RICH DONOVAN INCLUSION VANGUARD AWARD

When it comes to diversity, Rich Donovan is a pragmatist. Having worked in the heart of Manhattan’s financial industry, he knows that money talks and even projects backed by the best intentions can founder if they’re not financial viable or, better yet, profitable.

“Much of the activity in diversity today is fluffy: It’s about equality, but that’s not a business concept, that’s a political concept,” says Donovan, who is being honoured with the 2018 Inclusion Vanguard Award, sponsored by Deloitte. “We’ve been able to convert that political concept into an economic driver of value, and that’s our main advantage.”

“We” is Donovan’s Torontobased company, The Return on Disability Group. Donovan, the president and CEO, is a world-renowned expert on the convergence of disability and corporate profitability. He spent years creating metrics and models to determine the economic value of the disability market for companies, governments and other organizations that both employ disabled people and cater to them.

Donovan’s unique take on disability is to frame it as a global emerging market encompassing billions of individuals who can contribute to profit generation by sharing their knowledge (or working) and sharing their wealth (or consuming). To do that, in 2008 he created the Return on Disability index, which tracks the performance of U.S.-based companies that serve and attract people with disabilities, their families and their friends. Six years later, in 2014, he rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange when the Barclays Return on Disability exchangetraded note started trading.

Donovan’s success in this sphere is due largely to two things — a brilliant mind and a life lived with cerebral palsy. His disability, a motor condition that affects his ability to move, speak and maintain balance and posture, has provided him with an edge, he says, that others don’t have.

“It gives me certain advantages over other people,” says Donovan, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business from York University’s Schulich School of Business and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York. “I think very differently from other people because I have to be very good at planning and forecasting and understanding what’s coming down the pike, and that leads me to be incredibly well-prepared and ready for action.”

That action includes spending about 70 per cent of his working time with clients and seeing how they do business, whether they’re in Toronto or Shanghai. He also spends about 30 per cent of his time on research into how to help more clients, like RBC, the World Bank, Rogers and PepsiCo, be more profitable while serving what he calls the disability vertical marketplace.

“Our clients are telling us that they’re frustrated with the typical diversity approach, because it doesn’t produce results,” Donovan says. “Diversity sounds great as a sound bite but it needs to be backed up by a budget, and the only way that happens is if it’s equated to the bottom line. So, we’re proving our case to them, using solid metrics and stock market returns.”

The company, which was founded in 2008 in New York, has definitely hit its stride. Five people, including Donovan’s wife, Jenn, make up Return on Disability, and it’s looking to grow.

“Now we have to figure out, ‘How do we bring this business to thousands of clients?’ ” Donovan says. “The disability markets around the world are almost identical — disability is the same in Shanghai as it is in Toronto. So, we want to build this into Canadian-born success story that brings billions of people into the economy.”

His other goal? To delight his customers.

“Companies have forgotten how to do that,” he says. “They got so focused on profits and efficiencies that they forgot how to delight their customers.”

What brings Donovan delight? Aside from being at the helm of his company, he enjoys sailing in the Caribbean, the Atlantic and Georgian Bay, and spending time with his eight-year-old son, Maverick.

He’s also delighted to be the recipient of honours and accolades that recognize and help promote his cause.

Prior to receiving the Inclusion Vanguard award, Donovan was named one of the Top 50 Most Influential People with Disabilities in the World by the U.K.-based Powerful Media and Shaw Trust in October 2016, and he was appointed to chair Ontario’s Accessibility Standards Advisory Council in January of that year.

“It’s very humbling to receive the WXN award,” he says. “The fact that businesses are starting to see the value of what we do and embracing it publicly is a very, very good thing.” Angela Liddon, vegan blogger and best-selling author of the Oh She Glows vegan cookbooks, has put her finger on the irony of successful branding.

“I think part of my success is due to the fact that I’ve never treated my business as a brand,” says Liddon, a busy mother of two who lives in Oakville, Ont. “It’s just me, sharing my life and my journey with other people.”

That’s not to say that Liddon isn’t meticulous about the quality of the food photography she shoots and uploads to her website, or that she doesn’t ensure that her cookbooks have a look and feel that will resonate with her readers. But this self-taught branding and marketing expert’s voice is always authentic.

“I’ve always just trusted my instincts. Not every decision I’ve ever made has worked out but, in a general sense, I feel that I can trust my gut,” she says. “I try to keep in mind what made Oh She Glows successful from the beginning, and that was sharing my story with authenticity and compassion.”

Liddon’s story is unusual for a vegan cooking guru. After struggling with disordered eating as a teen and young woman, she taught herself about healthy eating — specifically, veganism. That led her to create a blog about her recovery and to share recipes online. Her blog became massively popular as Liddon continued refining recipes and regaling readers with tales of life with her husband and toddlers. A cookbook publisher took notice and now, with numerous awards and the New York Times best-sellers list under her belt, the rest is culinary history.

Liddon keeps an upbeat tone in her blog posts but she’s intent on sharing the good and the bad with her readers, because that’s a true reflection of her life.

“The biggest way I’ve impacted other women, I think, and especially young women, is through sharing my struggles with career happiness and disordered eating,” she says. “I think it’s important to share the hard times and connect with people.”

Alberta-based Manjit Minhas, CEO and co-founder of Minhas Brewery, the ninthbiggest brewery in North America, is also a proponent of being real on social media and not overthinking her brand voice. After all, she says, “we aren’t solving world problems here, we’re making beer — and we’re having fun with it.”

Minhas is also known for her ongoing role on the CBC TV show Dragon’s Den, where entrepreneurs try to forge financial partnerships with Minhas and her fellow Dragons. When she joined the show in 2015, she was required to up her social media game. She wanted to showcase her authentic self but, also, as a wife and a new parent, she wanted to avoid overexposing her private life.

“I had some hired help to guide me through and set up some parameters about how much to share,” she says. “I wanted to be very cognizant, as a parent and as a mom, of my kids’ safety. But I think people do want to know about the companies and the individuals that they buy products from.”

Minhas finds that abiding by the golden rule — do unto others — has helped make her brand successful and accessible. She puts herself in her customers’ and followers’ shoes, and posts content that she thinks would be genuinely interesting to her if she were the consumer.

With so many different social media platforms available these days, it can be hard to know what to post about your brand, when and where. So Caroline Riseboro, CEO of Plan International Canada, who is also a wife, mom and active social media user, has created guidelines for herself.

“Twitter is very much about my work. Facebook is much more about my friends and my wider network, and LinkedIn is about leadership in the business space,” she says.

She also advises that when promoting one’s personal brand, whether online or not, people should decide on three things they want to be known for and then weave those topics into their conversations, speaking engagements and social media posts. For instance, Riseboro wants to be known for “challenging the status quo, creating a better world and highlighting the accomplishments that we can have together.” And those topics are reflected in her personal brand.

All three women agree that branding messages should be positive — especially in the online world, where negativity can often prevail.

“Social media is like the Wild West, and you see everything there,” says Liddon, who spends one to two hours each day posting original content online and responding to comments and questions. “I do find that positivity attracts positivity, so if I stay positive and focus on stuff I love, I tend to attract like-minded people.”

And when people with negative opinions make themselves known online, Riseboro tries to take their comments with a grain of salt.

“I’m literally trying to create global change and help achieve gender equality,” she says. “This is not a small task, and a lot of people have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. Reading nasty comments that are posted about me online … is part of the price that we, as women in leadership, sometimes pay for changing the world.”