S5 Ep. 04 - Pathways to Self-Employment for Neurodivergent Canadians

In this episode of the Future Skills Podcast, host Jeremy Strachan explores how self-employment and entrepreneurship can serve as powerful pathways for neurodivergent Canadians to thrive in the workforce. Jennifer Fane from The Conference Board of Canada discusses her Future Skills Centre-funded research on barriers facing neurodivergent entrepreneurs and the need for tailored support programs; Wanda Deschamps, founder of Liberty Co. and openly autistic entrepreneur, shares her perspective on shifting the narrative from accommodations to strengths and the importance of neuroinclusion in business; and Brad Loiselle, CEO of Skills Council of Canada, reveals how “dyslexic thinking” has fueled his serial entrepreneurship success, from building North America’s largest wrapping paper business to creating innovative educational platforms. 

Guests

Jennifer Fane, Lead Research Associate, The Conference Board of Canada

Wanda Deschamps, Founder and Principal, Liberty Co.

Brad Loiselle, CEO and Founder, Skills Council of Canada

Transcript

Season 5: Episode 4  

Pathways to Self-employment for Neurodivergent Canadians 

In this episode of the Future Skills Podcast, host Jeremy Strachan explores how self-employment and entrepreneurship can serve as powerful pathways for neurodivergent Canadians to thrive in the workforce. Jennifer Fane from The Conference Board of Canada discusses her Future Skills Centre-funded research on barriers facing neurodivergent entrepreneurs and the need for tailored support programs; Wanda Deschamps, founder of Liberty Co. and openly autistic entrepreneur, shares her perspective on shifting the narrative from accommodations to strengths and the importance of neuroinclusion in business; and Brad Loiselle, CEO of Skills Council of Canada, reveals how “dyslexic thinking” has fueled his serial entrepreneurship success, from building North America’s largest wrapping paper business to creating innovative educational platforms. Together, they illuminate how neurodivergent individuals’ unique ways of processing information and solving problems can drive innovation and economic growth, while highlighting the urgent need to address discrimination and create more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems that recognize differences as strengths rather than deficits.  

Guests 

Jennifer Fane, Lead Research Associate, The Conference Board of Canada 

Wanda Deschamps, Founder and Principal, Liberty Co.  

Brad Loiselle, CEO and Founder, Skills Council of Canada 

Host 

Jeremy Strachan, Senior Research Associate, The Conference Board of Canada 

Links 

Future Skills Centre Homepage: https://fsc-ccf.ca/ 

Future Skills Centre LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fsc-ccf 

Future Skills Centre Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fsc-ccf.bsky.social  

The Conference Board of Canada Homepage: https://www.conferenceboard.ca/ 

The Conference Board of Canada Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConfBoardofCda 

The Conference Board of Canada Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConferenceBoardofCanada/ 

The Conference Board of Canada Insights Page, Exploring Self-employment as an Inclusive Pathway for Neurodivergent Canadians: English | French 

The Conference Board of Canada, Neuroinclusive Practices in Post-Secondary Education: English | French 

Liberty Co. Homepage: https://libertyco.ca/  

Skills Council of Canada Homepage: https://www.skillscouncil.ca/  

Made By Dyslexia Homepage: https://www.madebydyslexia.org/  

Transcript 

Jeremy: Welcome to Season Five of the Future Skills Podcast, brought to you by the Future Skills Centre. I’m Jeremy Strachan, Senior Research Associate at The Conference Board of Canada, and your host for the season. On the Future Skills Podcast, we explore what matters most to Canadians when it comes to skills, training, and the ever-changing world of work. 

Since 2019, the Future Skills Centre has been driving Canada’s workforce transformation by funding innovative training solutions, cutting-edge research, and inclusive partnerships to ensure everyone has the skills to thrive in a changing economy. 

In this episode, we’re exploring a topic that’s become part of the conversation on building a more inclusive and productive labour market: self-employment for neurodivergent Canadians.  

