Join us as we delve into the inspiring journey of The Narwhal, an environmental journalism organization, and its executive editor and co-founder, Carol. Discover how they redefined growth and purpose, shaping a unique approach to storytelling. Hear how their values drive editorial decisions and empower their team. Gain insights into navigating rapid growth and building a purpose-driven organization. Unleash the unicorn within your own endeavors as Carol shares advice on trusting instincts and embracing authenticity. If you're passionate about environmental issues and purpose-driven work, this episode is a must-listen.

Learn more about Within People and the work we do here.

Discover more about The Narwhal and the work they are doing here.

I expect something, I was expect something momentous to happen.

When that countdown finishes, that

countdown was exhilarating.

Can you picture in your mind being on the film

set and them having the Yes.

Is it the clapper they call it?

Yeah.

And you have to say 5, 4, 3.

Yeah, you can only mouth and then, yeah, you can only mouth the last two.

We all know how it goes.

Yeah.

We are basically all film stars.

Oh.

Hi everybody, and welcome to this episode of Re-Imagining Work From Within.

I'm Laurie Bennett, and I'm coming at you from Vancouver.

I have the distinct pleasure of being joined today.

By Carol Lynn, a co-founder of The Narwhal, which is a team of investigative

journalists who dive deep to tell stories about the natural world in

Canada that you can't find anywhere else.

Carol is a journalist, editor, illustrator.

And is the co-founder of the Narwhal Carol has been reporting on energy and

environmental politics for the last decade for outlets including Vice Canada, the

National Observer Academic Matters, and the Tye Carol began her career writing

and performing interviews for the Canada Expedition, a non-governmental

sustainability initiative, and while working in dispute resolution with

communities affected by resource scarcity.

Carol has a master's in English literature from York University where she studied

political theory, natural resource conflicts, and aboriginal rights.

She also has a master's in philosophy in the fields of phenomenology and

environmental ethics, and has a PhD in English and cultural, social and

political thought from the University of Victoria when she's not on her computer.

You can find Carol in some ocean somewhere, free diving or surfing.

Carol, I feel like you need a degree of a master's in English literature

to pronounce the rest of your degrees.

I feel like hearing you and watching you read that out I realize

that there's a cruelty to that bio.

Maybe I need to just sim simplify it.

You did.

You did wonderful.

I did okay with Phen.

What is phenomenology?

Just quickly, I know it's a side topic, but I'm sure we're all excited to know.

It's great.

It's, it's a great question in a, in a really general nutshell, it's the study

of things and our perception of things and our conceptual relationship to

things.

That's amazing.

I love that you can study something that you describe as it's the study of things.

Yeah,

somebody's gotta study it, you

know?

I'm glad someone is.

I'm glad you have been and it, this is all starting to piece together the parts of

your genius that I haven't yet understood.

I'm now getting a clearer picture of.

Uh

oh.

Don't dig too deep.

Oh boy.

Carol, welcome to our podcast.

It's really great to have you here.

We're gonna talk a bit today about the journey that we've been on together,

as within, and the narwhal down a, a pretty maisy but pretty awesome road of

exploring your purpose and vision and values as an organization and getting

those embedded into the, the real fabric of what you do and how you do it.

But before we jump into that tell us a bit more about the narwhal.

I love talking about the narwhal and so it's my, my great

pleasure, my, my pride and joy.

So The Narwhal is a, an independent online magazine based in Canada.

We are a team of 23 and, um, we're journalists.

And membership coordinators and audience editors and our craft and our, and our

pride and our purposes to tell stories about the natural world in Canada,

about the environment, threats to the environment the communities who live in

relationship with the environment and the people and the places that are centered

in some of the most ambitious and creative and, and valuable conservation efforts.

Today.

In our world.

And, uh, we just turned five.

Very, very proud.

Proud of that.

Proud, uh, thank you.

We're predominantly a digital first magazine, but we do a print edition

once a year, and that's a place where we sort of show showcase the

best of the best of the narwhal.

Yeah,

I have it on my desk next to me right now, in

fact, and it is a thing of beauty.

Thank you.

And I think.

The, it's extraordinarily inspiring, the work that you do.

And having been a little bit on this journey with you, I know that so

much of that comes from this group of people that you have together,

who I think you refer to, what is the collective noun for, for the narwhals?

Sometimes a pod, um,

sometimes a blessing.

A, a group of narwals is called

a blessing.

A blessing.

And let me tell you, world they are.

And so Carol, we're gonna rewind a little bit here to, I'm trying to

think when it was, but I'm pretty sure the pandemic was upon us when we met

each other a couple of years ago now.

And tell me a little bit about why we met, like what was happening with

you in the organization that sort of caused you to say, Hey, I think we might

need to do something different here.

