Canada
I'm a strategic advisor, independent director, and writer. Through my practice, ClearlyThen, I work with leaders, boards, and organizations navigating complexity: helping them build, transform, or decide what's next. My advisory work spans sectors and time zones. I counsel CEOs, founders, politicians, and executive teams across Canada and the U.S., bringing a generalist's range and a deep relational focus to every engagement. The work is referral-based, highly customized, and confidential. I bring the perspective of someone who has done the things I advise on. I spent six years on the senior leadership team of a large regional hospital, leading corporate communications, public affairs, government relations, and strategic planning, including GR, PR and comms for a $300M capital project. That experience became the foundation for Laridae, the B Corp management consulting firm I founded, grew to serve more than 200 organizations, and sold in 2021. I've served on boards for more than 25 years. Currently: Accerta, OwlCrate (Advisory Board Chair), the Vanier Institute of the Family, and 11A Collaborative. I'm also founding Co-Chair of the Peterborough Community Health Centre, where we co-developed an innovative Indigenous/non-Indigenous shared governance model. I hold a Chartered Director designation (C.Dir.) and a First Nations and Indigenous Director designation (FNI.Dir.). I'm also the author of seven books: novels, poetry, and short fiction. My next novel is forthcoming. The literary writing and the advisory work come from the same place: a serious attention to how people, stories, and organizations hold together, come apart, and find their way through. If any of this resonates, I'd welcome a conversation. DM for my scheduling link.
Candour. Advice. Momentum, Chief executives, founders and boards bring me in for the decisions they can't hand to anyone else. I listen properly, shape the options, stress-test them, and stay until the plan is moving. ClearlyThen is the advisory and governance practice of Jonathan Bennett, C.Dir., FNI.Dir. Based in Ontario, working with clients across Canada. My clients carry the final call, and most have been at it ten years or more. The problem in front of them doesn't fit a specialist and can't be delegated, which is why it rests with them and why it has sat there. Often their values are what make it hard: mission, employee ownership, B Corp, social purpose. Three ways in. 1. Retained trusted counsel. A confidential advisory relationship with one chief executive, founder or executive director. Six sessions to begin, then for as long as it is useful. 2. Strategy design, transition and succession. Growth, turnaround, founder handover, sale and exit, employee ownership, advisory board design. And what all of it is doing to the person making the call. 3. Board and governance. Effectiveness reviews, governance fundamentals training, chair coaching, committee design, building a board from scratch, and facilitation of the really tough conversations. Before ClearlyThen I spent a decade building Laridae, a B Corp certified management consultancy serving more than two hundred organizations nationally, and exited through a management buyout in 2021. Six years before that in the C-suite of a large regional hospital. Twenty-five years on boards.
Strategic Retreats for Boards That Govern Together > Reconnect. Advance your agenda. Govern as one. > Customized. Dynamic facilitation. Immersive sessions. > Experienced. Fully hosted. Expert-led. High-performing Boards start with connected Directors. We focus on how your Board relates, listens, and makes decisions as a group. Every engagement is built around your Board's strategic work, your agenda, your opportunities. > Full Board, Together We shift governance education from developing isolated achievers towards creating cohesive, high-performing board teams. Success is driven by the power of the collective board, not individual accolades. > Your Real Agenda No hypotheticals or case studies. Every session centres on your Board's actual agenda items: real decisions, live opportunities, pressing challenges. You advance your work while practising new and better ways of working together. > Experiential We treat Directors as the accomplished leaders they are, building on existing expertise. The goal is not to make Directors alike, but to help them consider new information and relate to their own experiences in different ways. > Relational Governance We strengthen the strategic work and interpersonal dynamics that drive Board effectiveness by embedding a relational governance focus within the retreat structure. Directors become attuned to one another, and group dynamics enhance the Board's work.
Accerta is a B-Corp certified social enterprise committed to reducing inequities in public programs and lessening the administrative burden for governments and their stakeholders. 2025 - Chair, Governance and HR Committee
OwlCrate is dedicated to spreading the joy of reading and supporting authors, artists, readers, charities and communities from all walks of life.
Member of the Advisory Board. 11A Collaborative consults to purpose-driven businesses, nonprofits, foundations, public offices, and government agencies seeking to increase their impact.