Collaboration is rising as a strategic priority in organizations of all sizes based on the growing demands for firm growth, talent expectations, WFH conditions, DEI considerations, and evolving client expectations. Yet every firm faces obstacles to collaboration that aren’t always obvious. In fact, firms frequently jump directly to disparate initiatives without really identifying their unique cultural and structural barriers.

Clinton will cover the principles of Smarter Collaboration and the traits of “Highly Collaborative Law Firms,” then outline an approach for you to identify your firm’s unique combination of strengths and barriers to collaboration. This will position you to help guide your firm’s selection of implementable ideas and programs to create a more collaborative culture, with an emphasis on collaborative business development.

Learning Objectives:

• A case for investing in smarter collaboration
• Frequent barriers in law firms to smarter collaboration
• A methodology to identify a firm’s unique barriers to smarter collaboration
• Examples to accelerate smarter collaboration

Clinton is the founder of CREDO consulting, specializing in guiding law firms and their
professionals to incorporate Disciplined Growth and Smart Collaboration for greater value to
clients, professionals, and firms.

Clinton is an Accredited Partner with Gardner & Co, founded by Dr. Heidi Gardner, author of the best-selling books “Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos” and “Smarter Collaboration.”

He served as Chief Strategy and BD Officer for prominent AmLaw firms, as well as a leader for a “Big 5” accounting firm and an employment training firm. His firms have been awarded “Best Law Firm Marketing” by The American Lawyer and the exclusive “Midsize Hot List” designation for best law firm strategy by The National Law Journal.

With his combination of consulting and leadership experience, he injects principles with practicality in collaboration and growth engagements. Clinton is a frequent speaker at law firm retreats and national conferences as well as a content contributor to more than 40 articles and case studies.

Clinton is a native of New Orleans, a graduate of the University of Alabama, and lives in Atlanta with his wife, four kids, and a basset hound named Gumbo.

This workshop is designed to take your skills and awareness in communication to new heights by leveraging the principles of improv to enhance the inclusion of others; to deepen your presence in conversation; and to adapt to the constant of change. Together we build a safe space for everyone to explore the communication concepts within your own comfort level.

Learning Objectives:

Enhance our communication practices to:

• Empower ourselves through better listening to enhance trust and build better partnerships
• Build unity by expanding the sense of inclusion and contribution in conversation
• Strengthen our organizations by practicing adaptability and mitigating fear of failure

Tracey brings over 20 years of experience supporting professionals across many sectors to
enhance their communication and leadership. She holds an MBA, is a PCC Certified Coach

trained at the UBC Organizational Coaching Program and is a certified practitioner of Core Strengths © and EQi 2.0.

Working with folks at all levels of organizations from C-Suite to the frontline, Tracey specializes in supporting people to enhance their impact by broadening their self awareness, mindsets, and communication toolkits. She brings a joyful and energetic approach to all her work and leaves participants and audiences feeling empowered and optimistic.

Tracey is the winner of the 2019 BC Health Care Award for Workplace Health Innovation as
part of a collaborative team. She is a leadership coach for UBC Sauder Executive Education
programs and teaches for UBC in several of the professional-based Master’s Programs.

Sarah Dawn Pledge is an actress, producer & instructor. She is of mixed descent born & raised in W(‘honnock)BC. She has been fortunate enough to carve a path acting and improvising for the last two decades and is grateful to acknowledge she creates, works & plays as a guest on the traditional, ancestral & unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples–Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and SǝỈílwǝtaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷmǝθkʷǝýǝm (Musqueam) Nations. She raises her hands to the stewards of these lands.

She is a long-time member & former Education Director of Queerprov and a co-producer of Momentous Comedy including such improv delights as Dirty Little Secrets, Random Acts of Comedy & Puff the Magic Improv show. She fell in love with teaching improv and has taught, facilitated & enjoyed corporate workshops all over Turtle Island. She also works extensively in film and television.