It's, it's a great question.

Yes.

There was so much happening.

We were, we were bursting at the seams in a way.

I think we had, we, so this must have been spring of 2021.

Mm-hmm.

Is, is my guess.

And we had experienced some rapid growth and had hired some new staff and in

every way imaginable, we were just, Just a little bit too much overextended.

But we were doing really great work.

We were proud of the work.

And we were receiving awards.

We were being asked to, you know, join partnerships.

We were being asked to speak on panels.

We were getting, you know, so many tips from readers about new things

that were very worthy of our attention.

We were receiving new funding.

We were taking on new kinds of initiatives that were sort of locking

us into publication schedules that we were just like, Really trying to

keep up with the hustle was just like extraordinarily challenging at that point.

And, and I think it was really interesting.

So we launched May of 2018.

So this would be coming onto our third birthday at, at this point.

Yeah.

And I think, Lori, in one of the first meetings we had with you we were right

in the midst of, of award season, which we're kind of just at the tail end of now.

And Emma and I were telling you how we had won all these awards and it was,

it felt so like a devastating burden.

Each new accolade that we were being handed, it was just like

we could not keep up with.

The, just the weight and the pressure of what we were doing and, and even our own

success, which is sort of a wonderful problem to have, but can be very difficult

as a founder and as a leader when you start to feel yourself really disconnect

from the joy and the vision that brought you to that work in the first place.

And so I feel like we were really in the crux of like a, a crisis in that moment.

And in fact, I'll never forget it because we still refer to

that actual month as awful.

April.

I don't know if you remember that.

It was a really.

It was a really like per, yeah, just profoundly difficult

time for our organization for so many different reasons.

We were empty husks of ourselves.

Mm-hmm.

And yet we were working at this place that was the outcome of this dream we had.

And it was and it was.

You know, we, we talked about it being like a rocket ship to the

stratosphere, or more commonly, we really described our experience as

being dragged behind a bolting horse.

And we were like, if we could just get back on that horse

somehow we know that we can.

You know, work with this momentum, this incredible momentum we're experiencing.

But it just in the moment felt we were almost like in a, in a place of despair,

actually, which is wild to think about.

It's so sad, right?

That you can be just so crushed by your, your own success in a way.

And so we were, we were right in that moment.

That's, that's the context when, when we first started working with you.

Yeah.

Hopeful.

April.

And it's such an interesting space to be as a founder.

Cause I think.

In some ways there's probably a lot of people listening going, gee,

that doesn't sound so bad for me cuz I'm really trying to scrape things

together here to get things moving.

Mm-hmm.

But there's a real, there's a reality to, and I love how you'd sort of

describe the, the being a victim of your own success, which then

causes you to ch the relationship to the joy of succeeding changes.

And you start to feel the burden of that instead.

And all the things the good.

I remember you speaking to all the amazing things that this was going to

unlock and how horribly out of energy you felt to actually be able to take on

those things you've been dreaming of.

It's like your dream comes true and you just can't cope with it,

which feels like a really difficult place to be as a founder, I'm sure.

I think.

What did, what do you remember from that sense of starting to think about,

well, what do we need in this moment?

Like do you remember kind of what you, what it felt like you were looking for

as the thing that was gonna help you cope with the situation you were in just then?

Yes.

I remember one thing really explicitly was this, Real strong desire to sort

of download or externalize from our physical bodies, the DNA of the narwhal.

What.

What was it that led to this incredible publication coming to life?

How was that connected to the principles through which we should operate?

How should that affect how we hire?

How do we share with the people who were bringing onto our team

the, the significance of, you know, the dream of why we do

things the way we do and how that.

Distinguishes us from other workplaces and from other publications and organizations.

And actually just a few months prior to this, we, Emma and I had both Emma

Gilchrist, the other co-founder of the Narwhal, the, the genius, the, this truly

the, this shining star of all of this.

We had been in a meeting with this incredible mentor we had been working

with, and she said to us, I don't know how else to say this, but I'm gonna say

this to you and I want you to take it in.

It is actually negligent for you to continue running your organization the

way that you are because she was seeing how UNE equally distributed the work was.

How and I were being crushed by the weight of the responsibilities we

had, that we were losing our joy.

We, it was a.

Classic recipe for burnout every possible way.

But she also said, if one of you gets hit by a bus, what happens to

this beautiful thing you've created?

Like this is not sustainable.

It's not safe, it's not smart.

You need to create a change.

And we really like felt that deeply we were, and it felt like

such wonderful permission too.

We'd been very.

Extremely conservative with the way we were handling our finances too.

So I think we were timid to grow too fast, which is a thing that happens

in our industry a lot, where people o uh, grow too quickly, they over hire.

