biz: bringing ideas to life

Making Laser Global

From 1982 - 1988, Fiona worked with Ian Bruce, a legend in Sailing, who, over his adventure-filled life, introduced the sport of sailing to hundreds of thousands of competitive and recreational sailors around the world.

Fiona learned from Ian hand how to build, run and grow the Laser Class Event program - `one fleet at a time`. Working out of a factory / office in Hawksbury, Quebec with Ian and Peter Bjorn, Fiona helped transform the Class event side in North America into what became a best practices reference. ‘Ian always used to say: “It takes a village to create great sailors!”’

And so it grew into national, regional, and world events catering to all levels of participation from juniors to Masters, from beginners to retired Olympic sailors.

Bringing ideas to life

In 1988, Fiona moved back to Toronto to work with design vision , an entrepreneurial hi-tech start-up consultancy. design vision pioneered the application of advanced 3d visual computing technologies to business - in design, marketing, sales corporate decision making, consumer testing, and data visualization.

Fiona started as the design vision Office & Marketing Mgr, over time taking on a range of admin and HR management roles - as well as all Accounting and YE Account reviews. She became Sr VP Admin in 2002.

She also contributed to design vision market strategy, and was a key team advocate for building an effective and professional team work culture. Fiona also took on client facing roles, and was the principal editor on many client engagements, expanding her media & content creation skills to include print, video, film, as well as digital media.

Urban Media Networks

PPTv was a business set up to Partner with Rogers Media (Canada’s largest telco’s media arm) and Pizza Pizza (Canada’s largest pizza business) who’s GTA store traffic tops 1,000,000 guests / month with 65% in the difficult to reach 18 - 49 year old traffic.

PPTv’s mission was to place and manage screen presence, along with partner media content to engage that audience and to build concurrent promotional reach using social media. Using its proprietary backend CMS, and working with Rogers Media to secure content, PPTv managed all aspects of the roll-out and management as well as programming and promotional media development.

Fiona assisted operationally, packaging the backend reporting of media and technical fulfillment with available proof of performance to partners, as well as managing the PPTv administrative and business requirements and investor relations.

2015 PanAm Game ON

Large scale Sports event management is by nature complex and challenging, especially in the case of PanAm and Olympic Games. As well as soft-skills in communication, organization and time management, and hard skills in programming, field-of-play management, logistics and financial planning, PanAm and Olympic Games involve politics, scale, venue funding/design/construction, procurement, security, and media / broadcast.

In 2011, Fiona spotted the opportunity to combine her strong people and management skills and her extensive international volunteer sports management experience with her passion for sports and competition. She successfully applied for and got a position as a Sports Mgr for the 2015 Games.

These Games would be the first PanAm games run using the full Olympic Event Delivery Management model. Staffed by a diverse, seasoned team of professional sports managers, it was a unique `pro sports` experience for Fiona.

Starting with 7 sports, she ended up earning the mandate to manage two of the most complex and challenging: Equestrian and Sailing - each sport with expensive, unique requirements and very strong International Sports federations.

As well, she volunteered to help running the Prince Harry sponsored Invictus Games - with the added bonus of being the official in charge of the Tennis match at Toronto’s City Hall where Harry and Megan first sat together in public: Point! Game! Match!

what drives an Optimist?

The Secretary-General, of course!

The Optimist Dinghy Association [IODA] is the largest sailing class in the world, with 77,000 boats registered and 50,000 actively engaged year to year around the world in 135 countries. Over 75% of sailing Olympians over the past 30 years have come through the Optimist programme.

The Optimist is a World Sailing chartered International Sailing Class, and IODA itself is governed by Danish registered corporate rules and regulations. IODA has a wide group of stakeholders, participants, and active contributors.

In 2016 Fiona took the position of Secretary-General,  heading IODA for the next seven years. Running an International class

• with seven annual international events,
• with 30 + major local events (eg the Garda Spring Regatta: 1000 participants + on Lake Garda),
• with 30 + active Builders (small to large) involved in the annual production and registration of 2500 boats,
• managing transactions, documentation, procurement and logistics as well as all related Accounting in multiple currencies,
• organizing, running, documenting, and managing annual Danish audits for Mid Year and Annual General Meetings….

… this plus current programs and initiatives, travelling the world as well as virtually from her home office in Canada - while maintaining an active role in World Sailing.

Fiona brought professionalism, real world management understanding, a complete understanding of the international Sailing context, and outstanding commitment to the position, making sure that jobs are done properly;and to the highest standards.

As well, working with her Executive, she found time and energy for Development initiatives, such as the ROPE programme on the Sustainability front; This award winning initiative is designed to inspire kids to tangibly contribute to the recycling of their boats and equipment so that others might use them to start to learn about the sport of sailing.