Women in Business Award Winners: Nicole Norris, Georgian College – Visionary Award

The Barrie Chamber of Commerce Women in Business Awards continue to highlight inspiring local professionals.

Each feature gives insight into the journeys behind successful careers and businesses in the community.

These stories not only celebrate achievements but also offer encouragement and perspective for others looking to grow in their own paths.

Nicole is a product designer, art school grad, an entrepreneur and pracademic, in academic research creating new knowledge applications

Officially Nicole is the Director of Social Innovation at Georgian College, part of research innovation – and entrepreneurship at Georgian College (which is unique in the college and university sector).

Nicole works with college, student training and the community in credentialling and learning in new and unique ways.

She builds up areas of research and social innovation in the community and social sector (not-for-profits) in unique ways, organizations which are facing so many complexities of issues like homelessness and food insecurity, racism – complex interconnected problems which are usually under-funded.

Can we help them work on these problems? E.g. they are facing things like pipelines of talent shortages and funding – having to do more with less. Their job at Georgian is to see if they can help support them. She is involved with social interactive agencies and boards in Barrie.

She ended up at Georgian while she sat on the Board of Dress For Success 10 years ago – she was asked to go to an event at the Georgian College Orillia campus, which involved social service worker students, child and youth care worker students and early childhood education students – who were tackling interesting issues through an innovation lens.

She had never seen anything like that and thought it would be an interesting thing to do…and ended up at Georgian. It was the best risk she took about 10 years ago. For the post-secondary sector both college and university – one of the toughest things they’ve been dealing with currently, is with government cutbacks across the board and trying to stay in what we can control and what we cannot. It is an interesting time.

With our staff, people are doing the best they can right now and our leadership is navigating some pretty complex waters. Even though she was born into capitalism Nicole has a belief in public education, public services and civil organizations. She and others have a ton of ideas in our organization.

One of the toughest things about being a visionary in large and codified institutions – is that we have a lot of policies and procedures and report to public entities. One of the toughest things is being creative and visionary in those spaces. She believes that innovation doesn’t happen with technology, it happens through people and relationships, and by tapping into the creative mindsets and their passions for what they care about.

She always says that the best innovations are not created… they are done through observations of how people are hacking the system. Taking different communities, in the city or in the region, they don’t really need us to innovate for them – they really need us to get out of the way and reduce barriers for them, because of the way they are hacking the system.

I’ve often wondered what is next – I’m a mom of a teenage boy and I’m in my ’50s. Working, studies and being a mom – there is a lot of energy that goes there. I think it’s important to see how I can be in service or help others reach their goals and sometimes it’s better to work behind the scenes. We are doing interesting things with Elizabeth Fry. I’m doing a PhD in Sweden, I love reading comic books and graphic novels and spending time to do illustrating again.

Being a mom, working and studies take a lot of energy but when riding season comes along – I love to do that as well.