Letter from GGA’s President, Eva Maxwell 

Happy International Women’s Day 2022! 

In the spirit of celebrating strong women and female achievement, I wanted to take this space to share with you some news that are long overdue and that affect every member of our organization. 

We have been fairly silent on social media this past year, following a year of immense and impossible hurdles: the loss of our dear colleague and pillar of our GGA family, the continuation of COVID, personal losses, and the list goes on. Despite our silence, however, rather than crumble and falter, we have been holding fast and rebuilding – sometimes stone by stone – to shape a company that fits our values and represents the work we strive for as consultants.  

The biggest piece of news is that I started working in my new role as President of GGA back in September 2021. With this change, my aim was to strengthen our identity and continue to grow our company, building on the many years of experience and quality services that our consultants have been dedicated to since our founders initially started the firm in 1992.  

Indeed, one of the first things we did in the new team set up was to sit down and revisit our company values, to see what has been and what has changed. When we sat down together, we discovered what drives us: collaboration, commitment to diversity, empathy, entrepreneurship, professional excellence, and curiosity. And to keep the link with GGA’s origins, we learned that the teachings and ideas of our predecessors were both the pillars of our organizational culture and the inspiration for the future.  

These key values and drivers anchored us in 2021. During our many check ins and planning exercises, we looked back and saw that the past year actually gave us a reason to push ourselves further than ever before and to pull, pivot, and stretch in new ways. The year that shook us to our cores also paved the way for critical thinking, planning, and really exciting projects. We realized that while we undertook the momentous efforts to stabilize, adapt, and grow while navigating extreme grief, we also worked on exciting research (to be published soon), helped organizations usher in new programs, and forged new partnerships with charitable organizations and experts from academia that move mountains in their work. 

We adapted at every step of the way: in response to the changing fabric of the business world, we moved to a fully virtual model. Although we have lost members of our team and others have moved on, we took the space to pursue projects that fit with our expertise and passions. We also grew our team with the addition of a dedicated and highly engaged executive assistant and persisted in our dedication to professional excellence through continued training and learning. In fact, because of all of the changes, obstacles, and opportunities, we found out who we are. This year, we are a passionate and ambitious firm of women entrepreneurs. We have had a taste of what life is able to throw at us, and now we know our strength and our ability to rise in the face of adversity.   

I couldn’t be happier and prouder of our core team, nor more excited to continue growing and building – through our network of subcontractors, our expanding employee base, our collaborators and partners, our service providers, and our dear friends and family. It is with excitement that I wait to see which opportunities we seize and what we learn. I am looking forward to seeing how the next pieces of the puzzle fit together. And in the meantime, I feel honoured to guide our team into this new era of GGA.  

Sincerely,  

Eva Maxwell