Sierra Woods Email & Phone Number

I always thought my dream was to be a professional Canadian soccer play where I envisioned myself as the next Christine Sinclair. Even though I did not achieve this goal, my time as an athlete gave me the attitudes and skills I needed to carve out a career in innovation and entrepreneurship. I discovered my love for entrepreneurship during a weekend retreat. On this retreat, I reflected on past jobs - the things I liked and the things I didn't like which led to the realization that I needed to start something. I didn’t know what it was but I started to reach out to friends at Carleton University and those friends connected me with friends at IBM to help me develop my idea. Through these relationships I secured the in-kind and financial support I needed to launch my first venture - Link X, an initiative focused on enhancing experiential learning opportunities for second year Carleton University policy students. A few years later, my Master's program became a platform for bringing new and old partners together to develop and launch Precision Cities - a research project focused on tackling food insecurity in an underserved neighbourhood in Ottawa. My current role allows me to be intrapreneurial as I am working with people inside and outside of government to build a knowledge mobilization program for the Department of Canadian Heritage from scratch. When I look back, it makes total sense why I needed to be in sports to get to where I am now. Innovation work is fun but it is hard work trying to create something that hasn’t been done before. Perseverance is critical because there are times when the things I design don't work. That is where adaptability comes in as I continuously incorporate feedback so that the things I am building reflect people's needs. At the core, I love the adventure that goes along with following my instincts on a path that leads me to different people, ideas and perspectives that I see potential in. Some of the ideas inspiring and shaping the direction of my adventure are: -"If your goal is innovation, then your role must instead be to create an environment - a setting, a context, an organization- where people are able and willing to do the hard work of innovation themselves: to collaborate, learn through trial and error, and make integrated decisions." - Linda Hill, Collective Genius