On the first Tuesday of every month, we’ll announce a new Female Founder, including a video interview of them sharing their business story. Want to be featured as a Female Founder? Contact Memberships for more details. The Female Founders Program would not be possible without our Title Sponsor, Scotiabank.
To learn a little more about the Scotiabank Women Initiative, and why they’ve chosen to sponsor this program, see the video below.
The next Female Founder(s) we’re featuring is Oluseun Olayinka, Executive Director, Adventure4Change.
Oluseun Olayinka(she/her) is currently the Executive Director at Adventure4Change, a registered Canadian charity with headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. She is also a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Work at the Wilfrid Laurier University.
Oluseun is a member of the Board of Social Ventures Partner Waterloo Region (SVP) Board and a member of the Equity, Anti-Racism Advisory Committee of the City of Kitchener. She is also a member of the Equity and Advisory Group for the Waterloo District School Board and sits on the steering committee of the Child and Youth Planning Table as Voting Member at Large.
Her passion and research areas are about contributing to leadership and building community-led social service organizations so that they can thrive, are sustainable and can continue to serve their focus neighbourhoods and communities.
To learn more about Oluseun’s journey as a Female Founder, watch the interview below (or read the written format).
Tell us about your organization.
Adventure4Change is a registered charity with headquarters in the north of Waterloo. We are known for being a breach for newcomers and refugee families who found themselves in government-assisted housing, low-income housing in that area of Waterloo, and whose biggest barriers usually is language, because many of them come in not speaking a word of English.
Sometimes it’s digital literacy that is the gap. Sometimes it’s just system navigation, not knowing where to go to get what. And so we have positioned ourselves as that organization that can help them get the necessary barriers removed and then slowly help them navigate the systems within which they found themselves, so that very quickly they can go back to identify the intrinsic values of who they are and what they brought from the places that they brought them from, and then find where they fit in Waterloo as a city, Canada as a nation, Ontario as a province, and then become contributing individuals and contributing citizens of the city, the region, or the province, and even the country as a whole.
What are some of your long-term goals?
Adventure4Change hopes to achieve helping these people identifying what they already have.
I think that’s always the first thing for us. The first thing is we believe everybody came with something as they came from wherever they came from all over the world. We have chosen to focus on those who are often marginalized, black, racialized, Muslim families in the north of Waterloo, around Sunnydale, Albert Street, and High Street.
Often these families cannot access what many of the educated immigrant families can access. So, our hope is that these families will remember when they’ve gone through all the things that immigrants go through to get to where they want to get to, that they would hold on to the things that they brought with them, whether that’s playing soccer, whether that’s cooking, whether that’s doing makeup for somebody, whether that’s hair making. They’ll hold on to those things and find where those things fit in the Canadian context so that in the shortest possible time, they can become contributing residents and eventually contributing citizens of Canada.
How did you get involved with Adventure4Change?
Beautiful question. As a non-founder of Adventure4Change, it was the founder that found me, and that’s a good place to start from. The founder of Adventure4Change, his name is Jeremy Horne, and he started this organization in April 2004 and did a great work for 17 years building this community, sacrificing and making sure that people can integrate.
And then he thought to himself, maybe it’s time that I step aside. I’m getting older. My contribution is valid, and everybody has seen it. I probably need someone to take over. So, he found me somehow. I know the story.
It’s a very long one, and I’m going to save you that long story. And after all the interviews, they thought it would be me. And I remember asking him questions like, what did you have in your mind at the time you started this? Because I really wanted to understand the story.
I’m African, and as an African Canadian, storytelling is very important to me. So, I wanted to piece the story of how Adventure4Change started together. And he was generous enough and kind enough to share all that story with me.
And so, sitting with Jeremy over a few months, I could understand what was in his heart at the time that started. And I saw the gap that existed that elicited a new leader. And so, my goal, as soon as I started the work, was how do I take this story that started 17 years ago to a level where the story not just continues, but becomes sustainable by itself? How does the story grow? How does the story become sustainable and then go beyond the local vicinity that it is into other spaces? So, I literally know that my assignment and my task is carrying a baby that someone birthed and midwifing it and taking it to another level from where it has been.
And that’s been my pursuit. That’s been my goal, is to see that that dream that originally was birthed in 2004 continues.
What have been some of your career highlights so far?
I have a bachelor’s in chemistry. So, I usually like to start from there because that was a father looking for a medical doctor that I wasn’t going to be. And so, I pursued that African father’s dream. And very quickly after I graduated my chemistry bachelor’s, I knew, no, that’s not where I’m going to go.
