Our Team
Debra Joy is an award-winning leader in socially conscious business. Debra played a key role as business
consultant with Renewal Partners Social Investment Fund, where she brought new businesses into the fund and worked
with the CEOs to achieve their financial and social goals. She was also pivotal in building awareness and acceptance
of Renewal Partners in the socially responsible investment and business community. She was also the President of Real
Assets, Canada’s first socially responsible investment management firm. Prior to working in socially responsible
investment Debra was the co-founder of SPUD.com, North America’s leading organic food delivery service.
Before launching SPUD she spent seven years with The Body Shop Canada in senior roles, increasing profits in key
locations by implementing innovative ideas and sound business practices.
Debra Joy co-founded and was Board Chair of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, a business led non-profit
that provides its members with customized advisory services to enhance social, environment and financial performance.
She is the recipient of the Ethics in Action award and Business in Vancouver’s Top 40 under 40 award.
Mark Schwartz has employed his business and media skills for the purposes of socially conscious storytelling, marketing
and training for nearly three decades. Mark’s films have been distributed internationally, honored at the most
prestigious festivals, and had a lasting impact on many areas of our society. As an independent feature film producer/director,
Mark developed business plans, raised capital, managed investor relations, recruited and led 50 member production teams,
and oversaw the marketing of the finished product.
Mark's production agency Alchemy (www.alchemymedia.com)
provides marketing media to a wide range of clients including Time Warner, Pitney-Bowes, Sony Pictures, Investor's Business Daily,
Pearson Education and the NBA. From project to project, he develops marketing strategy, leads production teams and hits
targets of quality, budget and schedule.
Mark is known for bringing out the best in people under challenging circumstances, from the talented and at times
temperamental members of a film set, to reclusive broadcast and web designers, to the at-risk youth he mentors
at his non-profit urban film school (www.onlocationfa.org).
Sam Elmore has been developing software and online systems since 1993, both
as an independent freelancer through his sole proprietorship, ASE Consulting, and as part of larger projects.
He specializes in Microsoft.Net, Microsoft SQL Server Databases, Microsoft Windows Server administration,
and automated build systems. Sam's passion in development is finding elegant solutions to difficult problems.
He thrives when breaking down a problem into its simplest form.
For Rootdown.us, a comprehensive online resource for the traditional Chinese medicine community, Sam built the
infrastructure for the integrated database of herbs, formulas and acupuncture points, as well as the entire
back-end of the website, including online continuing education class platform, payment processing, and online testing.
Sam performs the server-side administration for Twiddla.com, an award-winning online collaboration tool,
and Gigotron.com, a live music finder for the iPhone and iPod touch. He built (from scratch) the software that
runs the business of Albina Pipe Bending, including job costing, estimating, order processing, purchasing, HR, and so on.
Sam also created an infrastructure for Exemplar Human Services that supports reliable, repeatable software
development enabling them to implement best practices and providing tools to help manage change in the databases and code.