And then you hear about these like, you know, devastating layoffs and

we were really nervous and gun shy.

In a way about growing too fast and being, you know, financially

irresponsible in any way.

Three years in, it's like, yes, we're doing well.

Is this gonna continue?

Are we a sure thing for another three years?

And we felt like we were still like the underdogs, cobbling things together.

And I think we needed to catch up with ourselves in a way and feel empowered to.

Create the positions we need to create and hire the great people we needed to hire.

And so it was, yeah, it was an, an important moment for us that I think

in a way gave us the permission to start working with within people.

It was like, we need to rely on experts.

We need strategy, we need advice, and we need to take this thing that is

circulating in our heads and actually get it down somewhere so that we can grow

this organization in a way that feels

structured.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And what great advice to be given in that moment?

That sort of warning of, hey, the way you're behaving isn't just

problematic for you, but actually it's putting your business at risk.

And I the counter intuitiveness of that feeling of we're literally

doing everything we've, we're giving everything we have to give to the act

of sustaining and growing and making this work, and you're telling us that

by doing that, we might actually.

Kill it.

It just doesn't seem fair in that moment.

But I remember you sort of, some of the conversations we had early on

about that, and one of the things we talked about quite quickly was,

well, how do you actually want growth?

To feel, how do you want it to be and how do you, how does the growing of this

organization, which has become something so huge in your and Emma's lives, how

does that actually contribute into the way that you want to live those lives?

And how do you sort of find some, some rebalancing or some reintegration

of kind of who you are and how you want to live alongside growing this

phenomenally successful organization?

So and I just kind of what, curious to hear kind of what you remember of

those conversations and the kinds of pictures we pulled out together and

created around having a different kind of permission for yourselves around

what growth could be like instead of what you'd experienced up until then.

Yeah, I, I really remember this exercise we did with you.

And we were working on a jam board and we just had to, you know, find, find

images of, of what we really wanted.

And I think Emma and I both pulled in pictures of that sort

of represented calmness and, and sort of, Restorative activities.

I think may, maybe it was just Emma, it might have been both of us.

Pulled in pictures of surfing in the ocean.

Surfing is something both of us really love.

Emma's great at it.

I am committed to it.

And we actually spending a lot of time surfing together was what allowed us to

get into this sort of dreamscape, as we call it, to, to dream up the narwhal.

And I think there was a sense of space and expansiveness that we found together

that allowed us to become ambitious in ways that we hadn't found previously.

And in the vice grip of the moment, you know, fast forwarding three

years later, we did not feel that calmness and that connection to.

You know, those things in the very beginning that were really driving

us to do what we were doing.

We also were disconnected from the work itself in a way because

we weren't journalists out on the ground doing the thing anymore.

We weren't making funny explainer videos with baby goats, which was like

a real career highlight for both of us.

We were, you know, dealing with spreadsheets and, and, and, And

funding grants and dealing with HR issues and China hire and that stuff.

It just felt really grueling and not like the fund, you know, purposeful work

that we were doing in the beginning.

So I think for both of us There was that, and I think we both maybe also pulled in

pictures, or one of us did of many hands, and there was this sense that we wanted

the work to become more distributed and to become, to grow a team of excellence.

And the context in which we were dreaming about this was one in which the, you know,

there's this like shuttering happening in the, in the journalism world all across

Canada and environmental journalists.

Like the first to go in many cases.

And so there's just a lot of talent out there.

And we just thought if we could, if we can build something really great, the talent

we can attract is, is gonna be phenomenal.

And these people need jobs.

They need work.

And their, their work is so important to Canadians right now.

And so I think we just had this real dream that one day it wouldn't all be, you know,

this heavy yolk on our shoulders and that there'd be many people sharing in that.

And that doing the work would actually, I.

Feel restorative once again, that it would be connected to purpose in the

way that reenergizes you instead of just like siphoning out like your bone marrow,

which is how somehow felt in that moment.

Right, right.

Yeah, and I think through that process you came up with one of the best growth

contexts that I've ever had a client come up with, which was that the shift

from being dragged behind that bolting horse to joyfully riding the unicorn.

I think the unicorn is where we came to, wasn't it?

Of just that sense of we've got the reins back in our hands, the we're

on top of things rather than being.

The plow behind and the the beast where riding is something that feels

beautiful and that we're proud of.

And as the unicorns of the sea, you brought that forward and I

think I remember that's, there was something in that dis, that

articulation of that, that caused a bit of an energetic shift, didn't it?

In Okay, well this is giving us.

Permission to think about growth in other ways, and I remember talking to

Emma at that time and her saying, I just didn't really realize that we could

decide how we want to grow as opposed to just have to keep chasing, to keep

up with the growth that's going on here.

