Brad noted in his opening remarks that conferences are strange and ephemeral. You pour your heart and soul into something for months, it happens, and then it's over, leaving behind a few hundred people changed in ways you can't fully account for, as well as a void. I've attended conferences over the years, but producing one is another thing entirely. The months leading up to Greater Purpose Conference West meant searching for speakers who represent genuinely diverse voices and experiences — not a box-checking exercise, but an actual attempt to put people on a stage who reflect the breadth of what purpose-driven work looks like (and we know we have more work to do here). You make calls, send emails, and you don't always know until the day of how it's going to come together. That uncertainty doesn't leave you, even when the agenda is set and you open the doors. Then you kind of disappear into it. Dashing to the bathroom between sessions. Mic check. Making sure speakers are present and ready. Grabbing half a meal standing up. I squeezed conversations in wherever I could and there were many missed connections. Producing this conference taught me something I suspect is true of most purpose-driven work: you don't always get to be fully present for the thing you're building. You catch it in glimpses. The change we're working toward rarely arrives on a visible timeline — you plant seeds in conversations, decisions, relationships, and trust they're taking root somewhere you can't yet see. As Rose Marcario said during our conversation: "you might not see the benefit of your labour, but you will be glad you laboured." Reading the messages that came in afterward — the LinkedIn posts, the survey responses, the notes from people who found the person they needed to meet — has been really gratifying. The top words from our attendee survey: Inspired and Connected. We hope you carry both forward and that we see you in Toronto in October, where the conversation will continue. P.S. The purpose economy movement is growing—and it needs your voice. If you haven't already, consider adding your name to A Call to Purpose —a commitment by Canadian business leaders to build a purpose economy. We also invite you to explore the Social Purpose Professional resource to learn steps for senior leaders to show up as social purpose amplifiers.

I'm sitting in a McDonald's drinking coffee, reflecting on the idea of business as a force for good. Is business inherently a negative force or a positive one? I can't decide, so like many tired coffee drinkers, I struggle to make a decision. I decide that it's neither. And the more that I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I'm right. Business can do harm. There are too many examples to argue otherwise. Who can forget the story of Enron and how its fraudulent practices left everyone who touched it – employees, suppliers, shareholders and customers – wondering how it could do such harm to so many. Business can also do good, as we've also seen. Think of Patagonia, a business that made a deliberate decision to become a force for good, not because it was required to, but because its leaders decided that was who they wanted to be. That choice didn't come from a board mandate or a shareholder resolution. It came from the top. And it changed everything about how that company showed up in the world. The question for me is a fundamental one. What causes a business to head in one direction or another? And what causes a business to languish somewhere in the murky middle, neither good nor bad, committing acts that both benefit and harm society. What is the force that drives the actions of a business? Businesses are, at their core, organizations. Large ones. Small ones. They come with structure — boards, C-suites, managers, line employees — and that structure grows more complex the bigger they get. But complexity isn't the point. The point is that every business, regardless of size or sector, is guided by leaders. And those leaders make decisions that determine its direction, its purpose, and how it shows up in the world. It's not the shareholders. It's often not the employees (although many businesses give their employees a stake in decision-making, often a good sign). In the case of Enron, the vast majority of shareholders and employees had no idea what was going on until it was too late. I have been in a leadership role in a large, public company and it's still my experience that most business decisions are myopic, rooted in self-interest and in the best interests of a small slice of stakeholders (generally senior executives and large shareholders). So how can this change? It starts at the top, when enlightened leaders recognize that their business exists to serve society, and that its own betterment is deeply tied into its commitment to becoming a force for good. Where I struggle, and where most purpose advocates frankly struggle, is the convincing part. How do we convince a business leader who believes that a social purpose need not be at the core of business? A leader who is comfortable making decisions that provide short-term financial gain at the expense of its employees, suppliers and community. Is this business leopard capable of changing its spots? In short, some are. But most likely, most are not. What we need is a new generation of values-based business leaders who understand that purpose drives profit, and does not undermine it. Leaders who understand that a healthy, just and robust society relies on its organizations and institutions (I'm obviously including government in this) to drive this forward.  Business as a force for good isn't just a nice concept. It is the foundation of a healthy society committed to positive outcomes for all who live within it.

We've been using ChatGPT for over a year now. We built custom GPTs, invested hours training them, created workflows that made our small team more effective. When you're building a company with a big vision, that kind of leverage matters. The tool became our nth employee and was creating effortless ease throughout our days. And then I read this article by my friend Rutger Bregman in The Guardian. Rutger is a historian who has studied the major consumer boycotts of history. His piece made something clear that I couldn't ignore: our subscription fees were funding a company actively embedding itself in the Trump administration's infrastructure: funding MAGA Super PACs, lobbying against AI regulation, providing tools to ICE. At the same time, Anthropic—the company behind Claude—refused the Pentagon's demand for unrestricted access to their AI for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. It cost them $200 million (never mind the administration's retaliatory actions that followed), and my heart swelled seeing a company live its values with such commitment. By the end of the article my next move was clear. I quit my account and brought it to the team at our Monday meeting. Looking back, I led with the wrong frame. I came in saying we need to switch to Claude instead of leading with the story of why. So there was initial hesitation. There's the sunk cost of all those custom GPTs we'd built, and not everyone loves change as much as my neurospicy brain does. But once I walked the team through what I'd read, once they understood what their subscription fees were actually funding, the decision was unanimous. Convenience didn't matter as much as living our values. Rutger compared this moment to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on that bus. A small act of conviction that became a movement. He explicitly invites readers to do the same: try an alternative, and tell at least one person why. We’ve moved over to Claude, and while there has been a learning curve, it's validated the decision we made. In times of complexity, people are looking for an invitation to make an impact. And when you make that choice easy, people act. Over 1.2 million people have joined the boycott not because they were forced to, but because a clear purpose gave them permission and direction. That's the power of leading with purpose. Warmly, Claire, Chief Purpose Officer