Jamie Bennett

Jamie builds software that brings people together. He works embedded with your team, on the problem where it actually lives, and ships the thing rather than a recommendation about the thing. Strategy brain, builder’s hands.

The route here was not a straight line. A lab bench at STEMCELL, then building and delivering workshops for a 300-person support organization across four countries. Action sports after that: marketing at DC Shoes Canada, then founding a board equipment company and a bamboo eyewear company, which is where you learn exactly how far it is from a good idea to a shipped object. Then an MBA at Rotman, valedictorian of the 2009 class, and brand strategy at the top of that trade: Interbrand, a summer at IBM leading four engineers, and the full rebrand of Granville Island Brewing on contract to Molson Coors, with a team of five, a $2.5M budget and twelve beer identities. The last decade has been the same work with a different output, because a strategy nobody can build is just a document.

Jamie also teaches on call in BC schools. It is how he gives back: discovery learning built around whatever a student is genuinely into, with custom curriculum in software, music production, financial analysis, entrepreneurship and brand strategy. Some days he is in a classroom, and clients know which days before we start.

The we is not a figure of speech. When a project needs more hands, Jamie brings in people he trusts: Leanne Fulton of Fulton & Co. on graphic design and illustration, and Pavan Mirla of Perceptron Solutions on AI and decision systems, plus software architecture help when a build calls for it. Small teams, put together to fit the problem.

And there is Beerstorming, a meetup Jamie started: ideation and libation. Different trades, one topic, good refreshments, and structured riffing until the ideas get somewhere. Same instinct as the work. Get the right people around a problem, then make the problem fun to be near.