EPISODE 16: Inuvialuit Carvers

04/19/22 • 13 min

2 Listeners

Recorded April 2022

The Inuvialuit live in the western Canadian Arctic, predominantly in the coastal regions near the ocean. The landscape plays a huge role in defining the Inuvialuit style of carving, which uses natural materials — muskox horn, baleen, antler, soapstone — to represent everyday scenes. Consequently, each piece of art has a story to tell about the region, the environment, and the people.

Priscilla Boulay was born and raised in Tuktoyaktuk, NWT and is a proud third-generation carver. Her Daduck (Grandfather) was a carver, who passed the skills down to her mother, aunts and uncles, who in turned passed them down to her.

Before starting Inuvialuit Carvers, Priscilla was selling her sculptures and jewellery at local trade and craft shows. Encouraged by compliments from her customers, she eventually started Inuvialuit Carvers as a way to share her own art, art from family members, and art from other indigenous sculptors with a broader audience. Today, her work can be found in boutique galleries across Canada, but most of her business comes through the connections she makes on social media and through her website. Her artwork and her stories are worth sharing.

From her studio in Irricana, Alberta, she continues to tell stories through her carving and sculpture. Her daughters are fourth-generation carvers, and she has recently begun teaching soapstone carving classes to students across Canada, ensuring that the stories live on.

Inuvialuit Carvers Website

Recorded April 2022

Inuvialuit Carvers Website

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EPISODE 15: Claim Your Space

1 Recommendations

Recorded March 2022

I first met Belinda Aramide at a professional business networking event in 2018. At that time, she was a successful Sales Account Executive. But being a cog in a corporate machine was weighing on her. She might have been happy, but she wasn’t fulfilled. She hinted to me that she was working on something, and a short while later she launched Claim Your Space.

Claim Your Space provides business coaching and consulting for entrepreneurs and executives. Because the solutions are based on personal values instead of simply business goals, clients come away with a deeper understanding of how they can succeed in business by aligning and communicating their values to their clients. You might even consider Belinda the first client of Claim Your Space! She shares some of her wisdom on the “Claim Your Space” podcast, and is an active public speaker.

At the core, she helps executives and entrepreneurs confidently “take up space” in their industry, ensuring that their unique expertise is presented to the clients they deserve.

Claim Your Space Website

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EPISODE 17: Shop Vejii

3 Recommendations

Recorded April 2022

Kory Zelickson is an entrepreneur and innovator who has launched a number of successful e-commerce and technology companies.

He and his family choose to eat a plant-based diet. Although gaining in popularity, plant-based products are not as readily available through traditional grocery and retail chains. Not only do plant-based products fight for shelf space within their category, they also must compete with other products. As a result, it can be hard for customers to find all of their desired plant-based products — fish, chicken and beef to milk and egg alternatives—in one place. It can also be difficult for new start-up businesses to reach consumers, especially since many food products need to be shipped frozen to remain fresh.

To solve the problem, he created Vejii (www.shopvejii.com), an online digital marketplace that meets the needs of consumers and plant-based companies. Through an online portal, customers have access to their favourite plant-based products and are exposed to new products from emerging providers. Vejii controls a number of cold-storage distribution facilities across North America, ensuring that online orders are shipped directly to the customer exactly as the manufacturer intended.

Shop Vejii Website