We’ve built a special little team, and one of the loveliest human beings who poured so much into our growth over the past years has her heart pulled in a direction we genuinely shed happy tears for.
Candice Day, our Manager of First Peoples Enterprise Accelerator Program will be moving on from her role at RADIUS.
Please have a look at reflections from Véronik Campbell, our Labs Co-Director, as well as a message from Candice Day.
With love, from Véronik
I will miss Candice.
The way she cares for others, the wisdom of her words, the determination of her actions.
The program Candice spearheaded since 2018, the First People Enterprise Accelerator Program (FPEAP), came to an end this March. More importantly (and excitingly), Candice is ready to embrace the Secwepemctsín (Shuswap) language warrior she is. Listen to her reflections on learning her traditional language on our blog. As with many things at RADIUS, this team finds itself holding both grief and exhilaration at once.
Candice’s imprint onto RADIUS is monumental. I don’t say these words lightly. And whatever words or examples I ended up choosing don’t fully do it justice. But let me try.
Seven years ago, Candice took on the role of manager of FPEAP, a program aiming to cultivate deep, values-aligned relationships with Indigenous led partners to co-create entrepreneurship programming that recognizes the whole individual, centering Indigenous wisdom and worldview. Candice advocated for slowing things down so that FPEAP could become a for, by, and with Indigenous communities program. That slowing down infiltrated the whole of RADIUS, at a time when the organization badly needed it. Slowing things down is an act of courage and decolonization in a society that elevates speed and productivity. And it’s Candice, and others at RADIUS who circa 2020, held that courage.
Candice centred relationality and reciprocity in the work of FPEAP, investing in Indigenous leaders and communities already doing phenomenal work, and asked how she and RADIUS could help. This led to a multi-year partnership with EntrepreNorth, who to this day, kicks ass supporting Indigenous, community-based entrepreneurs up North. It led to the founding of the Fireweed Fellowship (now the Fireweed Institute), the first national accelerator program for Indigenous entrepreneurship in Canada.
While the reach of Candice’s wisdom and centered leadership extended wide and far externally, it reached deep internally at RADIUS. She was a foundational piece of the creation of BUILD, a momentous team effort to create an accelerator program that merges Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching with other RADIUS curricular and pedagogical approaches. The way she protected and advocated for the people of this organization at times when we felt like we were going through some seriously rough waters was… truly special. And as RADIUS continues to refine how we walk the talk of being in relations with Host Nations and the urban Indigenous populations where it operates, Candice’s reminders to have true and clear intentions, to prioritize reciprocity, and to listen intently are vivid guiding posts.
Candice, I, and the whole RADIUS team, know that your star is just about to shine even brighter. And you know that, but we’re cheering for you big time, and we’re immensely grateful.
A message from Candice
It was my great pleasure and honour to work alongside so many talented entrepreneurs realizing their dreams and supporting their communities. They inspired me to do the same.
With RADIUS’ support, I was able to work remotely and part-time over the last couple of years, allowing me to relocate to my traditional territory and learn my traditional language.
I will be moving on from RADIUS to continue learning and to work on language revitalization for my people. It is with a heavy heart that I leave the very special folks on this team and a very happy spirit to be bringing back Secwepemctsín.