When Shopify expanded into Calgary, there was no physical office, no local visibility, and no embedded merchant ecosystem. Unlike cities with established headquarters, Calgary required intentional market development.

I was responsible for establishing meaningful local presence from the ground up. Rather than focusing on isolated events, I built community infrastructure designed to generate long term advocacy.

Ecosystem Design

I developed a merchant champion model, identifying high alignment merchants and elevating them as visible advocates across panels, workshops, and ecosystem conversations. This extended Shopify’s signal beyond owned channels and into trusted local networks.

I introduced recurring programming to shift initial participation into sustained engagement, and built partnerships with Business Improvement Areas, entrepreneur networks, and eventually federal stakeholders. Rather than operating adjacent to the local economy, Shopify became embedded within it.

Strategic Impact

The model shifted the market dynamic from outbound education to inbound demand. What began as direct merchant outreach evolved into a self sustaining ecosystem, with businesses and partner organizations proactively seeking involvement.

Calgary transitioned from zero formal partnerships to a multi organization support network aligned with Shopify’s merchant base. The brand moved from distant platform to active ecosystem participant.

When I stepped in, Vention had a strong sales engine and solid marketing infrastructure, but lacked a dedicated space for user owned stories, peer validation, and visible social proof. The company was telling its story well, its users were not.

The opportunity was to build a user first ecosystem where customers could share experiences, surface insights, and shape the product narrative directly.

Community Infrastructure

I designed and launched a Discourse based community platform with clear participation pathways: product support, user stories, feature requests, and feedback.

To reduce friction and increase adoption, I implemented seamless single sign on integration so the community experience felt native to the product ecosystem rather than a detached forum.

Strategic Impact

Vention shifted from primarily communicating outward through sales and marketing to enabling customers to publicly validate and share their own experiences.

Beyond social proof, the platform created a structured feedback channel connecting customers to internal teams. Sales gained credible peer validation and real world use cases, and product teams gained clearer signal on needs and pain points surfaced organically in the community.

Run Calgary produces one of the city’s largest running events and has a strong volunteer and participant community. I joined the team during a pivotal year as the Calgary Marathon expanded into a two day race weekend.

My focus was strengthening engagement with two key parts of the ecosystem: corporate teams and charity partners.

Corporate Team Activation

Corporate teams represent a major portion of participants, but engagement often begins and ends with registration. I organized office drop ins with participating companies across Calgary to build internal momentum, encourage team participation, and position the race as a shared workplace experience rather than an individual sign up.

Charity Community Building

I helped streamline onboarding for participating charities so runners and teams could more easily pledge and raise funds for local causes. I also coordinated the logistics and partner communication for the Charity Block Party, creating a dedicated section of the course where charities could come together to cheer on runners and represent their communities.

Strategic Observations

Working inside race production highlighted opportunities to deepen year round engagement with the city’s running community through initiatives like Strava integration, city wide activations, and newcomer focused programming.

The goal was simple: help runners feel connected to the community well before they reach the start line.