And I very quickly went into the nonprofit, ironically, and worked there in administration for a few years. This was my time of trying to discover where exactly am I supposed to go. The beauty is that I did find that place and I ended up in consulting.
So, it was organizational development and learning consulting. And that was me. And in addition to getting my master’s and many other certifications, that was one major highlight, that discovery of how I like to use my brain to solve problems, complex problems especially.
And when organizations were struggling, I would be that consultant that could go there, see that problem, identify the gaps, and then find solutions over time. And so that for me was the very first major highlight. And then the next one will be moving over to the United Arab Emirates for about almost three years.
And again, the highlight there was, even though it was a foreign land, I found that consulting found me. So again, very quickly, I was using my problem solving and critical thinking skills, which I think is my core, to solve problems again. So that validated what I knew from home.
And my home is Nigeria. And so, finding myself in Canada, I very quickly wanted to see how that would evolve. If really this was me, it was a matter of time.
And not long after that, I found myself at Grand River Hospital doing some training and consulting work. So again, even though I was in Canada, within the first six months, I found myself at Grand River Hospital. And that was a big highlight of my work because for the first time, I was in a huge space.
I’d always worked in smaller organizations. And here I was in an organization of over 3,000 people doing the same things I had always done. And here I am now as Executive Director of a non-profit that I didn’t even start.
And again, it’s the same skills. It was a combination, or it is the combination of my non-profit skills for six years, plus my organizational development and training skills for almost 15 years that I’ve combined to help me do what I do today at Adventure4Change. So, this key highlight, I think, would be a story that maybe went up in a book one day of how a scientist combines scientific skills with business skills and becomes a business expert of some sort.
What have been some of the challenges that you faced?
Life is filled with challenges. There will always be ups and downs. At the different spaces that I have worked and lived; I’ve had different kinds of challenges.
Back home, it was a challenge of learning something new. So, in high school and university, first degree, which is my bachelor’s, all I knew was sciences. So, it was chemistry equations and physics problems and mathematics and advanced functions and those kinds of things.
And then my first challenge was having to learn new things. The beauty of this challenge, I’m a very optimistic person. Trust me, I might not find challenges too much without finding the solutions.
But the beauty of this challenge is that I could see for some strange reason the length of my science in those problems. I would always put it into some form of equation or put it in numbers or create a shape out of it, create some kind of framework. So, my scientific mind was, even though it was a problem or even though it was a challenge, was solving very quickly because that’s who I am.
And so that was the first one, the challenge of learning what I didn’t know but that I had to use because I was in a new space. Internationally though, specifically in the UAE, it was the challenge of being a black woman in the Arab world. That was a huge challenge because I was told, for example, I couldn’t go to the client space.
So, because of that, I ended up being a freelance worker for this consulting company. Because I was a black woman, the clients would not want me. So, it was like my brain was useful, but my face was not accepted.
But again, remember, I am that positive person that just believes it’s going to work out. I saw it as, that’s fine. You want my brain; you pay for my brain. That’s okay, let’s do it. And I kept doing that work and got exposed to so much learning, even though the clients never saw the person that did all that work. But for me, it was just fine.
And then here in Canada, the challenge has been taking huge corporate experience, because all my organizational development and learning experience was corporate. Insurance companies, banks, schools, private individuals, private businesses, and so on. And then taking that into the non-profit.
And so even though I had worked in non-profit, those were my days of consulting, and even though I had worked in consulting, there was no non-profit there. So, I had to spend about my first six months asking myself, what is different about this space? And honestly, community work taught me there was a difference. And so, I had to slow down and learn what was different about community work, as presented to me by Adventure4Change, and then take all the principles of strategy, and leadership, and performance management, and change management that I knew, and team building, and then combine my knowledge of community and say, here’s what is going to produce that.
And that, which I just described as a challenge, because of my person, is what has given birth to my PhD studies. I’m currently a PhD student, and what I am looking for is, what is the difference in leadership for community organizations like the one that I lead? Because I believe there’s something different, that there’s something different that you bring into community work plus leadership. And I’m wondering if there’s a gap in that, which is what I used to need, and the work that we do at places like Adventure4Change.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything you’d do differently?
Oh, I would do a lot of things different. I won’t accept to study chemistry. Let’s start from there, because I know that that’s not my area of study.
But maybe, you know, because again, like I said, it gives me that critical thinking. But I guess I will do a bit more research about the industry and the specific organization, because I kind of spent my first six months doing that, when I could have hit the ground running, if I knew more. But I guess sometimes that’s just the price you must pay for going into a very unique industry.
