After officially beginning operations early in the month, the Legacy Leadership Lab (L3) team assembled for the first time to begin planning their 18-month initiative on August 26th-27th.
L3 stands for Legacy Leadership Lab, and is a government-funded project to address the growing challenge of small business succession in Canada. L3 will seek to assemble key stakeholders in the realms of business succession, social enterprise and cooperative conversions, and social finance to map solutions and build market prototypes to make social enterprise and cooperative conversions easier and more desirable succession options for communities looking to sustain their local businesses.
The initial team consists of
- Lead researcher Sean Geobey, the Director of Academic Programs at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience and an associate professor at the University of Waterloo
- Project manager Meg Ronson, a University of Waterloo alumna (Masters of Economic Development and Innovation)
- Research assistant Aleksandra Szaflarska, a Wilfrid Laurier University PhD candidate and cooperative business owner
- Research assistant Sean Campbell, a University of Waterloo PhD candidate and business owner
The team mapped out their core values, messaging, logistics, and upcoming milestones together.
Operating as a project of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), the L3 made use of the University's cutting edge "Make Change" classroom in the campus' latest net positive building, evolv1, located in the university's north campus.