ALUMNI PIVOTS: Innovation Specialist to Consultancy Co-Founder

Hello friends, we are back again with another blog post! We have something a little bit different this time: an interview with a recent alumni and one of our very own Recent Engineering Alumni Council Members, Sarah Mostowich!

Through this interview, we hope readers can gain a better sense of the different paths that UWaterloo Engineering alumni can take as well as how to navigate career changes and the transitions from school into the adult working world. This interview will serve as the pilot for a new project highlighting the work of recent alumni and the interesting paths that their lives have taken!

We chat about some of Sarah’s favourite hobbies and thoughts on graduation, her involvement with the COVID-19 pandemic response in Canada, and her current work as a founder and partner of the consulting firm NorthGuide!

Qianshu Wang (QW): Thank you so much, Sarah! It is fantastic to have you here. I think a really great place that we can start from is basically just a general introduction of who you are, your graduating year, and your program.

Sarah Mostowich (SM): I'm Sarah Mostowich, formerly Sarah McKenzie at the University of Waterloo and I graduated in 2018 from Systems Design Engineering.

QW: I graduated in 2019 from Nanotechnology Engineering myself. Is your marriage recent?

SM: It is two years as of today.

QW: Congratulations on the two year anniversary!

SM: Thank you!

QW: Going into the interview, I think it's always great to open up with some fun questions. In that vein, what has been your favorite thing that you have eaten recently and why?

SM: First of all, my husband is an amazing cook and a bunch of our friends living here in the US are also really good cooks. So, my food quality expectations have gone way up but that also means that we'll make really bougie things pretty often. The latest thing that people have got me on is making your own butter from scratch instead of buying it from the store. Get heavy cream from the really good grass fed cows at Whole Foods. It's actually pretty easy if you have a stand mixer, you just put it in the stand mixer for a while and let it go until it gets to the buttery stage then you can season it however you want. The nice thing too is that you can like make it as salty or not as you want. We've taken to putting in different fresh herbs as well so I'm currently working my way through like a dill butter that I made a little while ago. It is so good, I'm finding excuses to spread it on everything. 

QW: That sounds incredible. Is it actually a significant improvement over regular grocery store butter?

SM: Oh, huge time.  I'm finding excuses to put it on things. It's honestly almost closer to cheese than it is to butter.  I really would have no issues just cutting a piece of it and eating it raw.

QW: Its great having a chance to learn a bit more about you and some of the fun things you like doing on the side. But getting to the actual meat of the interview, the theme is essentially talking to people that have had interesting career pivots and transitions into second jobs, as well as people that did interesting things during the course of the pandemic itself. 

I think you're a perfect person to talk about a lot of this. To open up into the set of topics, since you graduated in 2018 slightly before the pandemic, how did you feel regarding graduation, going into the working world as an alumni, and how was that transition in particular for you?

SM: It was, I think, pretty bittersweet for me. Obviously, I was really excited to graduate and go off on my own and build my own career in the real world. Having gone through the co-op program at Waterloo, and I'm sure a lot of other people would agree with me, you feel like you have a pretty good idea of what life is going to look like after graduation and what that post-grad career looks like. 

I was excited to get out of the school environment to learn on my own terms and get to build the career that I wanted for myself. But I was also nervous and sad to be leaving behind the big community of people that I had connected with over the past five years at UW. Especially in the System Design engineering class since our class was really tight knit. We would hang out all the time, we would study together all the time, and go to Kickoff's for a beer after exams. 

Upon graduation, I really missed and actually continue to miss having that close community around. That was probably the thing I was most nervous and disappointed about. You're excited for all of your friends who are moving all across the world and pursuing new amazing opportunities. But it means that they don't live just down the street from you anymore where you can knock on their door at any time of day.

QW: Not able to suddenly grab them for 9pm shawarma anymore right? I think is a very common set of feelings to a lot of new grads in general, especially with Waterloo and the close knit connections you form there as part of your class for so long. How did you feel like you really reconciled and dealt with those feelings?