We can actually put some intention behind this and make some decisions that give.

Us again, a little bit more control over how we want growth to happen and feel,

rather than sort of being subject to these big forces of donation and desir

of expectation out in the reader base and this marketplace of people who could

come and join us and just feeling this kind of unending pressure of if we don't.

Take advantage of all of that.

Now we are missing out somehow an opportunity to be the

thing that we want to be.

Absolutely.

I think from, from there then the, the conversation turned to what you said.

It's kind of, well, how do we, how do we not extract your bone marrow from

you, but sort of do that in terms of kind of take the dna, the magic that

had brought all of that success and articulate that out in some way so that.

Others might understand it and be able to embody that too.

And all of those hands in those images that you had, how did you, how were

you going to kind of enable and empower them to, to be able to carry with you

what it meant to be the narwhal and to.

Put editorial content out there into the world that felt like it was yours.

And that was a journey that we went on where we started to

uncover a, a purpose for the naral.

A articulate the vision that you wanted to move forward to, and particularly a

set of values, which is what I really want to talk about with you today, that

we're a way of starting to be able to.

Talk about what it, the sort of behaviors that underpin how you do the things that

you do and what makes you who you are.

Mm-hmm.

Tell me a little bit about your experience of the process of kind of coming,

bringing those values into fruition.

Like, how did it feel?

Was it a, was it a bone marrow transplant?

Was there, was it something a little bit less invasive?

Like, how did it feel?

It felt, it felt good.

It felt, you know, even just starting the process of workshopping this with

you was an exercise in creating that space that we were desiring so deeply.

It felt impossible in that moment to find an hour a week or two hours

a week or whatever it was in, in those beginning days just to work on.

Talking this through because we just, you know, if everything was breakneck

pace and to just shift out of that and just get into the space where we sort of

talk about What was it in the beginning and what are the things you're most

proud of and why was that so unique and how did that really zany, hilarious,

irreverent thing that went viral happen?

And we just, it, you know, there it was.

The whole process of going through that was.

One of reconnection.

And I think it was therapeutic in a way because we were feeling so disconnected.

So creating the space for us as leaders to remember and go through

that process once again was, was really valuable in terms of that reconnection.

It also felt in a way like, you know, spaghetti at the wall, because

I remember in the beginning it was like, what are, like, what

are the defining things, you know?

And I was like, isn't this, it's kind of that.

But no, that's, Like kind of more like those guys.

Like the thing that's different about uh, different about us is actually more this.

And and that, that was really.

That was really a fun process and it was really it's so valuable to just go

through that refining process, you know, for clarity and, and you don't often,

you can't do that in the day-to-day.

And, and you won't do it in the day-to-day.

And so just going through that process and being so particular,

like, I just remember Lori being like, what is the difference between.

Option A and option B.

And and then, you know, as we worked with you through the process, it was like, oh,

these are hugely significant differences.

And, and and what ended up happening was this beautiful process of sort

of sedimentation where it was like, what, what are the keystone pieces?

And then what, what is built around them.

And so when we ended up kind of identifying our values and we went through

great exercises to do this, where it was like we sort of were, it was an iterative

process where you saw these things coming to the surface over and over again and.

In the end for us, we have these values and tucked under

them our sets of behaviors.

And I still really love how that happened.

Because in the beginning it was very diff difficult to see the

difference between those things.

And now a couple years later, it's so clear to me why that was important and

why it's helpful for bringing new staff and how it's helpful for making decisions.

And I know I'm skipping ahead, but, but that process was really

meaningful in ways that we.

Couldn't really understand in the beginning there and now.

It's really interesting to reflect on it even just two years later or three

year, two years later, time warp.

The time warp of the last decade that happened in two years.

Totally.

But it's, yeah, it's really wonderful to see how your sense of

helping us carve these things out.

Based on what we were telling you, we couldn't even see that distinction in

what we were telling you, but you were able to help put that into place for us.

And so yeah, it was a really, going from spaghetti to the wall to these like

foundational pillars of our organization now is just like, it's pretty well

to reflect on that, on that process.

Yeah.

I.

I think there's, there's something in the, the sort of trusting of that in some ways

isn't there of that, within that spaghetti somewhere, there's gonna be value.

Finding the diamonds in the spaghetti is a bit of a mixed metaphor, but

there's definitely something that would be nice that would change.

That would be Italian dinner night, wouldn't it?

At home, if that was, I'd get

back on carbs

every night.

Yeah.

Where was I going?

Yeah, but I think, you know, the, what was so apparent to me is we

were in that work with you was just how clear you were on what made you.