The other thing I probably would do differently is, another thing I would do differently is write as I go. I have learned a lot in my almost three years working at Adventure4Change, and I have written a few learning curves that I’ve identified, but I have not written them on the go. If given another chance of working in a new space, I will document my new learnings as I go.
And the reason is that many unique things have happened to me as an individual, many unique things have happened to the organization, and many unique things have happened to the industry. And I just wish that I captured them at the moment, even if it’s not writing, to just record something, you know, and then have that become a contribution to knowledge for the industry, for the organization, and so on and so forth.
What tools have you used to grow Adventure4Change?
The first tool that I have used to grow Adventure4Change is listening.
So, it’s not a typical one. I’ve had to listen a lot, listen to the community, listen to the staff that I met on ground, listen to the founding director, listen to others in the industry. And all my listening has helped me to do is pick pieces of different things that can form a whole and has helped me redesign what was in ground.
So, it’s, yes, let’s add my knowledge to that listening, but it’s a common knowledge of many people. I come from a background that speaks a lot with proverbs. And one of the proverbs that says is that one of the proverbs that I like says that it’s almost like saying the combination of knowledges that forms a whole that can produce something good.
And so, I walk with that proverb everywhere I go to say what contributory knowledge, everybody has something to offer. Even the woman who doesn’t speak a word of English and cannot move a mouse to say, put on a computer. But there’s one word that person would say that changes how I lead or how I create the organization.
So, the first tip there is listening. The ability to just listen to others has been a big tool of growth. The second one is, because I have then listened, I’m able to have a plan.
Initially was just my plan, and then today we have a full strategic plan that Capacity Canada helped us to put together. But first I had a plan that said, in the next 30 days, here’s what I’m going to do in 60 days, in 90 days, in one year. And people have always said to me, a very future thinking, maybe it’s a strength.
So, when I think, I think what’s going to happen in one year? What if we don’t have money in five years? How many staff can we hire with the money we have? What if we don’t have that money in two years? So that future focused planning has also been very instrumental. Of course, in that plan, I then have things, or I have had things like brand development. I’ve had things like strategic plans that are now being implemented.
I’ve had things like performance management and coaching for the staff that has been hired. I’ve had things like hiring the right staff to do the work. I came into an organization that only had four other staff and we were doing the work of 16 people.
And so, I knew we’re all going to burn out. So how do I avoid that? So, there was manpower planning in the works, change management design. So, a lot of planning.
I would say I spent my first nine months doing a lot of planning, including, so where do we get the right money from? Remember I was listening to some people. And all my plans were the questions that I was taking to people to listen. I’ll give you one example of this that might be very useful to this.
And that was me going into the community, the actual community we serve, dressed down, went in there and asked questions like, what have you dreamt of? I asked from the youth, I asked from the mothers, what have you dreamt of as programs that we should be doing and we’re not doing? And they told me. And at the time, it didn’t look like we had the resources to do it. But as soon as we knew what they wanted, we created the plan of how it will happen.
And then we went after the money to make it happen. Amazingly, we got that money. So, I think when there is a dream and a plan, resources follow.
That’s how I’ve gone is listen to people, create a plan, and then take each plan at a time, get the necessary resource to make those plans happen, and then begin to implement the plan.
How do you define success?
Success for me is that which gives me peace of mind and allows me to contribute to inspiring and impacting lives all around me. That is what is success to me, nothing else.
It doesn’t matter how much it can pay, where it can take me to, if it doesn’t make those around me happy, if it doesn’t make them inspired, if it doesn’t leave their lives impacted positively, it’s not successful for me. So, the lives of people being positively impacted for their own growth and contribution is success.
What are some of the core values that you integrated into your organization?
I don’t know if Afrocentric worldview is a value, but it is one of the things that have been central to my leadership.
And what that huge framework or that huge lens or worldview brings are things like Ubuntu. I am because we are. There is no one champion in my world.
There is no one superman or superwoman in my world. In the world that I’ve created at A4C, my desire is that every of the staff that we have has a voice. Every voice matters at the table. Because everybody has a wisdom to contribute. So that value of commonality, togetherness, everybody can contribute. It takes a village.
Those are the key values that I bring. Recently, we began to challenge the hierarchical structures of organization as a team because we’re saying, is there a way that there are leaders, and we know who is responsible for what and the RASI model is clear? And we operate that structure that says everybody has a voice. It’s a circle.
Everybody has a contribution. Everybody can do something. And what I have seen is it makes people go above and beyond because they know that there’s an expectation of them.
And nobody is the brain carrier. Everybody has something to bring to the table. So those are the kind of values. Communication, that is everybody. Teamwork, that is everybody. Contribution, that is everybody.