My guests are Jennifer Fane from The Conference Board of Canada, who’ll tell us about a new Future Skills Centre-funded project she’s leading on some of the ways that self-employment, and entrepreneurship could be ideal pathways into the labour market for neurodivergent individuals. Then we’ll hear from Wanda Deschamps, founder and principal of the consultancy Liberty Co. Diagnosed at midlife with autism, Wanda will talk about why we should be focused on increasing neuroinclusion in our workforce. Finally, I talk to Brad Loiselle, CEO of Skills Council of Canada and self-described serial entrepreneur. He’ll share how what he calls “dyslexic thinking” has shaped his own remarkable career as an innovator and problem solver.   

As our workforce becomes increasingly diverse, we’re discovering that traditional employment models don’t always serve everyone equally. For many neurodivergent individuals, self-employment offers something valuable: The freedom to work in ways that align with their unique strengths and needs. The Future Skills Centre has been a research leader in neuroinclusivity in education and the workplace. You’ll find links to some of our reports in the show notes. One of our newest initiatives in this area is to shine a light on what barriers neurodivergent workers face in becoming self-employed, and what kinds of supports and programs could be tailored to neurodivergent peoples’ needs. Why does this matter? For one thing, unemployment rates are very high for some neurodivergent groups. And following that, neurodivergence is complex, and different neurominorities bring competitive skills profiles to the table. The pathway of self-employment not only benefits individuals but also helps address Canada’s talent shortage by tapping into an underutilized workforce segment. 

My first guest is Jennifer Fane. She’s a Lead Research Associate at The Conference Board of Canada and an expert on neurodiversity, training, and skills. You might have heard her last season on Episode 6, when we talked about her recent work on supporting neurodiverse students in post-secondary education, also funded by the Future Skills Centre. 

Jenn, welcome back to the podcast. It’s great to get a chance to speak with you again. 

Jennifer: Thanks so much for having me back, Jeremy. 

Jeremy: My pleasure. Let’s get started. Tell us about the project you’re working on around self-employment as an inclusive pathway for neurodivergent Canadians. 

Jennifer: Thanks, Jeremy. This study fits in with the neuroinclusive workforce research that The Conference Board has been doing in partnership with the Future Skills Centre these past few years. 

Our goal with this research is really to investigate where gaps are for neurodivergent individuals within the Canadian workforce in terms of workforce participation, being able to secure employment, but also securing meaningful employment and being able to move through their career pathways. 

So, while we’ve looked at workplaces and at post-secondary, another avenue that has really not been explored for neurodivergent individuals is self-employment and entrepreneurial activity. So, this study really looks at neurodiversity and self-employment and the exceptional strengths, skills, and talents that neurodivergent individuals bring to entrepreneurial activity. 

But also, the very real barriers and challenges they meet in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which is really not set up for different types of individuals and different types of thinkers. 

Jeremy: So, before neurodivergent individuals enter this entrepreneurial ecosystem, as you call it, how can entrepreneurial thinking be integrated into high school education, particularly to support neurodivergent students, and why should it be integrated into learning at an early age? 

Jennifer: Thanks, Jeremy. That’s a great question. As we think of the world of work right now, it certainly looks really different. More and more Canadians are choosing self-employment, are investigating entrepreneurial activities. More Canadians are participating in gig economy or contract work or remote work. 

The work landscape looks really different, yet career education at the high school level really has not caught up to that in a lot of ways and is not maybe, meaningfully, thinking about how to support young people in investigating entrepreneurism at a young age. And when that happens, students are often highly focused on those maybe more traditional careers or pathways through more traditional careers. 

But as with this research study, as we’re talking to more and more neurodivergent individuals who have chose self-employment, we know that they have moved towards that because they have noticed in their career, either with the successes in their careers or sometimes the very real challenges in their careers, that self-employment or entrepreneurial activity has been the best fit for them. And in speaking with these entrepreneurs, many of them reflect that they just really were not aware of that pathway or that that was a valuable, meaningful pathway for them when they were young people. And that there really is a missed opportunity, especially for neurodivergent students who are likely to meet barriers in their workforce participation or transition to the workforce, that there actually are many options in terms of work and workforce participation. And that young people aren’t cutting off avenues before they’ve had time to think with them or maybe hear from others who are doing that or explore them on their own. 