Who you were and that the le, you hadn't brought the language to it yet,

but there was a real felt sense of the stuff that you wanted to put forward as

your values and that as they started to kind of crystallize into what they've

ended up as, you were full of stories and examples and reasons why those were

the right things, and you, I could tell that there was a real authenticity.

In what you were saying, you weren't trying to build a set of values to make

you look good or to kind of sound sexy out there in the values marketplace,

but rather, these were things that that truly you could consider to be

cornerstones of the way that you do what you do, and reflections of what's most

important to you and what your audience and the people out there who support

you, the community that you speak to.

Wants and needs and treasures about the work that you do,

but tell us what they are.

And this is maybe putting you on the spot, but I'm pretty confident

that you've got this down.

Yeah, yeah.

I almost brought out like a poster board, but I know that for a podcast,

so props are not particularly useful.

But actually as we're talking about this, you know, just thinking about.

The authenticity of this exercise and the difference between like,

what are your values if you're just whispering them quietly to each

other in a room versus like, what do you wanna say on your website?

That was actually a very different enterprise and really when it was

like, what do you want them to be?

Mm-hmm.

That some of these, I'm still like, are we allowed to have that as one of our values?

Like, so Great.

Okay.

So our values are be bold, dive deeper, lift people up.

And find beauty,

which is your favorite one, Carol?

I mean, I sort of have a real soft spot for find beauty because

and you, you know this right from the beginning, but I just had such a desire

for the work that we were doing, which is environmental journalism, which

is by its very nature, Difficult.

Um, and we talk about destruction and disaster and despair, and

I wanted us to find ways to tell those stories beautifully.

And I felt like that was a service to humanity, was to make those stories

alluring and enticing and to draw people back into these important issues

and conversations that they felt.

Disempowered by and alienated by.

And these conversations are, you know, other people are having

them in, in boardrooms and, and places of power all over the place.

But we wanted everyday ordinary people to, to be re re enchanted

into talking about the natural world.

Um, and we often, you know, have this sort of tagline or, or little.

Turn of phrase that we use, that we tell ugly stories beautifully.

And um, and that's been really significant for us.

And so this, this finding beauty is for me so much more than aesthetic preference.

It's really, there's a radical political sense to which we want people to see this.

And we want them to want to look at it more than other things.

And there's, there's a sense of re-empowering people

when, when we do that.

And also we're telling stories of, you know, people who are going

through really difficult things.

And if you're, if you're a politician, if you're a premier or the Prime Minister,

you have great high quality photos taken of you all the time doing all the things.

But if you are living in a remote First Nation and your community is being

flooded again, and you're dealing with.

Successive years of dangerous health impacts of poor infrastructure.

Is anyone there to take a beautiful, powerful portrait of you?

The answer is no.

And so there's a, there is a power dynamic that is at play and we really

believe that working with visual storytellers, photojournalist to go to

these places to tell these stories in a beautiful way is really important.

Yeah, you don't have to.

Spend too long reading your stories or absorbing the imagery that comes with

them to see how powerfully that value shines through into not just the way

I think a lot of people, when you talk about values, assume that it's, those

are the things which sort of shape the way that we are with each other, or you

know, in that least, Advanced sense, kind of the way that we decorate the office

and the rituals that we hold, and they don't necessarily imagine that values.

Grow their tentacles right into the very work that you do when they're done.

Right.

They describe not just kind of what makes our culture interesting, but

how we do the work that we do in a way that makes us successful, and that

brings us a sense of joy in what we do.

And I know that you've.

Taken those values and I, I want to hear some stories from you quickly

about kind of how you're seeing those showing up inside the organization now.

But I know that one of the things you've done that's I'm super proud to see you do

is you've really quickly having defined them, found a way to have them become the.

Blueprint for how you do your editorial work.

And I just want you to speak a little bit, if you can, to kind of how you

made that connection and what that, how that's working for you right now.

Yeah, it's, it's a great question and one that we, yeah, we are

benefiting basically every single day from having these written down in a way

that we can reflect on them and, and incorporate them into these big decisions.

Big and small decisions that we find ourselves making every single day.

As everyone knows, you know, newsrooms are selective, editors are selective.

There's always some human somewhere deciding what a headline says and what

stories are being fed to the public.

And and it's no different at the narwhal.

And we take that responsibility really seriously.

And we, there are so many.

Important environmental stories across Canada, far, far, far more

than we could ever possibly tell.

Which means we have to go through this fil filter process and this process of

selection every single day with our team.

And so as we're doing that what we found is that actually, like looking

back at our values, is really helpful for us in terms of being decisive about

where we're gonna spend our times.

Energy and resources, and also how we're thinking about the communities

that we're reporting within and reporting on behalf of as well.

So for example being bold.

So that, that's the value and, and the set of behaviors that

we've sort of tucked underneath that is swim against the current.

