult for this magic that we do with families on a daily basis, it's hard to replicate that. And then durability. Are we hiring for succession planning? Are we imagining times in which, you know, other communities, other sectors could be influenced by us? And are we doing things in a financially sustainable and responsible way that says - I mean, as I say, like the fundraising is a hustle, it's a constant pressure - but are we doing things like setting up reserve funds? Are we doing, Covid was tough. You know, we posted our first deficit in 20 years for one of the years of Covid. I'm happy to say that we've come through it. But not every organization in the city has. And the need for us is increased so much, so significantly during and since Covid because of the mental health cost that we're only starting to understand now. So that's, for me those are the three sort of areas - that impact, scale, and durability - is what I try to think about every day when I try to get to that view from 60,000ft, which is not easy.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:44] It's high.   Krista Flint: [00:25:46] It's way up there.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:25:47] It's really high. This has been so lovely. I have been so inspired by the work that you're doing at Highbanks. I feel like I've learned so much about impact being not traditionally what we thought it would be and the different ways. So thank you for sharing your story and the work Highbanks is doing and for joining us today.   Krista Flint: [00:26:08] Not at all. I was so happy to be here. Thank you so much, Mel.   Melanie Nicholson: [00:26:14] Impact, scale, durability, those three things I think all of us can incorporate in some way, shape or form. So happy to have Krista on the podcast today. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe and consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Catch you next time on It's a Theory.