Our Partnership Team

13 FACTORS For Business Growth was founded by Kim MacDonald as a mission-based company focused on workplace mental health and psychological health and safety.  

Kim began studying leader and team dynamics, behavioural science and motivation in her early career in marketing and communications with a focus on shifting social norms in addictions, health promotion, and civic engagement.  She then applied it supporting businesses entering new export markets.  She is a 2x entrepreneur with 25 years of leadership experience and experience facilitating diverse and courageous group conversations of strategy across 17 industry sectors.     

Kim and Krista, who founded 13 FACTORS partner, Root & Branch, met early on in their company launches and joined forces to help companies take on some of workplace's biggest challenges. Their partnership is built on Industry 5.0 thinking.

Kim is a trusted advisor in workplace culture analysis and development.  She leads evidence-based initiatives to identify psychosocial hazards to mental health, motivation, engagement and retention and to mitigate risk and harms to people, performance and safety.  

She leads our workplace assessment, strategic change planning and training services.  She also provides trauma-informed coaching to leaders making positive workplace change.  Kim considers herself a 'thinking partner' supporting your insights, discovery and exploration aimed at the change.  

Kim leads the company and our team from a foundation of human-first and trauma-informed.  A core principle is to mindfully build internal capacity in every one of our assignments so that the client team can continue to evolve their culture from a place that is inclusive, high-trust, psychologically-healthy and safe.  And one that also has the flexibility to grow positively over time in response to new internal and external conditions.

Kim's business background blends deep evidence-based research, with frontline knowledge, experience and understanding of the interplay and complexity of the factors that influence people at work. 

In our training, Kim brings a motivating and experiential approach to the virtual and in-person classroom and places great importance on creating a safe and collaborative learning environment. 

Kim has an undergraduate degree in communications and public relations, an MBA, plus certificates and certifications from varied institutions in various workplace-change focus areas including workplace assessments, stress management, trauma-informed leadership, embodied coaching, and motivating health-related behaviour change.  

Kim is a Certified Psychological Health & Safety Advisor through the Canadian Mental Health Association, and certified in Mental Health First Aid and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training.  Kim's training in mental health and psychological safety also includes the Mental Health Commission of Canada's The Working Mind Manager program, Workplace Mental Health Crisis Response, Psychological Health & Safety Champion Advisor.  

Kim believes in the power of self-directed learning as the best path to stay innovative and current.  Her own mission is to #changethewaypeoplethink about #mentalhealth, #mentalillness and #addiction and eradicate stigma.  She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia.  She is also a member of the Association of Workplace Investigators.

Krista is 13 FACTORS strategic partner and subject matter expert in workplace conflict investigation, evidence and root cause analysis.  Some might call her a reformed lawyer.  We call her your ally in organizational people-centred, holistic and healthy workplace change.  She believes not in serendipity but that 'chance favours the prepared mind".  She believes organizations can best introduce positive change when presented with solid information gathered through a valid and reliable process, executed with empathy.  

Krista provides advice to organizational leaders on preventing, navigating and recovering from workplace challenges and crisis.  Her work as a conflict mediator and advisor focuses on early interventions to reduce the harm and cost of internal conflicts. Krista, with Kim, also leads our workplace conflict prevention workshops. 

Krista's approach acknowledges individual lived experience in the workplace and the restoration of a future-focused relationship.  She works on practical empowerment of each individual to meet their needs in the workplace relationship and encouragement of all participants to share responsibility for creating a workplace environment that allows everyone to flourish and experience inclusion and belonging.

Krista is a certified workplace investigator.  She practiced corporate labour and employment law for ten years before moving into transformative mediation and restorative justice.  

Krista is a practicing lawyer with a specific focus on bullying, harassment and discrimination.  She has served as a senior lawyer in the Policy and Research arm supporting the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission and Inquiry into the tragic deaths in April 2020 and is currently completing her Master of Laws at Dalhousie University.  

We are excited to have her as a partner!

Emma is a researcher for 13 FACTORS, helping our team deepen and connect recent organizational behavioural science, workplace culture, health and safety and the law.  She is a recent graduate of Mount Saint Vincent University with a bachelor of arts in history focusing on women's political participation, inclusion and diversity. Emma has worked in a variety of industries as a precarious worker and brings that experience to her understanding and interest in equity and social justice within the workplace.

In university Emma worked on a variety of initiatives to bring equitable services to students. She was a founding organizer of the 'dissolve msvusu' campaign which sought to reset a negative group culture and build a new union from scratch. From these experiences she has frontline knowledge of how harmful behaviour can grow within otherwise good organizations, diminish psychological safety and discourage speaking out. 

Emma brings strength in policy review and analysis from an anti-oppression informed lens.  In particular she brings a research based ability to support the positive changes you want to make to existing policies and practices that may be impacting your goals to improve inclusion, diversity and retention. 

Emma is currently completing her Master in Information (MI), formerly the Master in Library & Information Sciences (MLIS) program, at Dalhousie University.

Our team members and trusted partners provide a rich and deep perspective to your workplace challenge or opportunity for growth, innovation or change:

• Kevin D'Aigular, Data Analytics and Data Storytelling.
• Corilee Fox, Mindfulness Practitioner and Somatic Coach.
• Tonya Canning, PhD, Anthropologist and Neurodiversity Advisor.
• Nicole Silverman, Workplace Assessment and Leader Coach
• Pam Rogers, PhD, Education and Systemic Change Leader.
• Wilma Li, Organizational Assessment, and EDI Specialist and Coach.
• Andrea MacNevin, JD, Workplace Investigator.
• Alan Harvey, PEng, Construction and Industrial Sector Advisor.

We are looking for entrepreneurial-minded people who want to bring their talents to workplace change and help clients create exceptional workplaces. If you are interested, we would love to talk to you!

13 FACTORS works in partnership with trainers, consultants and company partners who are on a similar mission-to change workplaces for good. 

Specialties we are always looking for include decolonization and antiracism experience, anthropology, behavioural, industrial, social and occupational psychology, cognitive science, workplace mental health, stress and emotional science, policy and process improvement, occupational health and safety, adult education, EDI, restorative justice, trauma-informed mediation. Are any of these areas your specialties? We would love to meet you.