Vision, that is co-created and so on and so forth. And the other value is that at the fore, and maybe this should have come first, at the center of our circle the big tree, so I’m going back to Africa now, there’s usually this huge piece of land that is owned by the grandfather or grandmother. And everybody in the family has a bit of that piece of land.
And at the center is this huge tree. At the center for us is the community that we serve. And so, no matter what we have as wisdom, intelligence, brilliance, knowledge, PhDs and Masters or Bachelors – without the voice of the community it’s a waste of time so at the center the huge tree in the middle of that huge circle that we created is the community that we serve.
What have been some of the benefits of growing your business in Waterloo Region?
Waterloo is a unique Region. I have to put it that way it is extremely unique because it’s a region that is growing and so for us it’s an opportunity to grow with it, we’re in that growth phase, we’re on the journey pursuing sustainability so it’s a perfect time to grow with the Region.
Earlier this year the chair of the Region Karen Redman gave I think that was in May this year the one million um focus of the region as we get 1 million ready because there’s the forecast or the there’s announcement that by 2050 the Region of Waterloo will be a million people and I remember when I listened to that declaration made in May I went back to the office and I said guys the Region of Waterloo is getting ready to be 1 million people how do we position ourselves to be ready to serve some of that 1 million? And that’s driving how we’re positioning ourselves as an organization again so it’s the right time it’s the right place ready to serve the right people that will come in in the next few years so there’s no better time for Adventure4Change to be prepared to serve that teaming population of immigrants that will come here would not have a clue how to go about the unique systems that Waterloo Region presents and Adventure4Change is saying we are ready to get them settled and integrated into this community that they found themselves.
What inspires you?
What inspires me first, I am a God-centric person, it’s a legacy my parents handed over to me and that I have searched myself and I found fulfillment in and so the biggest book that I read daily is the Bible. What drives me daily is what the word of God says to me through the Bible and what I hear in prayers and of course beyond my faith which I think is central to me there’s also people everyday people that I meet Muslim people, you know Buddhists, every human being in this world black, white, tall, shorts, thin, slim, fat – everybody inspires me one way or the other that it might be a movie today but then it’s a billboard tomorrow and then it’s a sticker the next day and the different words. I’ll say words inspire me a lot, I have to confess that words inspire me a lot because I’m a word person myself and what I read what I hear what I engage that I imprint stick with me challenge me and helps me make everyday decisions so all of my values are founded on my faith and on the different words that I hear and I just align with my faith and then pick what I would use and what I would not use as a person.
What advice would you give to other aspiring business owners?
So like Jim Collins says in his book “Good to Great”, the concept of level five leadership says that they have a will to do so they doers they get the things done they have all the strategies, they have other plans and they get it done, but what’s unique about them is that they combine that with extreme humility and that’s the concept I’m trying to talk about where even though the assumption is that we know that’s why we have the titles and the positions and the power we use that to be humble and bring others to the levels that we are that way it’s not about us first it’s about others first.
What are some of your next steps?
There’s only one goal that I have for Adventure4Change during my leadership and beyond, that it becomes a sustainable organization that can run to do the amazing work it is created to do and that nothing limits that work because the work of Adventure4Change is unique the work of we call something the Adventure4Change model and what that model says is that we create experiences, we create opportunities, we foster mentorship and so forth.
That model has helped us do extremely unique work that can continue and so if we are sustainable then we can all always be there to do this work and we’re already on that trajectory of growth and hopefully we’ll get to the point of sustainability as well.
What can we expect from you in the meantime?
In the meantime while we’re trying to build towards sustainability what Adventure4Change is doing right now is position ourselves by strengthening the team, so we are strengthening the team in terms of training, coaching or strengthen the team in terms of aligning with the picture that long-term picture at the same time we’re trying to raise intentionally sustainable funding that is not short-term only, so we would always get the short term but we also pursuing a lot of long-term funding to help us grow to that level that we desire it to be and while we’re doing that we’re building relationships because I think that’s a huge gap that I identified where I came not just relationships of people that know or that my founding director knows but relationships beyond that everyday people because sometimes it’s not the big money that count sometimes it’s the everyday little amount of money.
So, all of that work of building relationships building the strength of the internal team helping the team to see the bigger picture and the long journey that is possible with the work that we have started is what we are doing so through team meetings and quarterly retreats, and training where we invite external facilitators to do we are strengthening ourselves to position ourselves for that long-term work.
Where can we learn more about you?
Know more about Adventure4Change you might want to visit our website it’s www.adventure4change.org, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, all of these are updated very frequently these days to ensure that you see what’s happening, you know what’s happening, and where you can support us and share about the good work that is happening in the North of Waterloo.
