PeopleFirst knows
the answer is in your people
The best solution is a solution that puts your people
first.
PeopleFirst knows the answer is in your people
The best solution is a solution that puts your people first.
Who We Are
Peoplefirst is a talent development and organizational design company that solves problems related to performance and efficiency.
We help you optimize structures, processes, and employee engagement through unique methodologies.
Who We Are
PeopleFirst is a talent development and organizational design company that solves problems related to performance and efficiency.
We help you optimize structures, processes, and employee engagement through unique methodologies.
Why PeopleFirst
Our versatile team of energetic, engaging, certified leaders know exactly how to tap the transformational power of Insights Discovery™, ranked one of the most innovative learning and development providers in the USA, trusted by many Fortune 500 companies.
We can facilitate your next workshop, plan an exciting out-of-office experience, provide team and whole-organization assessments, and customize programs to solve a vast range of business problems, including leading hybrid teams, managing change, creating a diverse and inclusive culture, and building successful leadership, sales, and innovation teams.
Why PeopleFirst
Our versatile team of energetic, engaging, certified leaders know exactly how to tap the transformational power of Insights Discovery™, ranked one of the most innovative learning and development providers in the USA, trusted by many Fortune 500 companies.
We can facilitate your next workshop, plan an exciting out-of-office experience, provide team and whole-organization assessments, and customize programs to solve a vast range of business problems, including leading hybrid teams, managing change, creating a diverse and inclusive culture, and building successful leadership, sales, and innovation teams.
We Believe In The Power Of People
People are at the heart of everything we do. We’ve built a great team of knowledgeable, spirited, insightful industry leaders who are eager to help you build stronger relationships with your people.
Our ‘bench’ has advanced skills relating to professional growth, team building, workstyle and leaders style assessment, hybrid and remote workplace effectiveness, organizational design, cultural shifts within the workplace, and leadership development. We strive to be a powerful and innovative force for positive change, bringing our expertise to a wide range of companies across industries, to help our clients navigate complex challenges and successfully implement transformation.
What others are saying
"The facilitation of sessions for the Hughes&Co team lended to a strengthening of our company culture and resulted in strong adoption of our company’s values resulting in a strengthened team and a more collaborative environment. This directly impacted the quality of work leaving our agency."
- Allie Hughes, CEO Hughes&Co
"The session served as a unifying force for my team and created a new energy around how we communicate and how we show up. Most importantly it showed the strength of our team dynamics!"
- Paula Knight, CEO Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia
Earl Hoeg
Earl is a bilingual (English/French) workplace effectiveness coach who is committed to helping create inspiring, engaging, and safe workplaces. Through his extensive experience, network, and relationship-building skills, he knows how to connect people, places, and processes required to meet the challenges of work today.
After 25+ years of leading teams from five to 150+ people, Earl is on a mission to support other leaders in building effective teams. Throughout a 33-year career with the Canadian Federal Government, Earl gained significant experience in executive leadership, change management, workplace strategy, facilitation, and employee development.
Earl has an MBA from Queen’s University, is a trained executive coach, Insights Discovery Licensed Practitioner, Centre for Creative Leadership-certified Assessor, workshop leader, and public speaker.
Earl is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Peter Bedard
An Insights Discovery Distributor, Peter founded PeopleFirst as an Organizational Development and Design Consulting company in 1998.
Peter’s philosophy of facilitation is to make the attendees the stars of the show; his job is to make that easy for them. Peter has a gift in reading the room well and can adapt to different leaders and cultures. Humour and lightness are hallmarks of Peter’s sessions to enable vulnerability and openness.
His process begins with a pre-meeting with the client: a critical success component in your work with Peter and his team. Peter’s organizational development experience helps connect the learning to context to make it real. His meticulous preparation ensures that he can focus on the dynamics in the room and adjust to shifts in energy. His informal approach allows the team to self-manage.
Peter’s refined and effective style are the result of experience and exposure to a wide breadth of organizations. He has been an organizational development consultant to some of Canada’s most notable entrepreneurs and leaders. His intuition on culture is fine tuned, he can tell a lot about an organization’s culture just by looking at its org chart.
An organization would benefit from Peter’s ability to work as comfortably with senior executives as he does with junior managers. He is a keen student of organizational behaviour and has been leading workshops and seminars on related topics for more than 20 years.
Peter has a background in Psychology and Criminology, and a Master’s in Business Administration and Doctoral studies focusing in Organizational Culture.
Peter is located in Niagara, Ontario, Canada.