Jeremy: Ok, so you mentioned that some folks felt that entrepreneurship was not a viable pathway for them. Do you think it’s time to reconceptualize what it is when we say entrepreneurship, what that means? So that it can be more inclusive for individuals facing employment challenges due to neurodivergence?  

Jennifer: That’s a great question, Jeremy, as well. And I think we also need to step back with that question and just relate it to, why does the entirety of workforce participation need to be more inclusive, because that really is the big question. And as we work to make workplaces more inclusive, this research purports that it’s really important to think of the suite of workforce participation and other ways to engage people who are currently excluded from the labour market, in the labour market. 

Because of the tendency for workplaces to revolve around neurotypical tendencies, neurodivergent individuals often feel excluded from the workforce. They’ve had repeated negative experiences within the workforce or feel like they’ve not been able to meaningfully move up, gain promotion, or use the skills and knowledge that they have.  

So, for this group of people who also have low employment rates—for example, autistic Canadians have the lowest employment rate of any group of Canadians—we really do need to rethink about what inclusive employment strategies and pathways might be. And because neurodivergent individuals bring such exceptional strengths and skills that are often hidden or not accessed in workplaces due to misunderstandings around individual strengths and capacities, self-employment really does provide an opportunity for some neurodivergent individuals to take a strength or a skill and turn it into a successful career pathway where they were not able to do that within the workforce. 

Jeremy: Thanks for that. Jenn, my last question for you is about how complex and vast neurodiversity is. Can you talk to us about the diversity of supports that are needed to empower neurodivergent individuals to succeed in the pathway of self-employment and entrepreneurship? 

Jennifer: That is one of the key findings that I really want to highlight that’s coming through with this research that I think perhaps is largely invisible within the entrepreneurial ecosystem right now. 

Many of the neurodivergent entrepreneurs that we are speaking to are running successfully, running small to medium enterprises. They’ve had their organizations or companies for many years, and while they certainly can speak to sort of the barriers and, and enablers that they have experienced self-employment is absolutely the best fit for them. And they felt that it has been a way to utilize their strengths to find working conditions and working environments that are highly flexible for their needs. And, also, just to be engaged in activities, thought, or work that is meaningful to them. And that group of entrepreneurs has been operating successfully in Canada for probably a very long time without a spotlight shined on the fact that they are neurodivergent. 

But the other sort of side of the coin, if we think about neurodiversity and self-employment, are individuals who have not been successful in the labour market, perhaps ever, because their support needs are quite high. Or perhaps they have been able to enter into the labour market but they’re stuck at a level below their skills or qualifications; or perhaps they’re seen as a problematic worker, or perhaps as not valuable because their skills or strengths are not being seen; and perhaps only their challenges are being seen in the workplace. And for that group of individuals, self-employment can also offer really generative and meaningful work opportunities, but the support needs of this group are much higher. 

And here’s the crux of where this study really wants to add to the literature and make a difference—is to really identify those specific barriers that neurodivergent individuals are facing and what types of tailored supports would bridge those gaps.  

And we can see these programs for many other equity seeking Canadians. We see these tailored support programs for Indigenous Canadians; for women; for newcomers, and with great results. We really see these programs being able to move equity-seeking individuals from place of non workforce participation into meaningful work.  

But the needs of neurodivergent individuals are different. And while some of them are captured in current programs for disabled Canadians, the focus of, or the criteria for, disability does not meet the needs of neurodivergent Canadians, which are diverse. And we really would benefit from thinking around tailored supports for this group. 

Jeremy: This is really exciting work, Jenn. Thanks again for sharing some of the preliminary insights with us. 

Jennifer: Thanks, Jeremy. I really appreciate the opportunity to share about this research study on the podcast. 