Bravely reimagine what's possible and be fearlessly authentic.

So a way that that may show up in our editorial decision making

is looking at what's happening elsewhere in the journalistic world.

How is the story be being covered by every other news topic?

How is a story being misrepresented or underrepresented?

How can we as an organization sort of be bold in the face of.

A moment, a news moment, for example, and tell a story a totally different way.

I, a really specific example of this is the Fairy Creek blockades that happened

in the summer, like 2020 to 2021.

And this was, has, has now become the largest act of civil

disobedience in Canadian history.

It was just like hundreds.

Thousands of people were flocking to these remote logging roads, setting up

blockades and encampments to stop the, this old growth force from being logged.

And there was some tension under the surface of the story because the

territory of the first Nation on who's.

On, on, on which this forest was located as the Apache, that first nation.

And in that moment, they were not doing any media interviews.

And so this story was just exploding in the news.

The RC MP showed up with incredible resources and force and just started

arrest, performing arrest after arrest after arrest more than a

thousand people were arrested, you know, over a span of months.

The activists were engaging in like more extreme tactics.

Every week that was going by, they were creating these teepees and

hanging themselves up from these sort of teepe structures, 25 feet in the

air, making it very difficult for the R C P officers to safely arrest them.

Just a lot of like really creative environmental activism was, was ongoing

and it was a very sexy, fiery news moment.

And, Yet no one had actually heard from the First Nation who, you

know, was located very nearby.

The, the actual reservation was nearby.

They had a little local mill nearby.

And we were really sensitive about how to report on the story without actually

hearing from the nation themselves.

And so Sarah Cox, our, one of our BC reporters, just really quietly, Patiently

and, and and consistently got to work, like trying to find a way to build

some trust and to, you know, Basically have an invitation into the community.

And eventually we got that and we ended up publishing this really wonderful feature

about the patch it at First Nation, their relationship with that forestry and how an

indigenous community that for so long had been denied the opportunity to participate

in the economics of their own territory.

Had slowly, slowly begun to build up a, a forestry industry for their community.

And they were able to build a, a lodge and.

Create some small stores for local ecotourism, a a small mill.

And it really was the story of sort of economic sovereignty for this

nation that had, who, who for which decisions about what happened in

that area had been denied to them.

And in, in, in a critical way.

I.

Many of these activists moving in, were continuing that denial.

And it's a complicated story for environmentalists.

It's complicated for people who are devastated at the loss

of biodiversity and the just.

Clear cutting of old growth.

The last remaining old growth in this province.

People are, have, feel like they have a duty to humanity to protect these

last stands of epic ancient forests.

And yet it was coming into direct conflict with another common environmental value,

which is to support indigenous communities in self-determination and governance.

And so Sarah ended up getting the story and writing the story, and it was just

like, Very controversial and we had people who were really upset with us for.

Shining a light on this incongruity that was very uncomfortable for the

environmental community, especially in a moment when they had actually

drawn the nation's attention to a major environmental issue.

Is that the moment in which environmental journalists should be, but wait,

there's a real problem here we need to talk about in a different way.

Sarah ended up winning an award for that.

It was just Taylor Rhodes did the photography.

It was.

So sensitive.

It was so beautiful.

It was really profound in the moment, and it was very much

swimming against the current.

Mm-hmm.

In a lot of ways.

And so I, but I feel like we felt comfortable in the fact that we were

living our values in that moment.

And, and it was such an important story and one that needed to be told, and it

sparked really important conversation.

So that, that's an example of how a moment like that where it's really

difficult to make a decision.

There's lots of pressure, there's lots of momentum.

All these other news outlets are in our turf, you know, telling

environmental stories and it's like, what do we wanna do?

And it's like, maybe we actually just stop for a minute and think about how we

do this and try to take a different tack.

Yeah.

And, and that one proved to be really, yeah.

Really valuable for us.

And we still talk about that story.

And in fact, when we're hiring we ask people, you know, what's a story that

really stands out for you at the narwhal?

And like Sarah's story that patchy, that story comes up time and time again.

It's really like made an impression on, on journalists and young journalists

who wanna do meaningful in-depth work.

Yeah.

Ah, it's amazing and I hear so many of your values

actually shining in that one.

There's the swimming against the current, there's the lifting people up and the.

Pri the priority that you gave there to kind of finding the

underrepresented voices and giving them the microphone in a different way.

There's the diving deep into the, not just the facts of the story,

but into the relationship and the trust that needs to be built in

order to build those kinds of things.

And there's, you know, to reach right back to your purpose, which is to use the

power of journalism to bridge divides, you know, Finding those moments where there is

an, an incongruence in things and saying, Hey, well how do we actually join these

ideas together in a way that makes sense?