Email PeterConnect with Peter on LinkedIn
Dianne "D" Surman
D is the Managing Director of a learning consultancy, Development Toolbox Inc. based in Toronto. Prior to this, D worked for over 34 years at Unilever within the Consumer-Packaged Good industry focusing the last 25+ years in learning and leadership development.
D is a highly experienced learning and development professional with extensive experience driving leadership excellence, organizational capability, and high-performing cultures across global organization. Her expertise in needs assessment, learning design, content development and curation, creation of detailed learning journeys, learning evaluation, facilitation informs learning solutions that address evolving business needs and future-of-work trends while driving measurable results. She has a proven track record of designing and executing learning programs that impact employees, enhancing organizational performance and increasing effectiveness.
D is a passionate coach and facilitator conducting bespoke workshops around High Impact Teams, High Potential/Transition Programmes, Line Manager Capability, Finding Your Purpose, Equity/Diversity and Inclusion, Mindfulness and Wellbeing. She is accredited to facilitate Insights Discovery, Everything DiSC®, and The Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team®. Through the Centre of Creative Leadership, D is accredited to conduct and facilitate 360 Benchmark® Assessments and debriefs for individual and teams.D is a certified Coach (CPCC/ACC) through the Co-Active Training and International Coaching Federation (ICF).
A few of her clients include Canadian North, Federal Government (Talent Company), Unilever, World Finer Foods, Appleby College and TuesdayAfternoon Media.
D is located in the Greater Toronto Area.
Christopher Bozik
Chris uses humour, an open mind, and provocative questions to help leaders benefit from the lessons and experience of his three-decade career in the Canadian Public Service. A manager, executive, and facilitator for more than 20 years, Chris has led multi-disciplinary teams, directed national programs, and helped new leaders define their own paths to success.
Chris’ philosophy of leadership is based on twin pillars: values and ethics, and enabling success. In other words, a leader must do the right thing, especially when it is hard; and a leader must create the conditions where their followers can thrive.
He believes that good leaders support their teams. And that great leaders listen, coach, encourage, and challenge people so that the entire team is motivated and committed to success. His workshops focus on individual communications needs and styles, understanding our fellow human beings better, and how we can step into a leadership role by building relationships.
Chris has BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto and a Maitrise en administration publique from the École nationale d’administration publique. He is an Insights Discovery Licensed Practitioner and a certified DISC consultant.
Chris is fluent in English and French (y habla un poco de español) Chris is located in the Ottawa-Gatineau area in Quebec, Canada.
Earl Hoeg
Earl is the President of PeopleFirst (aka Gray Matters Connections Inc doing business as PeopleFirst). He is a bilingual (English/French) workplace effectiveness coach who is committed to helping create inspiring, engaging, and safe workplaces. Through his extensive experience, network, and relationship-building skills, he knows how to connect people, places, and processes required to meet the challenges of work today.
After 25+ years of leading teams from five to 150+ people, Earl is on a mission to support other leaders in building effective teams. Throughout a 33-year career with the Canadian Federal Government, Earl gained significant experience in executive leadership, change management, workplace strategy, facilitation, and employee development.
Earl has an MBA from Queen’s University, is a trained executive coach, Insights Discovery Licensed Practitioner, Centre for Creative Leadership-certified Assessor, workshop leader, and professional speaker.
Earl is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Peter Bedard
Peter Bedard founded PeopleFirst Inc (Ontario) as an Organizational Development and Design Consulting company in 1998. Peter has been fortunate to work closely with some of Canada’s leading executives and entrepreneurs, helping them build their leadership capacity and teams.
Peter has been a trusted advisor to management teams in several industries, namely real estate, manufacturing, education, healthcare and recreation.
Peter has a background in Psychology and Criminology, a Master’s in Business Administration and Doctoral studies focusing on Organizational Culture. Peter is accredited to facilitate Insights Discovery and The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team.
Peter is located in Niagara, Ontario, Canada.
Dianne "D" Surman
D is the Managing Director of a learning consultancy, Development Toolbox Inc. based in Toronto. Prior to this, D worked for over 34 years at Unilever within the Consumer-Packaged Good industry focusing the last 25+ years in learning and leadership development.
D is a highly experienced learning and development professional with extensive experience driving leadership excellence, organizational capability, and high-performing cultures across global organization. Her expertise in needs assessment, learning design, content development and curation, creation of detailed learning journeys, learning evaluation, facilitation informs learning solutions that address evolving business needs and future-of-work trends while driving measurable results. She has a proven track record of designing and executing learning programs that impact employees, enhancing organizational performance and increasing effectiveness.