Jeremy: You can find links to this project in the show notes. This research, along with other work that the Future Skills Centre has spearheaded on neurodiversity could not be more timely, especially as the conversation around neurodivergence becomes more and more evolved. My next guest is someone who’s a passionate advocate for making workplaces more inclusive for neurodivergent Canadians. Wanda Deschamps is the founder and principal at Liberty Co., a consultancy focused on increasing neurodiverse employment. As an openly autistic entrepreneur, she wants to revolutionize the way we approach inclusion in the workforce.    

Wanda, thank you for joining me on the Future Skills Podcast. 

Wanda: Thanks for having me, Jeremy. It’s great to be here. 

Jeremy: Wonderful. Wanda, the conversation around neurodiversity and business is often framed in terms of accommodations, rather than strengths. So, my question is, how can we shift that narrative to one that highlights the value that neurodivergent entrepreneurs bring to the economy? 

Wanda: In terms of the conversation around neurodiversity and business, and that it’s often framed in terms of accommodations rather than strengths, I see the two as being mutually inclusive. So, we can link accommodations in terms of strengths and when we’re talking about accommodations, it’s not deficit. What’s really limiting to us is when we come from a deficit approach, that neurodivergent individuals have deficits. 

So, I think that in terms of shifting the narrative all of this can be part of a whole. It’s a matter of recognizing that forms of neurodivergence—autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia—they’re differences. They’re not deficits. And, actually, differences can be strengths. Especially in terms of thinking that neurodivergent individuals, because we process information differently, because we see things differently, our differences may lead to innovative thinking. 

So, I think it’s a matter of recognizing, first of all, neurodiversity exists. And we’re looking at about 10 to 15 to 20 per cent of the world’s population as neurodivergent—it exists in many forms. And that difference is not bad. Difference from the mainstream population, our neurotypical peers—difference is not bad. In fact, difference can be good. It can lead to innovative approaches. Of course, neurodivergent individuals wish to be recognized as individuals. There’s a vast spectrum of characteristics and traits across the spectrum of neurodiversity. However, we can have skills in areas such as pattern recognition; memory; mathematics. 

And in terms of those differences and thinking and, and you know, coming up with solutions that might otherwise be overlooked, or untapped, that is something that we really need to be paying more attention to in terms of entrepreneurship and aiding the economy as a whole. 

Jeremy: So, to build on the idea of differences as strengths, I’d like to ask you about empowerment and self-determination. And many neurodivergent individuals embark on a path of self-discovery in their careers. How can entrepreneurship empower neurodivergent individuals to shape their own futures? 

Wanda: Entrepreneurship can be a powerful path because, well, we’re free from barriers in the form of discrimination, unfortunately, in the forms of harassment and bullying that take place in the workplace because of our differences. So, everything there, down to the flexibility that provides in terms of schedules, often in terms of hours, location, the opportunity to work from home. 

And then, because we think often differently from our neurotypical peers, we don’t, I guess a way to put it is that we don’t necessarily subscribe to ‘groupthink.’ It means that we can really take ideas—interesting ideas—and put them into action. 

So many entrepreneurs want to solve problems. The reason our businesses exist is because we want to solve some kind of issue. We want to provide solutions, so that it gives us the opportunity to channel a passion that we might have to solve a problem—to think in unique ways, and to be free of all the constraints that unfortunately still exist mostly in traditional workplaces.  

It’s really interesting, you know, if you look at some studies. ADHD entrepreneurs can actually be overrepresented in terms of the entrepreneurial pool. And, you know, that could be considered good in some ways. However, something that’s really important from my perspective is and something that I’m really advocating for through my business is that entrepreneurship for neurodivergent individuals be considered a choice. So, we’re still looking it to be something that we’re pulled into because we want to do it and not pushed into it, because of discriminatory practices in the workplace. So, that pull is something that’s really important. 

Jeremy: Earlier we talked about accommodations. And I’d like to ask, from your perspective, what are some of the systemic challenges facing neurodivergent entrepreneurs in Canada? And what can we do to create a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem? 

Wanda: So, the biggest systemic challenge that we still experience is discrimination. Our differences most often present in the form of variances in communication and interpersonal relationships. And that extends, of course, to workplace and entrepreneurship. 