SM: Honestly, I think you're almost in denial at first when you graduate, because we've done this cycle of leaving the Waterloo campus for four months for a co-op term and then coming back together. The first four to eight months of working full time, you know it wasn't going to happen like before, but in the back of my mind it always felt like: "Well, it's not for very long, right? We're always going back to campus and seeing everyone again." So I think that denial was definitely a real thing. 

I think making points to stay in touch with people was also really important. You form another community with the people that were able to stay in touch with the most and typically with the people who live most around you. You build new connections with the work friends that you make and career friends as well. I think it's about being able to build up that community again around you very quickly.

QW: What was your first career/first job like after graduation?

SM: I would say my career path started while I was still in school. When I was still in fourth year, I decided to take on work as an independent innovation consultant. I got the confidence to do that because in my fourth co-op term, I was working at the General Motors Innovation Lab. Going through the Systems Design engineering program, you learn a lot about the approach that one should go through when they're solving problems, when you're coming up with new ideas, and when you're innovating. 

Working as an innovation specialist at GM, I was really able to apply those principles at a company. I was able to really see that not a lot of people know the importance of starting with the problem when you're looking to build something new. A lot of people will just jump in and say: "Well, what else can we do? Brainstorm! What's the new fun idea?"  I think being able to apply systems design engineering principles to the General Motors space and to teach people about what that looks like was really exciting for me. 

Over the course of that co-op term, I spun up this idea in my head of "Wouldn't it be such a cool idea to be basically an innovation SWAT team?" I can parachute into different companies and help them understand how do you innovate? How do you apply design thinking? How do you come up with new ideas? How do you start bringing these ideas to market? 

Over the course of my fourth year, I had a couple of connections from previous co-op terms and all over the place that I started pitching this idea to of "what if I were to come in and help you with this?" I got some traction there and so I was working part time on that as I was finishing up my fourth year. I was still applying to full time jobs but was really excited about this sort of side hustle that I had at the time. 

One day, I just kind of said: "You know, do I think I could do this full time and go off on my own?" and I was able to make that work. I worked as an independent innovation consultant for about four years. A lot of the work that I did was actually through Communitech, in Kitchener, who I had made a connection with when I was working at General Motors, because their innovation lab was also located at Communitech. 

Through them, I was able to do lots of consulting with really, really big companies and organizations. I've done a lot of work with different banks and insurance companies. I worked a ton with the Royal Canadian Air Force and with the Army and the Navy to help them approach problem solving in different ways. I did consulting with GM again and with lots of different kinds of big organizations. More recently, I started honestly getting a little bit lonely just working as an independent consultant and so I decided to team up with three other partners to form a new consulting firm.

QW: Very cool. That's NorthGuide, right? Is that a continuation of a lot of the past work you've been doing in the innovation consultancy realm?

SM: Yup! NorthGuide is an organization that does consulting for purpose driven organizations. That can be businesses that have a purpose driven mandate. In many cases, its government organizations as well, which are quite purpose driven just by their nature. Often its community groups as well and not-for-profits. 

We're specialized in work that sits kind of at that intersection of business, government, and community. In some cases, that's helping businesses understand what does it mean to engage with government? What does it mean to engage with community partners? In some cases, it's helping government understand what are the needs of businesses when it comes to developing their programs and how do you work with business effectively? In some other cases, it's bringing together lots of different partners all to the same table to say how can we as a community work together to build something big and something really new?

QW: That sounds extremely cool and like a lot of really interesting dynamic work. Touching on that, I guess the pandemic was a very major event for you then? We've spoken about this a little bit through email but how did the pandemic affect a lot of your life and work on this front? I know you did a little bit of work with the federal government with regards to the distribution of rapid test kits for COVID.

SM: Over the course of the pandemic, I was doing a lot of consulting still through Communitech and so I had been connected with Iain Klugman who was the CEO of Communitech at the time. He had been recently appointed as a strategic adviser to Health Canada to advise on the approach for rapid test distribution across the country. I had worked with Iain on a couple of other projects over the years and we knew of one another. 