D is a passionate coach and facilitator conducting bespoke workshops around High Impact Teams, High Potential/Transition Programmes, Line Manager Capability, Finding Your Purpose, Equity/Diversity and Inclusion, Mindfulness and Wellbeing. She is accredited to facilitate Insights Discovery, Everything DiSC®, and The Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team®. Through the Centre of Creative Leadership, D is accredited to conduct and facilitate 360 Benchmark® Assessments and debriefs for individual and teams.D is a certified Coach (CPCC/ACC) through the Co-Active Training and International Coaching Federation (ICF).
A few of her clients include Canadian North, Federal Government (Talent Company), Unilever, World Finer Foods, Appleby College and TuesdayAfternoon Media.
D is located in the Greater Toronto Area.
Christopher Bozik
Chris uses humour, an open mind, and provocative questions to help leaders benefit from the lessons and experience of his three-decade career in the Canadian Public Service. A manager, executive, and facilitator for more than 20 years, Chris has led multi-disciplinary teams, directed national programs, and helped new leaders define their own paths to success.
Chris’ philosophy of leadership is based on twin pillars: values and ethics, and enabling success. In other words, a leader must do the right thing, especially when it is hard; and a leader must create the conditions where their followers can thrive.
He believes that good leaders support their teams. And that great leaders listen, coach, encourage, and challenge people so that the entire team is motivated and committed to success. His workshops focus on individual communications needs and styles, understanding our fellow human beings better, and how we can step into a leadership role by building relationships.
Chris has BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto and a Maitrise en administration publique from the École nationale d’administration publique. He is an Insights Discovery Licensed Practitioner and a certified DISC consultant.
Chris is fluent in English and French (y habla un poco de español) Chris is located in the Ottawa-Gatineau area in Quebec, Canada.
Lani Schultz
Lani Schultz
Lani is a highly regarded facilitator specializing in team and employee development, strategic planning, and change management. With over 20 years of experience at the
senior levels in municipal government, Lani has led high-profile initiatives and delivered large organizational transformation programs. She has developed and co-delivers a national award-winning high-potential leadership program with Royal Roads University.
Lani works with a wide range of clients including government, business, and not-for-profit organizations. She integrates Insights Discovery and a Systems Thinking; approach to enhance their business outcomes and transform how their people work together at the individual, team, and organizational levels. She focuses on helping clients find inspiration from a common purpose and compelling vision, creating aligned plans to achieve that vision, and developing effective, collaborative leaders and employees to successfully execute those plans. Her style has been described as “inspiring”, “engaging” and “highly effective”.
In addition to her work with Peoplefirst, Lani is the founder and lead facilitator for Lead with Intention Consulting. She holds a Master’s Degree from the University of British Columbia, a Mastery Level Certificate from the Centre for Strategic Management, and is a Licensed Practitioner for Insights Discovery.
Lani is located in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Danl Loewen
Danl Loewen
Danl Loewen has 30 years of experience as a bilingual executive and coach in Canada and abroad. He worked 22 years in the federal public service, a decade on Parliament Hill, and another dozen in the private sector and not-for-profits. Throughout, he gained a reputation and awards as a results-oriented high performer who is highly engaging, interactive, people-focused, and client-centred.
Danl is deeply experienced with Insights Discovery, DISC, 360-degree feedback, human resources, strategic communication, transformation, service excellence, and public policy development. He trains and coaches current and aspiring leaders in key leadership competencies, self awareness, resilience and healthy career progression, hiring for diversity and managing for inclusion, organizational effectiveness, managing relationships, fostering innovation, problem solving, and dealing with workplace disruption. Based in Ottawa, he both works virtually and travels frequently.
He co-led diverse organizations through national program modernization, restructuring, and workforce adjustment. He has advised cabinet ministers and party leaders, developed capacity-building for a newly democratic African government, and led a 2-year culture-change following fatal shootings at a local utility.
As a lifelong champion of equity for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, women, sexual and gender minorities, he is a committed advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion through bridgebuilding rather than judging others for where they are on their own learning curve. He is experienced with mental health issues and physical disabilities in his professional and personal circles.
Danl holds a B.A. in Political Science, and is an ongoing learner in human dynamics, languages, and keeping his dog off the bed.
Nicole Richard
Nicole Richard
Nicole Richard is a Leadership Development and Business Transformation Consultant, Insights Discovery Facilitator, and Executive Coach who empowers leaders and teams to achieve lasting impact. With a people-first approach, she simplifies complex challenges, fosters meaningful dialogue, and equips organizations to navigate change and improve performance. Nicole delivers customized workshops and coaching sessions that build trust, strengthen collaboration, and drive results. Holding a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, she blends proven leadership theories with innovative practices to address high-priority challenges. Known for mobilizing teams and fostering inclusive environments, Nicole partners with clients to enhance effectiveness and achieve strategic goals. Her dedication to creating positive, collaborative spaces makes her a trusted advisor in driving meaningful transformation.