And our differences are often perceived as bad. We’re perceived as ‘less than’ just because we’re different. And that is so unfortunate. It’s so unfortunate because we have the right to live free of discrimination. It’s so unfortunate because it means that our ideas and our contributions are not being fully tapped. 

This is more important now than ever when you think of our world. When you think of conflict. When you think of inflation. When you think of climate change. We need different ways of thinking now, perhaps, you could argue, more so than ever. So, we really need to break down those challenges, and we face these on the day to day. 

In terms of making the ecosystem, as a whole, more inclusive—recognizing the sheer numbers of neurodivergent individuals. If ADHD individuals are overrepresented in the entrepreneurship ecosystem compared to the traditional workplace, then, that’s really key. You know, recognizing how to play to our strengths and talents. And we need more education. We need more awareness, and we need more acceptance. 

Jeremy: So, Wanda, my last question for you builds on that a bit. As a neurodivergent entrepreneur yourself, what lessons have you learned that you wish more people understood about the intersection of neurodiversity and business leadership?  

Wanda: So, I didn’t know my value. And when I’m asked to share thoughts with other neurodivergent founders, I start with saying: Know your value. I really didn’t know it. I am really, really lucky [for] the fantastic relationships that I’ve been able to build during the time I’ve had Liberty Co. 

People like Wendy Cukier, the founder of the Diversity Institute. People like Jason Field, president and CEO of Life Sciences Ontario. There’s more people than I could ever mention, but relationships have been so valuable to me. I knew that, but it’s really been reinforced through my work with Liberty Co., so I’d encourage neurodivergent founders to really focus on relationship-building. 

You know—relying on your network. People want to help. That was something else that I really, I knew, but I needed it reinforced. Like, people really do want to help. And if your business is furthering an idea, like, when I said I was going to focus on neuroinclusion, I had no idea it was going to resonate with so many people. And so, you know, connected with the relationships, you know, you have an idea, you’re furthering something that’s really important. People really do want to help you, because they don’t just, they don’t see it just as helping you or just helping themselves. They see it as helping others who will benefit from the mission of your organization. 

I knew that time management was really, really important. But I’ve learned to be a better manager of time. You can’t pursue everything. You can’t pursue every opportunity. Not every opportunity is for you. So, manage your time well. And then back to your network, every opportunity is not for you. However, if you develop a network, you develop a group of people, you can make referrals to others. You can develop partnerships as your business grows. And again, these are all things I either knew or I had a sense of, but they’ve really been driven home. 

I guess I would say, finally, in terms of a business: Having a long-term view. Whether it be in terms of efforts that you make, you know, you might not see dividends on that, the next day. It can take weeks, months—it can take years.  

And as well as change. On the one hand, we still have so far to go in terms of true neuroinclusion in the workplace. On the other hand, we’ve made so many strides. When I made the move towards neuroinclusion five years ago, I had no idea that we were going to see increased diagnosis. That we were going to see more and more individuals coming forward with their own stories. I didn’t realize that we would have so many leaders coming forward. And, you know, people really caring and making the investment in neuroinclusion.  

So, [these are] some of the things I’ve learned, and learnings that I’m happy to share, and until our work’s done, until there’s true neuroinclusion across workplaces and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, we still have so much more to do. 

Jeremy: What a great sentiment to end on. Wanda, thank you so much for joining me on the Future Skills Podcast. It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk with you today. 

Wanda: Thanks again for the opportunity, Jeremy. This has been great. 

Jeremy: My conversation with Wanda is a great reminder that embracing neurodiversity isn’t just an inclusion imperative but a catalyst for innovation and solving problems. My next guest is going to tell us about his experiences growing up with dyslexia, his early entry points into entrepreneurship, and some of the amazing things he’s accomplished by thinking outside the box. Brad Loiselle is CEO of the Skills Council of Canada, an enterprise dedicated to providing equitable access to education and lifelong learning to communities who otherwise might not have those opportunities. He’s built several companies from the ground up, including iPal, an early e-learning initiative launched way back in 2009, and before that, EasyWrapLines, a global creative company, manufacturer, and distributor of paper goods products—which ended up disrupting and changing the industry in North America. 