And I think that takes such skill, but I love how you are, how you're using

your values to help you navigate the complexity in that and make some decisions

around this is something that we need to write and there's a way for us to

write it that is going to make it ours.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

Where do you find yourself now?

You know, here we are a few years on from that, from that creating of the

values and had some time on as well from the writing of that story, for example.

I had the pleasure of coming to join you and the whole team for the first time a

couple of weeks ago on Salt Spring Island for your very first ever team retreat.

And I remember in the planning of that, I had this great idea for how we were

gonna get back around your values.

And you basically said to me, I don't think we need to do that.

We, we, we really, really know what these are.

And we go through them all the time.

And I, I thought, good daughter, that may might be the first time

a client's ever said that to me.

It didn't surprise me, of course, but I'm curious about kind of,

how are you, how are you noticing them live in the team right now?

Your team grew fast in the last year and I just, that that idea that they all have

somehow internalized, this intrigues me and I wanna know how you've managed that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, just like thinking about the growth, so it's

kind of interesting because I.

The, the horse slash unicorn never stopped bolting, you know, it was like

that growth was just happening to us.

But as we were able to sort of codify in this way, like the, the normal

values and our sense of like who we are and what we're doing, that we

immediately use that to build out our hiring practices and our onboarding.

And like, that was really the This, this sort of movement of this work,

like into the, the sort of structure of the organization as we grew,

which absolutely fundamentally changed the way it felt to grow.

It didn't feel like chaotic scattershot.

It was like we were putting in one block after another.

And the result is this like incredible team of people that we've amassed

that you got to meet on Salt Spring.

And, and yeah, when, when we were talking about, you know, how can, how can we work

with, within people in the context of all of us being together, cuz you know,

we're primarily engaging in digital work.

The digital workplace of Slack.

We have the little offices here and there, but this is our first time all

being together as you know, human beings.

We really want to prioritize, like just joyfully being together

because that's such a rarity for us.

And I was telling you, Lori, that you know, some of our staff actually

have the values printed up on the office wall, and when they're talking

about stories, they'll all like sit back and look at the values.

And so we really didn't need a refresher on the values.

But but what we really wanted to do, and this was such a joy to do, was to

open up that dreamscape again and get into, you know, that visionary place

where we're outside of the, you know, the, the busyness of deadlines and news

events happening and, and all the things.

And just create some space to be like, what are the things we've done

that have made us the most proud?

Where have we really shown up?

What do we wanna do more of?

Where do we wanna see the narwhal in five years?

How can we really live these values And And that was really meaningful

to do with all of our staff.

And if I, to me, it was an opportunity to really just build back in those, those

values in a, in a way that connects to the vision of what we could be in the future

reconnecting to those in order to have a vision of the future because, It's another

thing when you grow, you have a bigger team, you have different imaginations,

you have different skill sets.

You know, there's diversity in many different ways with, with a diverse team.

And that is, that can also be difficult to wrangle or it

can actually be a total skill.

But you wanna have focus.

And the focus is not to restrict people, it's to capacitate people

and to protect people from the thousand things we can do and how.

Burnout is for all of us if we try to do them all.

So how can we like really get a sense of like what is unique that the narwhal can

offer in, in the, in the journalism world, and what is the, you know, the impact that

we can have on our readers and our country and environmental issues and how do we

really like, get a sense of ourselves?

Like if we were being the most possible badass we could be, what is that

gonna look like for us in five years?

And that was like such a fun.

Thing to just get into that head space with the team and, and allow everyone to

sort of dream really ambitiously together.

And yeah, and you know, it's, there's, there's also with the I, I think I

had expressed to you, Lori, that I had this like tiny insecurity about like.

Having a big, expensive conversation and getting the sense of like, let's all dream

together and then being the person who said, but we can't actually do anything.

You know?

And so like, yeah, how do you facilitate as a leader a conversation where you

wanna bring people into that space?

But you don't wanna also have no guardrails because you want it to be

meaningful, you want it to be real.

And I feel like the values become these.

These meaningful guardrails, not in a restrictive way, but in a way that

allows us to channel deeper into the things that make us great, make us unique

and, and that truly have drawn a lot of these people to our organization, right?

They saw what we were doing.

They saw that there was something different.

They saw that, you know, we were producing journalism that was really

rare in Canada, and, and a lot of people felt compelled there, like,

I wanna be a part of that team.

So the hiring and bringing people in and connecting to them at that, it all creates

this really beautiful ecosystem where we can really be, we can really trust each

other because we have this shared sense of purpose and there's like a freedom that

comes with that in a, in a wonderful way.

Yeah.

I love hearing you talk about it, Carol.

