Callan Forrester – LJI Reporter
This year, a former Ormstown resident, Candace Borland, was recognized and honoured as one of Canada’s “Top 40 Under 40”, which is an annual award organized by business advisory services giant Caldwell and PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers). The award identifies and celebrates excellence in young achievers, and highlights not only those who are doing exceptionally well in their fields, but who are also involved in the betterment of their communities.
An accomplished businesswoman, Borland was primarily recognized for her work with Anomaly, where she is a partner and president, and for her efforts in women’s empowerment and workplace equality. Anomaly is like an advertising company; however, Borland emphasizes that labelling it as such implies certain stereotypes that her company likes to defy.
Anomaly helps companies with brand strategy, communications and marketing, among other things, and, “Basically, in a nutshell, I would say that we creatively solve business problems,” she explains. She has been at Anomaly’s Toronto office for around a decade. The company has seven offices around the world.
To Borland, being nominated was especially meaningful because of who had submitted her for consideration. “My agency nominated me, [and] one of my references was a past boss of mine who’s the vice-president of Sick Kids hospital in Toronto. I’d say that the thoughtfulness that went into those nominations was probably as meaningful as anything.”
The number of submissions of nominees was up by approximately 40 per cent this year, at around 1200. 80 people were shortlisted and interviewed. Borland met with a vice-president from Caldwell and one from PwC, with whom she discussed her background, her career, and her upbringing on a farm in the Valley.
When Borland found out she had been named to the prestigious top-40 list, she was at a farewell party for a long-time client the Friday before returning to work from parental leave. The client was Kyle Norrington, former president of Labatt, with whom Borland started her career about 15 years ago. Seeing him move on to another position (with Anheuser Busch InBev in New York) while she received notice of her award was a nice full-circle moment.
The best motivation
Borland recently had her first child. This has been an exciting change and one that has pushed her even further than before. “I have never felt more focused, and efficient. … When you have a person on the planet that you love that much, there’s no motivation like it.” Borland wants to clarify misconceptions about women returning to work after having children, and to address that these women are often paid much less than their childless female counterparts: “I think the stigma is that women deprioritize work when they have children, and a lot of us fall victim to that. And the statistics are there.” She goes on to say that women with children are often paid in the region of seventy-odd cents on the dollar in comparison to their childless peers.
Much of Borland’s work has been in the realm of creating gender equality in the workplace. She has existed in male-dominated spaces for her entire life, having grown up in agriculture and then transitioning to advertising.
Borland ran a Time’s Up advertising campaign and said that one of the only official groups that was comparable in size was the agricultural Time’s Up in the United States. She has been running a group called WINN (Women in Need of Nothing) at Anomaly since she first started there, as a way for women to share and learn from each other’s experiences.
Not only that, but she established the relationship between Anomaly and Pencils of Promise, an organization that helps bcreate educational infrastructures. They have currently helped build three schools in Ghana, and an important part of this is that when more schools are built, more girls get educated – they are often kept away from lessons when there is no proper school building, unlike the boys.
One of Borland’s projects that focused on emphasizing gender equality was the production of Underplayed, a documentary about the lack of female representation in the world of electronic music. The film was scheduled to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, but the event was unfortunately cancelled due to the pandemic. Instead, the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the fall of 2020.
Anomaly focuses on cultural education and programming, tackling issues of race, gender and sexuality in the workplace. Borland says that this is important to the company because “If they’re going to create communication for the country and the world, they need to be aware and empathetic.”
Connections
Borland explains that a lot of the values she was taught while she was growing up in the Valley still influence her today. “I would say it’s difficult in some ways to separate career, and how you conduct yourself in your career, from your identity.” Her family has always been heavily involved in various aspects of the community and being a part of that while she was young helped her form a lot of the values that launched her into her career. “I’d say the hard work, integrity, community spirit that I learned in the Valley served me very well.”
The honourees of this year’s “Top 40 under 40” met in true pandemic fashion: on a Zoom call. Borland explains that all the recipients are incredibly smart, and it’s amazing “just to work on things together and learn from each other.” Seeing so many ambitious and hardworking people all in one space fosters the perfect environment for big discussions and new innovations. “I’m really excited to be connected with the honourees and to get to chat with them about some of the big questions that are facing us all as leaders in Canada going forward.”