Brad, welcome. I’m so glad you could make it.   

Brad: Pleased to be here. 

Jeremy: Growing up, you faced a number of challenges—including being told that your career options would be limited because of dyslexia. Can you tell us about how you got started as an entrepreneur? 

Brad: When I was younger, I used to do a lot of things like I’d go shoveling to try and make money at people’s houses. And my brothers and I, we used to go and jump in dumpsters and look for things that we can, you know, maybe sell or find. And in Westgate Shopping Centre [in Ottawa], right behind there, there used to be a Consumers Distributing. And this is before they locked all the tops of garbage bins. And we’d look for—through bags and boxes and try and find stuff that we could fix, and maybe sell during the summers.  

One Christmas, we went—Christmas Eve—jumped in and, so we started moving some bags out of the way, and there was all these big boxes that just filled the entire base of the garbage bin. We opened the first one and it was filled with toys. And then we opened the second one: It was filled with toys. There must have been about a dozen boxes, all filled with toys. And most of them were broken. But all we saw was opportunity. So, we got out of the bin, took off home, got a, one of those really long wood sleds, came back and we just piled up the boxes, brought it all the way home. Got home and our living room was packed with all these broken toys, and we just spent all day, Christmas day, building toys, fixing them. And then that summer we made about $300 selling these toys out in our backyard. So, that’s how I got involved in entrepreneurship. I realized that I didn’t think like everybody else with math and science, and I didn’t do well in school, but I was really good at figuring out how to take something and do something else with it and make something better and bigger. 

Jeremy: So, you realized that you didn’t think like everyone else. And that leads me into my next question, which is about your LinkedIn profile. And, I notice that under every business and initiative that you’ve started, under the skills, you list ‘dyslexic thinking,’ and that caught me. So, what does dyslexic thinking mean? And I’m hoping you can talk a little bit how that’s shaped your career.  

Brad: Absolutely. So, I would’ve never put dyslexic thinking on my LinkedIn profile up until about a year ago. I was invited [to] Necker Island with Richard Branson, Erin Brockovich—a whole bunch of global leaders were there to an event called Made by Dyslexia. And a couple years ago, Richard had mentioned to me that he, cos he is dyslexic, that he wanted to create an event that brings together a bunch of dyslexic people from around the world who have faced the same problems, but are entrepreneurs. To hear the stories of all the other people with dyslexia: feeling dumb in school, feeling inadequate, being told you won’t be able to excel, you don’t fit within the same teachings of how the school system was designed. Every single person there had the same stories, and I was sitting there listening to everyone speak, and I was in awe. And I was feeling like I wasn’t dumb. You know, growing up, I was misunderstood, and dyslexia was misunderstood. And then we started watching all these videos that talked about some of the greatest leaders in the world, from Alexander Graham Bell to Steve Jobs. And the list goes on and on—to Einstein. There’re all dyslexic. One in five people have dyslexia and dyslexia is just a different way of thinking. We don’t think traditional. We have lots of large, ambitious ideas and we’re able to piece things together that may look very difficult for somebody else.  

But for me, a lot of the project businesses I built are really big. But I’ve been told every single time, every time: “Very ambitious. I don’t think you’re gonna even get this done. This is really hard to do.” But when I look at it, I don’t see that. At all. And most people who are dyslexic think the same way. 

Jeremy: Ok, so Brad, your entrepreneurial endeavours are extensive, to say the least. You build up the largest paper wrapping paper business in North America, which started out as Box It Solutions from your garage. So, can you tell us about how that endeavor lead to not only iPal, but also the establishment of Skills Council of Canada?  

Brad: So, I was going to China a lot to oversee manufacturing with my younger brother Keith. And I came across a level of poverty that I had never experienced before. And I saw little babies living on the street. At this point, my kids were about the same age; they were quite young. And it really bothered me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I said need to fix this problem. So, I started doing research on education. I thought if I can build access to education to everybody and equalize it around the world, maybe there was an opportunity that we could help people who don’t have access to change their destiny. 

