Enviro-Stewards was founded in September 2000 by Bruce Taylor, FCAE, P.Eng, with the objectives of:
- helping clients address root causes that lead to resource consumption & environmental liabilities, and
-
providing staff with meaningful work on projects that serve people and care for creation
Alarmingly, in Canada and the USA, nearly two-thirds of entrepreneurs lack formal succession plans. Over the past 25 years, Enviro-Stewards has grown from a sole proprietor to a team of 21. And as a member of the first year of Generation X, Bruce has been exploring transition alternatives.
Ownership Transition
A normal exit for a small- to medium-sized consulting firm such as Enviro-Stewards would be to sell to a large consulting firm. Enviro-Stewards is attractive to such organizations as a dozen of its projects have won national sustainability awards1 and its client list includes leading brands such as Unilever, PepsiCo, Maple Lodge Farms, Maple Leaf Foods, Toyota, Jamieson, and many others. In fact, it is unusual for Enviro-Stewards to not receive an unsolicited purchase offer at least once each week.
However, following such acquisitions, 34% of acquired workers typically leave a company within one year. This is nearly triple the normal attrition rate for consulting (12%) and 30 times Enviro-Stewards’ typical attrition rate (<1%).
At Enviro-Stewards, it would likely go as follows:
- Large multinational acquires Enviro-Stewards to acquire its specialized expertise, take advantage of its client list, and increase its capacity
- Purchaser reviews Enviro-Stewards’ root cause-based approach and rejects it as it literally avoids consulting fees (by reducing or eliminating problems at source; see Jackson Triggs Case Study)
- Purchaser reviews Enviro-Stewards’ Safe Water Social Venture work and concludes that this makes no money for Enviro-Stewards and in fact costs money (from a percentage of profit as well as pro bono time provided by staff)
- Enviro-Stewards’ key staff would then gradually fall away when they lose opportunity to make a substantial positive impact on society & the environment
In fact, the people who believe in Enviro-Stewards’ mission the most are the Enviro-Stewards team members themselves. Therefore, in 2020, Bruce committed to selling 5% of the company to the employees each year for a decade.
As of 2025, 95% of Enviro-Stewards’ staff have chosen to purchase shares and employees currently own 25% of the company. As co-owners, employees are benefitting from stock dividends as well as rebounding of the share value (as it recovers from the COVID hit of 2019/20).
Leadership Transition
In development work, we sometimes encounter the “Big Man” problem. The Big Man is a leader who makes every decision until they (literally) die and then the next person, who has never been entrusted to make a decision, tries to pick up the pieces.
To avoid this scenario at Enviro-Stewards, a leadership team was formed in 2017 to update Enviro-Stewards’ mission, vision, and values statement and to share the burden of managing the company (see below).
Mission
We cultivate resilient businesses and improve lives in extraordinary ways.
Vision
To be an internationally recognized and sought after leader for maximizing resource efficiency and creating social benefit.
Values
We love people
We love our planet
We’re authentic
We’re agents of change
For expediency, minor decisions are made by relevant individuals, and more significant decisions are made by the leadership team.
In (infrequent) cases where consensus cannot be reached amongst the leadership team, the President makes the call. By making a decision (right or wrong), it can then be proven out in its application, and the course can subsequently be corrected if necessary.
To ensure the next leaders have adequate runway themselves, Enviro-Stewards elected to skip a generation. The only requirement of the job is to train up their replacement before they leave (and if they are smart, they will start building the capacity of multiple folks right away).
As of January 1, 2026, Mats van Kleef and Spencer Kelly will serve as President and Vice President of Enviro-Stewards Inc., respectively.
Bruce will stay on (for up to a decade) as founder with the roles of:
- Brand Ambassador,
- Strategic Projects, and
- Safe Water Social Ventures (director)
Stay tuned to next week’s blog to meet the new leaders as we start on our second 25 years of engineering change.
Photo: Bruce handing off our mission, vision, and values document to the next generation of leaders, Mats and Spencer.
Footnotes
- Enviro-Stewards’ sustainability engineering work for Unilever, Gay Lea, Bimbo Canada, Maple Leaf Foods, Campbell Soup, Southbrook Winery, Andrew Peller, Maple Lodge, Dextran, North York General Hospital, 50 Food Processors, Smart Blue Roof, and Tim Hortons have each won national awards.
- Enviro-Stewards also founded Safe Water Social Ventures in South Sudan that has won an international globe award and was featured in B the change magazine, MEDA magazine, and a TEDx talk.