This month on The Discovery Pod, we sat down with four remarkable leaders whose organizations span financial services, clean energy, sport, and social innovation: Sarah Saso of Meridian Credit Union, Chris Severson-Baker of Pembina Institute, Gail Hamamoto of Special Olympics Canada, and Tonya Surman of Centre for Social Innovation. While their sectors couldn’t be more different, a striking set of themes emerged across every conversation: the power of strategic alignment over scarcity thinking, the importance of curiosity and learning, and the belief that progress comes from building from a position of strength.
Purpose Has to Connect to Strategy
Sarah Saso, VP of ESG and Social Impact at Meridian Credit Union, and Gail Hamamoto, CEO of Special Olympics Canada, both spoke candidly about what purpose-driven work actually looks like when it is embedded in an organization rather than bolted on.
For Sarah, the turning point came when she stopped thinking about social impact as philanthropy and started mapping it directly to Meridian’s core business. By working closely with her colleagues in retail banking and business banking, she identified a gap in the affordable housing ecosystem, not enough skilled tradespeople to build the homes Meridian was helping to finance. Sarah noted, “What you support has to be strategic and align with your business imperatives”. Her team developed a speaker’s bureau of financial confidence coaches and a wraparound skills training model that treats participants as whole people, not just program recipients.
Gail arrived at Special Olympics Canada with a similar conviction: the organization’s social return on investment data — an 8.76 return on every dollar invested, with measurable impacts on employment, mental health, and longevity for athletes — gave her a new language for conversations with funders. Instead of asking donors to feel good about sport, she could show them they were investing in health outcomes, employment, and reduced reliance on public services. “It used to be more of a ‘it’s the right thing to do,’” she reflected. “But people want tangible data on what the impact is.”
Removing Barriers Is More Powerful Than Raising the Alarm
Chris Severson-Baker, Executive Director of the Pembina Institute, offered a perspective shift that resonates well beyond the clean energy sector: the most effective advocacy organizations are not the ones shouting the loudest, but the ones quietly, persistently removing the barriers that stand between an idea and its adoption.
For Pembina, a national clean energy think tank with 40 years of history, that has meant evolving from proving that renewable energy was even possible in Canada to now accelerating the deployment of technologies that have already proven themselves economically. “Just in the last couple of years, now it is deployment, now it is scaling, it is eliminating barriers,” Chris explained. He also offered a valuable lesson on messaging discipline for any organization leading change: the people you are trying to influence will be far behind you. Repeating your core message, even when it feels tedious, is the work. His team often says, “We have already done that. We have already said that.” His answer? That is exactly the point.
Convening Is the Beginning, Not the Goal
Tonya Surman, Co-founder and CEO of the Centre for Social Innovation, has spent 22 years building what she calls “collaborative infrastructure”, the physical, cultural, and relational conditions that allow social purpose organizations to move from conversation to genuine collective action. CSI began as Canada’s first co-working space; it is now reimagining itself as a platform for the kinds of deep collaborations that the sector urgently needs.
The insight Tonya keeps returning to is the gap between convening and collaborating. “We will even go to design sessions and social innovation labs, and we will do all these things that we are supposed to do,” she said. “The question is, what happens then?” Her answer involves tapping into self-interest, not just shared values — understanding what each organization concretely needs to move forward and finding the genuine overlap. CSI’s new Climate Coffees, a recurring gathering for climate-focused members, is one experiment in that direction. The ambition is bigger: building regenerative, circular systems that help organizations work at an ecosystem level, rather than treating symptoms in isolation.
Strength is the Foundation for Growth
Across all four conversations, a common thread emerged: the leaders doing the most meaningful work are the ones who have chosen, sometimes painfully, to build from a foundation of strength. Not the illusion of strength, but the real kind built through financial resilience, deep relationships, and a willingness to say no before saying yes.
Gail described her first year as a provincial executive director as a deliberate year of restraint: “I’m going to say no until we have enough money in the bank and everything is solid, and then I’m going to say yes.” Tonya spoke of spending fifteen years paying off a mortgage so CSI could pursue its mission without relying on external donors for survival. Sarah described her practice of meeting organizational partners with transparency, not just about what she is looking for, but about what does not fit, and where a given organization should look instead. Chris built an organization that diversifies its revenue year over year, without an endowment, because resilience demands it. Each of these leaders is making the case that an abundance mindset is not naive optimism. It is a discipline built through strategic clarity, honest relationships, and a refusal to confuse activity with impact.
These four conversations are a reminder of how much is happening across Canada’s social profit sector, and how much more is possible when organizations lead from purpose, build strategic partnerships, and invest in their own foundations.
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