Embracing the mindset of an entrepreneur will shift your perspective and help you to step into your personal power. When you think like an entrepreneur, your level of ownership grows, and the focus on your customer’s experience inspires you to approach your work, responsibilities, and relationships in a new way. This mindset encourages you to leverage your unique strengths, talents, and ideas, leading to a greater sense of confidence and satisfaction. By tapping into your entrepreneurial self, you become more proactive, assertive, and willing to take risks to unleash your full potential.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the entrepreneurial mindset
• Identify and address limiting beliefs that are diminishing your personal power
• Cultivate a client-centric mindset by learning to view lawyers as your clients and understand their goals, motivations, and needs
• Enhance relationship-building skills to increase your level of influence
• Identify tangible next steps you can take to apply this learning

Jane Iannacone is the founder of Jigsaw Performance, a business advisory firm that helps entrepreneurs build the skills and confidence needed to improve business performance, while also realizing the full benefits they dreamed of when going into business for themselves. Jane has advised 100’s of leaders across the country and around the globe from solopreneurs to large global corporations. She is passionate about working with owners of small businesses, who put themselves out there every day and make significant contributions to the world around them. There are many great lessons to be learned from entrepreneurs that we can apply to our personal and professional lives. Jane is excited to share how you can improve your performance by thinking like a client-centric entrepreneur

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is an increasingly used term…. but what does it mean and how should leaders think about its objectives? This session is about why companies are embracing ESG and how they begin integrating it into their work (proactively and reactively). Also explores what role leaders must play in ESG and what kind of leadership best leads to lasting impact. The session will focus on dimensions of ESG in practice and what it looks like – responsible, accountable, purpose-driven, as well as an additional dimension exploring Indigenous reconciliation.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn key concepts in ESG in a digestible way
• Explore actionable ESG steps you can take back to your workplace
• Explore how truth and reconciliation can be a part of ESG, and how it stands alone

Larissa Maxwell (she/her/hers) BA, MBA, RCT, CLC is a researcher at UBC, the CEO of ESG Consulting Firm the Maxwell Consulting Group, and an executive leadership coach. Larissa leads groundbreaking ESG strategies, impact projects, transformative education series and custom leadership coaching programs, and storytelling design for clients including Telus, Slack, Salesforce, RCMP, CBRE, Migrant Worker’s Centre, The City of Surrey, RBC, AMSSA, Unifor, Scotiabank, the United Nations University, Native Courtworkers and Counseling Association, and Melki Films. Larissa believes in building organizations with a soul that are responsible, accountable, and purpose-driven.

Angela Kermer ancestry includes Haida and Coast Salish. She carries the Haida name Sgaan Jaad Kwahst’aang, Finning Killer Whale Woman. As principal of In a Good Way Consulting and a regular collaborator with the Maxwell Consulting Group, Angela uses strength-based values from her cultural, academic, career, and life experiences to create future reconciliatory legacies with non-government, government, corporate, and Indigenous clients. In her work, Angela focuses on assertion, governance, relationships, and reciprocity, the elements of a potlatch put into a modern context, as she helps people groups develop, implement, and measure reconciliation goals and actions.

Lejla is a senior leader and owner of Kolibri Consulting, providing fractional COO services and specializing in strategic, leadership, and operational matters for law firms. She is also an executive coach working with numerous leaders across Canada.

Lejla is a CPA-CA with a Master of Professional Accounting (MPAcc) and over 15 years of advisory experience including over 10 years in senior leadership roles in prominent professional services organizations. She started her career at KPMG, and then moved into a senior regional leadership role at Grant Thornton where she led various initiatives such as integrating over 20 M&A deals, spearheading the creation of new departments, and leading multiple national projects. Lejla is also a certified Professional Project Manager, Change Management Professional, and Coach and taught courses at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business.

