Today@Dal

From the Faculty of Open Learning and Career Development’s Business Development Panel

At Dalhousie, we embrace our role as a civic university, investing in meaningful partnerships that have local and global impact. The Faculty of Open Learning and Career Development’s (OLCD) Business Development Committee recently hosted a panel event to discuss building mutually beneficial partnerships – and why it’s worth pushing past our comfort zones when it comes to business development. Our three panelists were Dr. David Gray, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at Dalhousie’s Truro campus; Sheena Russell, founder and CEO of the Dartmouth snack foods company Made With Local; and Val Ryan, a former VP at Sobey’s who is now a management consultant, mentor, and senior advisor. The panel was moderated by Dr. Dianne Tyers, Dean of the OLCD Faculty. Our panelists responded to questions from our faculty about feelings of vulnerability around networking, how to grow our business impactfully, and building a culture of business development that spans our entire organization.  

Pushing through feelings of discomfort around “networking”

In our faculty, feelings like vulnerability, nervousness, and anxiety have been shared as common experiences in business development contexts like networking. We asked our panelists what advice they have for people who are experiencing nervousness towards business development.  

David and Sheena are self-described introverts, but you might be surprised to hear that even the more extroverted member of our panel, Val, has these same feelings of anxiety around networking. She works through these feelings by thinking back to other times in her life where she has felt this type of nervousness, such as the first day of school or times she started a new job. She acknowledges that she not only survived these past events, but that opportunities have come from them. Her advice is to keep putting yourself out there – “Do it often and it will make you feel a lot better” – and to be willing to show vulnerability by offering or asking for help from other people.

Is our desire to "do good" in conflict with our goals to grow and develop our business?

We asked our panelists how they reconcile the discomfort around mixing business development with the noble pursuits that drive our organization, such as delivering education or fulfilling a larger social purpose. This is a topic that hits close to home for Sheena Russell, whose company Made With Local is focused on having a positive social and environmental impact (the company’s tagline reads “Nourishing snack foods with social impact, baked-in.”). Sheena recalls how she used to reject opportunities that weren’t aligned with Made With Local’s values, causing people around her to say, “For a CEO, you really hate capitalism.” Eventually, she realized that "an impact-making machine needs fuel" (aka money) to make and sustain an even larger impact. Our other panelists agreed that growing a business can lead to an even greater social impact.  

Building a culture of business development where every team member is important to the cause

People in our faculty have different relationships with business development depending on their role in the organization, so we wanted to know how our panelists have had success with building a culture of business development that spans the entire organization. David reminds us that most of us in higher education are not salespeople, so the term “business development” might be scary to us. Instead, we should remember that our core purpose is to train successful graduates while supporting industry and the economy. “We’re about helping to find solutions,” David says. “We need to have the confidence that we’ve done it, and we can help.” He believes everyone in our organization should feel empowered to say, “Dalhousie can help with that. Let me put you in touch with the right person.” So while a culture of business development may sound alien to us, David points out that we’re already able to build this culture by fulfilling our organizational goals with the confidence that we have something to offer the community.

There is no fast-forward button when it comes to building relationships, but by investing time into growing our connections, we can create a culture of collaboration, innovation, and growth. As we work together to fulfill our mission of being a civic university with global impact, it's important to recognize that each of us has the power to contribute to meaningful connections with the greater community. Whether it's by reaching out to someone new, engaging in thoughtful conversations, or offering support to those around you, every effort counts.