December 11
By Sean Meyer
——————-
Louise Pitre had imagined launching her own coaching and consulting business as far back as 2008, but she knew the timing had to be right so she’d waited some nine years before heeding the call.
In October 2017, she launched Louise Pitre Coaching & Consulting as she felt the time was right for her new role, one that would allow her a “tremendous amount of creativity” in the work she wanted to do.
“There’s coaching, leadership, executive, team coaching, which is really accompanying people who want to take a journey, whatever that journey is. There is also consulting, working with organizations that have a specific need,” Louise said. “For me, this has really been about journeying and walking with leaders who want to be more conscious and aware of the power they have, and to transform themselves and their organizations.”
Louise, now 54 years old, has been a formal leader in organizations for nearly half her life.
Starting at what was Victoria Hospital at the time and would later become London Health Sciences Centre, Louise was one of the few young women at that time moving up the corporate ladder.
But then, she left the hospital and struck out into the community. With more than 25 years being a formal leader in organizations, she learned to step into her own power, what was “really authentic to me.”
A good deal of her work has been in the non-profit sector, where she learned important lessons that have shaped both who she is, and the work she does.
“You can’t create equity and social justice outside the organization if you aren’t doing it within,” Louise explains.
“That’s it really; for me, it’s about transforming power. Therefore, it’s about transforming leadership and our impact.”
In just over a year, Louise has enjoyed what she describes as “a really successful year in lots of different ways.”
Not only does she have clients throughout the province, but she’s been working with individuals and organizations specifically around the issue of power, which she says has been extremely positive.
When she was looking to launch her business, it was colleagues in the coaching profession — Janet Frood and Chris Moss — who pointed her towards Innovation Works.
Louise became a co-tenant at Innovation Works in December, just two months after her launch, because she liked what she was seeing from this emerging community.
“It’s about building community, about being able to connect with like-minded and not like-minded individuals,” she said. “It helps you realize you are part of something bigger. Even though you might not be in a formal organization, you are a part of a community, and that’s important.”
As positive as she is today, Louise admits when she first heard about Innovation Works, she “wasn’t necessarily sold on it.”
She explains how she wasn’t seeing how accessible the space was to people who might not fit the dominant culture. From her perspective, it felt like a space for people who already had privilege, who were already entrepreneurs.
In the past year, however, she is excited to say she has been “in awe” of the changes being made around creating a sense of inclusion.
“It’s palpable. I want to see more of that. I think whatever spaces we create, we have to be challenging ourselves constantly to make them as inclusive as possible,” Louise said. “Innovation Works has demonstrated how that can be done. I want to see that, I want to see it bursting at the seams with breaking down barriers to inclusion.”
For more information, visit http://louisepitreconsulting.ca.
Want to work alongside incredible humans like Louise and her team? Consider joining us at Innovation Works!
And don't forget to check out upcoming events happening at the space.