Simon Mainwaring

We First provides consulting and training to help companies tell the story of their good work in ways that build their business

Simon Mainwaring

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Growing up, Marilee Nelson intended to be a doctor. She certainly never expected to be selling cleaning products of any kind. “And I really don’t even think of it like that,” she says. “I just feel like our products are a platform for our mission. But, I had two unexpected catastrophic instances in my life […]

Growing up, Marilee Nelson intended to be a doctor. She certainly never expected to be selling cleaning products of any kind. “And I really don’t even think of it like that,” she says. “I just feel like our products are a platform for our mission. But, I had two unexpected catastrophic instances in my life …

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One hundred and one years ago when Amalgamated Bank was launched in New York City, its founders would not have been surprised to learn their brainchild would eventually be run by an Ethiopian-American woman: The bank has deep roots in progressive politics, workers’ and immigrants’ rights, and feminist ideology. No surprise then to find President and CEO Priscilla …

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This latest chapter into Land O’Lakes expansive history begins when career marketing expert Heather Malenshek joined the Twin Cities-based Land O’Lakes team as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer “in the middle of COVID. So, fun times.” One thing Malenshek has championed from the beginning is that Land O’Lakes is more than your favorite …

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Here are three not-so-fun facts that seriously concern anyone paying attention to the many crises caused by our culture of overconsumption: Now: What’s one thing that all three of those highly troubling truths have in common? If you guessed waste, you’re right on the money — and if you guessed wasted single use products, you …

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About 10 years ago, when Brett Hagler was only 24 and relatively unfamiliar with the facts on the ground in the developing world, he took his first trip to Haiti. There he saw firsthand the terrible challenges and choices occasioned by a lack of adequate housing. “Obviously, Haiti, it’s a very dramatic, arresting example,” says Hagler. But …

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One of her favorite things about entrepreneurship, says Katlin Smith, Founder and CEO of better-for-you baked goods company Simple Mills “is that there’s always a new problem to be had, always a new thing to learn.” Smith left a successful consulting career in 2014 to start Simple Mills as a way to “harness the power of food to …

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