Hybrid Work

The return to the office continues to be a controversial topic, with the discussion having shifted from whether it’s going to happen, to how it’s going to work. With the evolution of employer and employee needs and expectations comes a myriad of questions, considerations, challenges and opportunities. Organizations have an opportunity to not just re-occupy the office but to seize this moment to define a new and better way to work. The pandemic flattened previous cultural and technological barriers, resulting in more people with a choice of where to do their best work. This shift has caused firms to rethink the purpose of the workplace itself. For employees, going to the office is about much more than sitting at a desk and attending meetings – all of which can be done remotely. The future office considers a more holistic approach, creating in-person experiences that make it easy, make it work, and most of all, make it worth it.

Panelists:

Sara Forte is a lawyer, mediator, workplace investigator, speaker, entrepreneur, community builder, mother of 3, and backyard henkeeper. Sara founded Forte Workplace Law in 2016, a boutique employment law firm with offices in Surrey and Calgary that include a team of 13 lawyers.

In addition to their representative work, Sara and the Forte Workplace Law team offer an innovative respectful workplace offering, StandUP Teams™. This program includes bystander training, an emerging best practice that Sara wrote about recently in Canadian Lawyer
Magazine. Sara is also Chief Happiness Officer of Not Your Average Law Job, a project focused on lawyer
happiness and wellbeing.

Sara built out a new office space for the firm in 2021, with a focus on an environment that nourishes both
productivity and well-being. Her commitment to crafting a peaceful, welcoming, and invigorating workplace was showcased in a recent news article “Greening the office: It Started with a Tree”.

Blair Lill is the Chief Operating Officer at Singleton Reynolds, Blair is responsible for firm strategy and the overall day-to-day operations of the Firm. He is a member of the Management Committee, Partner Compensation Committee, and provides strategic input to Firm direction and opportunities. Blair oversees the activities of Finance, HR, IT, Marketing & Business Development, Knowledge Management, Litigation Support, and Office Services.

Shalisha Senkow is part of the Colliers Workplace Advisory team, specializing in providing strategic solutions to respond to the shifting needs of the workplace. Shalisha is an experienced strategy and change consultant and has worked across industries and geographies to develop and implement workplace transformations. Over the past year, she has worked with several legal firms, both national and regional, to guide them in the development of workplace and flexible work strategies to meet the unique needs, business strategies, and culture of each firm.

The key to living an empowered life at home and at work, and to finding balance in the demands of your life and leadership is to develop and hone the ability to get crystal clear about what matters most. Then move accordingly.

Strategic priorities, daily delegation, leading with legacy in mind. Avoiding burnout and overwhelm, finding joy, and leading a life and career you can look back on with great pride and few regrets. All of this requires you to decide and live by what matters most.

Not only will you leave equipped with the clarity of what matters most to you, you’ll also leave with clarity on your key golden nuggets from your conference experience to carry forward into your work and life so you can be empowered and balanced for business.

Learning Objectives:

• The session will inspire you with new ways of thinking about your priorities and introduce you to a new tool and process to gain clarity in the chaos and demands of daily life
• You will leave with insights and tools to help you navigate your full life with more spaciousness, ease, and impact and be inspired to show up for yourself in new ways without the guilt!

Tanis Frame is a long-time facilitator, speaker, and sought-after leadership coach who helps passionate people create the impact they are called to make in the world while thriving in all aspects of their lives.

With a background steeped in science and human development, she teases out relevant insights and connects the dots in a profoundly actionable way. She brings a refreshingly adventurous spirit to exploring our human nature which unlocks huge opportunities for change and growth.

Tanis is relentlessly curious about what cultivates thriving and what gets in the way. After supporting leaders across industries for nearly two decades, she knows that thriving starts with deeply aligned and integrated personal leadership – without which we can’t effectively nor sustainably lead anyone or anything else.

As a Whistler local, most days you’ll find her playing in the mountains with her husband, teen girls, pup or her horses.