Elizenda Jean Claude
Intact Financial
Canada
Elizenda is a leadership and organizational design advisor transforming businesses and communities. She is a certified design thinking and HR expert with over 17 years of experience counseling C-suite executives, founders and non-profit leaders. Through her leadership and organizational human centered design work, she focuses on empowering Black community leaders to increase their internal capacity, and learn how to build their equitable ecosystem for the sustainable advancement of the community they serve. Her goal is to build a network of community and philanthropic leaders who adopt the human centered design and leadership principles through case studies, education and coaching.
Elizenda seeks the support of the WLW fellowship and network for mentorship, support and guidance to expand her reach and serve more communities at the national and global level.
About
Me.
What is your story?
What drives your work?
I built a corporate career in Human Resources Management because my purpose was to be “Courageous human voice in the business world”. Over the years, I developed an expertise in counseling c-suite executives in making strategic HR decisions, organizational transformation, mergers, acquisitions, leadership development and culture building.
However, after 15 years, it became more and more evident that the Human Resources function’s primary mandate is to protect the corporation from any labour liabilities and maximize productivity. Not to put innovative conditions in place for employees to be empowered and thrive in the workplace. My contributions and ideas were always limited by those boundaries. This is why, although I was proud of my accomplishments, I was yearning to contribute more to the “human side” and to find spaces where I could openly center my work on improving the experience of those often overlooked.
It is this passion that made me, in 2019, help build the first Black Professional Network in the largest telecommunication company in Canada. Then, in 2021, I took the mandate of leading the launch of the Bell Let’s Talk Diversity Fund program, which aims to support the mental health of diverse communities in Canada. I also created and executive produced an award winning podcast “From Where We Stand: Conversations on Race and Mental Health” aiming to raise awareness on the mental health challenges faced by diverse communities. Through this mandate, I discovered how deeply misunderstood the needs of ethnocultural communities were and how disconnected the philanthropic stakeholders were from the reality of underserved communities. As an attempt to bridge that gap, I decided in 2022 to do a certification in Human Centered Design to help bring together various stakeholders that can truly make a lasting difference in the life of communities in need. It is also that same year that I joined the Foundation for Black Communities as a Board member to help advance the socioeconomic status of the Black communities in Canada by facilitating access to funding.
I am dedicated to continuing putting the human experience at the forefront in every one of my interventions, whether through leadership, business, organizational or social work.
Describe your biggest strength as a leader
Communication: I am able to navigate through, facilitate and guide difficult discussions with executives and various groups towards a common objective.
Leadership: I am an inclusive and empowering leader who creates space where multiple viewpoints can contribute and grow.
Empathy: I have an innate ability to put myself in other’s shoes, feel what they are experiencing and understand the drivers of their perspective. This helps me build deep and trusting relationships.
Describe your biggest challenge as a leader
Although I am confident in my competencies, I have imposter syndrome and have a tendency of fearing to be in the spotlight, which limits the reach of my impact.
Finding the right balance between work and self-care. Understand what is the right pace of work for me. I tend to overextend myself and prioritize work over my health when I am passionate about what I am working on. But then, my health and family members suffer.
About the
Organization
and the Project.
Sector
For-profit
Website
Vision & Mission
Mission: We are here to help people, businesses and society prosper in good times and be resilient in bad times.
Vision:
Our customers are our best advocates:
3 out of 4 customers are our advocates
4 out of 5 brokers recognize our specialized expertise
Our people are engaged:
We are a best employer
Our employees and leaders are representative of the communities we serve
Our company is one of the most respected
3 out of 4 stakeholders recognize us a leaders in building resilient communities
Achieve net zero by 2050 and half our operations emissions by 2030
Year Founded
1809
No. of Employees
30000
Years in the Organization
1.5 years
Annual Budget (USD)
$21.000.000.000
Geographical Area Served
Canada, US, UK and Ireland
Organizational /
Project Description
By April 2025, I will have built a training program tailored to teach non profit leaders how to build their internal capacity, leadership, strategic partnerships and community impact through the use of human-centered-design.
I will have designed, launched, and trained a cohort of 8-15 leaders and will be planning a summer retreat.
Objectives:
Creating partnerships with various experts and institutions
Designing the training
Building a fundraising plan
Launch campaign
Delivering and facilitating the training
Why is this project important and timely?
What is the target population of your project?
It is well documented how little support non profit leaders from diverse communities receive.
Lack of access to resources and sponsorship, makes it difficult for black and diverse community leaders to scale. On the other side, the gap between the capacity of the organizations and the increasing needs of the communities augments the chasm between organizations and their community members. As a response to the increasing separation, we are introducing the concept of Community Visioning, a decolonized user-research approach that accelerates the growth potential by organically strengthening the relationship with community and generating long-term partnerships.
Human centered design, a user research methodology putting the community served at the center, is an approach that has been the secret weapon used by for profit organizations for decades to build their empire, such as Netflix, Uber, etc.
I want to democratize access to this powerful approach and teach the power of community visioning to generate genuine community and partner relationships, exponential demand and scale their impact.
How will you know that you have achieved that impact? What data will you use to assess your impact?
Number of program participants
$ Amount raised
Pre and post training survey results
Number of community visioning/ human centered design workshops facilitated with leaders and their organization
How do you anticipate this unique leadership education impacting you personally? What new skills are you hoping too develop & grow through this experience?
I hope that this program will push me out of my comfort zone and expand my horizons and self-belief.
Some of the skills I would like to develop and grow with the help of the support network, coaches and mentors are:
•Risk-taking and experimentation.
•Overcoming fear of failure.
•Overcoming fear of being in the spotlight.
•Understand how to achieve work-life integration (as I understand that balance is impossible)
•Balancing personal growth and balance with professional demands.
•Cultivating strong, trust-based relationships in new sectors.
Where would you like to see yourself professionally in the next 3 years?
My goal is to continue to contribute in a leadership and design thinking capacity in the entrepreneurial and social spaces. I also love to inspire and educate through public speaking. Ideally, in 3 years, I would be able to do this full-time.