I came up with a methodology that I thought could build better online education programs. I had no idea if it would even work. So, I applied to the Canadian Society of Training Development in Toronto. It was a conference that all at university leaders go to, and so I thought, maybe if I can go speak to people and share my methodology, they can validate if it even makes sense. 

And the methodology was: better online education programs; how to build it, how to integrate it, how to create more dynamics to it. 

They politely declined. They just didn’t see how I could contribute. Funny enough, about three months later, one of their committee members called me and she said, “I read your white paper, and it was fascinating.” And she said, “The way you think about all this stuff, it was mind boggling to me.” And she’s like, “We would like you to speak for an hour and a half.” Are you kidding me? An hour and a half. I’m like, holy geez.  

So, I decided to do it. I went to Toronto, and I showed my methodology, and I walked through the whole thing. I got a standing ovation. I got tons of people who approached me. Toyota approached me and asked if they can work with us on building stuff. And that’s when I knew I had something there. So, I launched, it was called iPal—Interactive Professional Applied Learning. I landed contracts with IATA [International Air Transport Association], BMW, Toyota, Scotiabank, OLG—we developed their programs. The Ontario government, Canadian government, Indian government. We landed so many contracts around the world, our revenue went from nothing to a couple million within 17 months. 

And I grew a team of 35 developers, instructional designers, built that around the world. We then got acquired by one of our first customers. I took what I made, and I decided that I was going to go to India because I wanted to see what were all the barriers that existed to get access to education for everybody. And, I thought, India—being as complex as it is with gender and inequality, caste systems, poverty, technology issues, mass population—I thought, if I can understand the complexities of such a diverse, in breadth and depth, country, I can think through how to solve this problem for everybody. 

And then we built a platform that had over 50,000 courses from 200 educators from nine countries. So, I traveled around the world speaking at conferences, trying to convince educators the value of collaboration and working together in one platform, and being able to provide access to people who don’t have access to it. And how do we create that? So, we created this massive platform in India. That was a lot of challenges; technology challenges; growth challenges. There’s so many challenges. And then unfortunately after ten years, we got hit by COVID. And like most people, it destroyed everything we built.  

I was sitting at home in Ottawa there trying to think of what do I do to solve this problem? So I decided to build Skills Council of Canada. And I thought, I’m going to take all the lessons learned and start applying how I can make what I’ve learned in India to support vulnerable people around the world. And in Canada we started focusing on Indigenous communities, employment agencies, all the not-for-profits who are struggling with access to resources.  

And building a platform—so, we have a platform that’s 5,000-plus courses. We’ve had so many partnerships join our platform. We had so many educators and leaders and not-for-profits and all different agencies that have partnered with us, not only in Canada, but we have stuff going on in Africa as well in the US and just all—India. That’s how I built Skills Council of Canada. We’ve been helping thousands and thousands of people. It’s been incredible. 

Jeremy: That’s amazing. Brad, this has been a wonderful conversation. I’m really so very grateful that you were able to join us on the Future Skills Podcast as a guest for this episode. 

Brad: I’m pleased to be here, honestly, I am. 

Jeremy: In this episode, we’ve heard some remarkable stories about critical it is to be thinking differently in today’s uncertain world. And it is those differences—and not deficits—that enable neurodivergent entrepreneurs to find solutions to some of the most complex problems in our economy, in our workforce, and even on our planet. 

Thanks again for joining us on the Future Skills Podcast, brought to you by the Future Skills Centre. I’d like to thank my guests, Jennifer Fane from The Conference Board of Canada, Wanda Deschamps from Liberty Co., and Brad Loiselle from Skills Council of Canada. You can hear all five seasons of the Future Skills Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Give us a follow if you haven’t, and stay tuned for the rest of the season. This episode was produced, edited, and hosted by me, Jeremy Strachan. Sound design also by yours truly. Thanks for listening.