I get a phone call from him one day, randomly out of the blue, saying: "Hey, I've just been appointed strategic adviser to Health Canada, we're looking to deploy over 30 million rapid tests across the country really fast. I need your help, we're going to save Canada, and we’re going to save some lives." Well, who could say no to that? Of course I want to save Canada and some lives. He brought me on-board with the project and basically, we acted as a bit of a testbed and disrupter for trying new ideas when it came to rapid tests and getting those tests into the hands of businesses and individuals across the country.

When we first started out our work, it was back in January of 2021 and we had this idea of: wouldn't these rapid tests be really useful to get into the hands of businesses and into the hands of basically everyone so that you can test for COVID if you have symptoms or you have recent exposure? Or if you're worried that you might have it if you're going into a high risk environment? Wouldn't it be great if you could take a test? Find out within 15 minutes if you're positive then you can proceed accordingly?

We had this big vision, which now sounds kind of very obvious, because that's the world we live in currently but at the time, rapid test usage was highly, highly regulated. You couldn't just distribute them to anyone, it needed to be done in a supervised environment by a healthcare professional. We were trying to take Canada from that highly regulated space to this much more open free market where everyone's able to use these tests. 

We spent a lot of time helping government and helping business leaders understand what the opportunity might be to get rapid tests into the hands of everyone. We started initially trying to get tests in the hands of businesses so that they can run workplace testing programs and basically enabled businesses to go back to work from being in the lockdown state and go back to work safely. We spent some time developing what we referred to as our "StaySafe Just Add Water" guide for how businesses could run a workplace testing program. 

We basically said to businesses: "If we give you a bunch of rapid tests through the federal government and we give you this manual outlining how to run a rapid testing program, is this sufficient for you to be able to execute and what else might you need?" We did lots of work in developing those resources, educating, and also performing advocacy as well about what does this actually look like in the real world and why is this important? We did that for a while and we also worked on piloting different types of distribution programs. 

Obviously, there's tons and tons of businesses all across the country and it's always a challenge to quickly get any product into the hands of a lot of people all at once. My team decided to pilot a couple of different approaches for distributing tests. One model that we did is basically working with the chambers of commerce that exist all across the country in different regions, to have them be a key distribution partner. We developed a bit of a playbook for what it might look like to distribute these tests then we did a pilot program of that specifically in Waterloo Region in partnership with the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce as the first location where they were giving out tests to local businesses. We worked out a bunch of kinks in that process before we were able to scale that playbook across Ontario and then later across the other different provinces.

QW: Very cool! We've kind of already gotten a sense from what you've talked about but did you feel your hurdles involved in this process were mainly technical or more organizational?

SM: Definitely organizational. It was really challenging just to do a bit of a mindset shift for people about rapid testing. As a tool, it is an at-home diagnostic that you can use to enable decision making when it comes to your own personal safety for COVID. I don't think people are used to having something like that at home in general. If you have the flu, typically you don't take a test to find out if you have the flu and then decide whether or not you can see your grandmother. You're kind of like, how sick do I feel? 

This is really a new type of product that hadn't really been used by people before. There was a lot of education that was needed in order to get people to understand why this is useful and how it should be used. It's also important to remember the way that COVID spreads. Say if you and I are in close contact and you have COVID and you transmit it to me. If I were to take a rapid test, I wouldn't immediately show up as positive because it takes a while for the virus to transfer and incubate within me before I would actually be testing positive. 

It was challenging and continues to be challenging to articulate those types of nuances to people so that this product can be used enmasse. I think there is also a lot of fear as well about what does it actually look like to put this sort of medical device into the hands of everyone. Typically, the way that we do healthcare in Canada is you have an issue and you go to the doctor and the doctor will walk you through it and help you understand what's wrong and how to overcome it. Versus this which is a much more democratized and distributed version of healthcare where you are empowering people to find out answers for themselves and to take the decision-making about what to do with that answer into their own hands. 