And I love the, the.

I would want to talk to you about it forever if we can, but we can't.

But I think there's something definitely in the, in that sense of kind of

as a, as a leader and as a founder, giving yourself permission to dream

a little bit around what you most want and to make that feel like a

valid and important use of your time.

And starting to then see what can land from that, that you can pull

into the, the way that you want.

Your organization to be in the, the way that you want it to, to grow in shape.

But I'm by way of kind of a wrapping up the conversation here.

What I'd love to ask you is standing here today in 2023, give some advice

back to the Carol in 2021 around what she should do or think or try.

Now, kind of what have you, what have you taken from this journey that you've been

on that you wish you had known then, or that the advice you would give yourself

from the, with the benefit of hindsight?

Wow.

What a question.

I think I would tell myself to trust my instincts.

And for, for both Emma and I to, to trust our instincts, I feel like we

were desperate to prove ourselves well beyond it being necessary.

And I don't know if that's because we had an underdog complex or because we

were women in the industry or we were coming into the journalism world from

an unconventional space, which is, you know, digital first and, and online and

independent and not at all having the hallmarks of, you know, traditional.

New York Times journalism but the ambitions to do the same kind

of work, same caliber of work.

I think, yeah, I would absolutely say like you need to trust your instinct

and you have something to offer.

Mm-hmm.

And don't be afraid to offer it.

That would definitely be one thing.

And then another thing that I think I might say to myself is you may.

You are a leader, even if you don't maybe feel like you are one yet, if

you are leading, you are a leader and your experience matters to the

conversation of leadership, you're, it, it's not it's not illegitimate

because it doesn't look like what your ideal picture of leadership looks like,

and probably a lot of other leaders.

And other capacities and organizations are struggling with very similar things.

So I think, I think there is also that sense of like, we

don't know how to do this.

Like no one taught us how to do this.

And actually in some ways we still feel that way, right?

Mm-hmm.

We didn't actually grow up and come up in the industry with the

kind of mentorship that we are now trying to provide and the type of

leadership that we now wanna embody.

And so the only.

Way to deal with that is to be more authentically yourself to just lean

into that because you're not gonna become, and Lori, I feel like I'm

like talking, I'm te I'm saying back to you things that you actually said

to me in, in, in leadership sessions.

But I feel like you really encouraged me.

Like I, for example, My favorite value is finding beauty and I, I had this sense of

like, I want to build this into the naral.

This is so important to me, and it's very much not a budgeting and

spreadsheet and fundraising skillset.

It's something totally different.

And I think I had a sense of like, is this a less valuable asset than other assets?

This is not a hard skill.

This is a soft skill.

And Lori, you were just like, no such thing.

And like you're, you.

These are powerful forces that are growing your organization and you

should never like, shy away from being passionate about that and that being

a thing that you can really b bring to your organization and build it up.

And I like needed to hear that in, in that moment.

And so I feel like that was, you were saying you're a great leader.

You are a leader.

Just be yourself, be more yourself.

Dig into that and accept that and grow through that.

And that is actually so worthy and so valuable and a part of the reason why

you're doing what you're doing and why it's been successful and like that.

I needed to hear that so much in that moment.

So yeah, I guess, I guess it's, you know, we all, we all need to

find our authentic selves no matter what, what we're doing, right?

And to be comfortable with that and, and to accept ourselves and to lean into

our strengths and be okay offering the thing that we can offer to the world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Incredible.

Well, that's a beautiful thing to hold.

Carol and you are a beautiful leader with a beautiful organization, and

it's been a real privilege, not just to talk to you about it today, but

to have observed and in some points contributed to that journey that

you've been on in these last few years.

Because the work you do is important and the way that you're doing it is inspiring.

Thank

you so much, Laurie.

Thank you for all you've helped us accomplish.

It's.

I feel like we would be in a different place right now if we hadn't

crossed paths with you and that.

Oh, so awful.

April, all those days ago,

one of our values is learned together, and I think the process

we've been through together has taught us plenty from your side as well about what

it means to grow an organization that.

It is here to make an impact in the world and that really cares about how the people

in it feel in that quest essentially.

But thank you for your time today and.

If you're listening to this out there, get yourself to the Narwals

website, read everything, be better.

Still become a member.

You won't regret it.

It's really fantastic stuff.

All right.

Carol, you're amazing.

Thank you for being so eloquent and articulate and all the

things I am not finding the ability to be in this afternoon.

Well done.

Oh yeah.

Perfect.

All right.

Thanks for listening everyone.

We hope you enjoyed learning about our purpose, vision, and values

journey With the naral, you can find more information about Carol

and the NARAL at their website.

The naral.ca.

Tune into our podcast every month for more episodes on what's happening

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