Richard Gabourie
Richard Gabourie
Richard Gabourie (CTDP) is a leadership development and workplace effectiveness consultant dedicated to helping organizations create environments where individuals and teams can thrive. With over 20 years of experience in leadership training, coaching, and conflict resolution, Richard specializes in helping managers develop the skills needed to navigate the complexities of today’s workplace.
Throughout his career, Richard has designed and delivered leadership development programs for organizations across the public and private sectors. As a former senior leader within the Canada School of Public Service, he supported thousands of leaders in strengthening their ability to communicate, collaborate, and drive meaningful change. His extensive experience spans industries such as regulatory compliance, law enforcement, food inspection, manufacturing, research and development, and transportation.
Richard is the founder of Innovative Learning Solutions (LSI) Inc., where he partners with organizations to build high-impact training programs, improve team dynamics, and foster psychological safety in the workplace. His expertise includes executive coaching, negotiation and mediation, emotional intelligence, and psychometric assessments.
At the core of Richard’s approach are his three pillars of leadership success: first, leading and understanding oneself; next, leading and understanding others; and finally, leading through change within the organization. With a unique perspective gained from experience in senior management, HR advisory, and as a union negotiator, he helps leaders build trust, engage their teams, and navigate challenges with confidence.Richard lives in Tottenham, Ontario, with his wife, Helene, and their three children.
Catherine Pagot-Reynolds
Catherine Pagot-Reynolds
Catherine, a bilingual Integral Master Coach™ (Integral Coaching Canada) and facilitator, counts more than 2500 hours of coaching and has been in the field of leadership development and Coaching for more than 25 years. Catherine is certified to use several psychometric instruments, including the EQ-I 2.0/EQ-360, the 360 by Design Assessor and SCHOR.
Catherine holds a B.A from the Université de Montréal, a diploma in Education from McGill University and an M.B.A from the University of Ottawa, with a specialization in organizational development.
She joined the Canada School of the Public Service in January 2006 and worked there until June 2013. She designed and facilitated a variety of leadership programs, facilitated Peer Coaching Groups and coached Public Servants at all levels (employee, manager and executive), using the Integral Coaching approach. Her one-on-one coaching with people includes working on their capacities to lead change, professionally and personally.
Before she joined the School, Catherine was the team leader for the Leadership and Career Development Programs at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. She designed and facilitated numerous workshops on leadership development, using participatory facilitation processes grounded in participants’ experience.
Prior to 2001, Catherine spent 17 years at the International Development Research Centre where she occupied various positions with increasing responsibilities and challenges in the field of Human Resources Development.
Catherine has created her own coaching practice, CPR for the Soul: Coaching for Profound Realizations, in 2013. She offers her coaching services to The Institute on Governance and People First. With enthusiasm and compassion, she is looking forward to continue supporting the growth and happiness of individuals, teams and organisations as they move forward.
Kent Estabrooks, CPA, ICD.D
Integral Master CoachTM Professional Certified Coach (ICF)
Kent is a seasoned executive and coach with over 25 years of leadership experience in both the private and public sectors. He coaches individual contributors, managers and senior leaders, including C-Suite, to overcome challenges, increase their impact and design a plan to pursue their passions. Kent has coached hundreds of clients in over 3 continents, and has built a solid reputation specializing in: leading transformations, interpersonal challenges, neurodiversity, equity and inclusion, genuine leadership and executive presence, career development and high potential leadership.
He sees his role in supporting people's growth as an immense privilege, striving to create a trusting partnership, predicated on the notion that the client is the expert in themselves and what works best for them. His contribution is his leadership experience and in using proven techniques that may enable clients to:
- see things about themselves that they may not have fully appreciated previously;
- develop a plan to close gaps that are important to clients; and,
- create the structure and accountability necessary that builds on the client’s strengths in generating new and productive ways to achieve their goals.
Kent uses a method that looks at the whole person, meeting clients exactly where they are now and building a tailored and sustainable approach in collaboration with them to bring them to where they want to be in the future.
Peoplefirst improves workplace communication and collaboration by building awareness and respect among individuals, teams, leaders and organizations, powered by Insights Discovery®
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PeopleFirst improves workplace communication and collaboration by building awareness and respect among individuals, teams, leaders and organizations, powered by Insights Discovery®