I think it's just a very new way of approaching healthcare so there's definitely some organizational and cultural hurdles to overcome, especially within the medical community.

QW: Were there any really interesting particular stories or challenges that arose out of this entire process?

SM: There are so many. Actually, as part of my work at NorthGuide, one of the things that I did recently is a bit of a look back on all of the workplace testing efforts over the course of the pandemic and what the impact has been. 

The thing that has been most exciting looking back is all of the stories from businesses about how important these rapid tests have been as a tool for them. Especially when we're seeing another COVID wave and another spike, people are really scared to go back to work and they're scared to be in close contact. They're scared to be bringing this virus home to people, to their families and to their friends. 

We got a number of stories of people saying these rapid tests were a lifeline for me as an employee to feel safe coming into the workplace. Lots of stories from businesses as well saying how many cases of COVID they caught before they entered the workplace and how they truly feel that if they didn't have this, they would have had to shut down our operations for some time. I think these were probably the most exciting stories coming out of it.

QW: It sounds like it was a really unique experience regarding how you in particular dealt with the pandemic and I think this is really interesting and valuable work. It sounds like it's helped out the country, it's helped out people, and it's helped businesses out quite significantly. With regards to the present, what do you have going on currently? What kinds of side hustles or major projects? What is the nature of your continuing work with the federal government with regards to the pandemic? What has that been like if there has been any more beyond the rapid test stuff?

SM: I can share a little bit about what NorthGuide does as an organization beyond what I've already shared. I'm actually one of the founding partners of NorthGuide. There's four of us: there's myself, Iain Klugman who's the first former CEO of Communitech, Avvey Peters, who's the former Chief Strategy Officer at Communitech and founder of Canada’s Tech Network, and James Meddings who is a former deputy minister in the federal government. 

The four of us basically all teamed up and said "hey, we want to work in this consulting space, we want to work with purpose driven organizations, and we want to help really to make the world a better place through enabling these purposeful organizations.” We do this through 3 main pillars. 

First off, we work with public sector organizations, government departments, and non-profits around innovation work and big problem solving - very similar to the rapid testing work I’ve already spoken about. 

Secondly, we work with businesses and non-profits around public affairs. We help them build solid business strategy and accelerate their growth through things like telling articulating a clear and compelling value proposition, forming strong partnerships rather than working alone, and helping them work with government including through funding programs. 

Our third big pillar is around ecosystem building and regional economic development. I think that anyone who has lived in Waterloo Region can say that it’s a pretty special place. It has such a strong community, great tech scene, there’s always something new going on, and it’s growing like crazy. My partners in particular have spent much of their careers helping to make Waterloo Region the amazing place that it is. So at NorthGuide we’re working with other communities around the world, taking the lessons we’ve learned in Waterloo Region to help them build stronger and more prosperous communities, each with their own unique value and special sauce.

QW: Best of luck with all the future endeavors on all this stuff! I think this is really cool to hear from you. We're nearing the end of our time actually but one very final question I want to throw at you before I'm going to end this interview is: what is a piece of advice you would give to a recent alumni? As I spring this on you what immediately comes to your mind?

SM: I think what's really served me well is that I'm always open to new opportunities and I'm constantly talking to people to find out new opportunity areas. If I think about the kinds of career transitions that I've made and the new opportunities that were unlocked, it's usually because I talked to someone at some point who was interested in something and months down the road it becomes relevant again. I think always being open to trying new things and to jumping in with both feet on those new opportunities is the advice I would give.

QW: I think that's a very relevant and very useful piece of advice. Thank you so much, Sarah, for taking the time out of your day to agree to this interview. I think it's going to be very helpful to a lot of recent alumni and it's been really enjoyable getting to hear about your butter churning adventures as well as your work with COVID rapid test distribution. I think this has been fantastic and thank you again!

SM: My pleasure! Thanks for having me.

Are you a graduate of the last decade and have an interesting career pivot you want to share? Please feel free to get in touch with us at [email] with stories or feedback for this interview project. 

Big thanks to Sarah for agreeing to this interview as well.