As of this morning, Heather Deeth has been the Interim Executive Director of Hollyhock for 19 days. Cortes Currents caught up with her on Sunday to talk about the changes in her life, as well as what’s happening in one of the most dynamic retreat centres on the West Coast.
It is the peak summer season at Hollyhock. The programs listed on their webpage are grouped into categories like: Wisdom Teachings, Social Innovation, Health & Healing, Creative Expression, the Hollyhock Leadership Institute and Signature Holidays.
Cortes Currents asked, Why is Hollyhock important?
Heather Deeth: “People have transformative experiences here. If we can give people the skills where they can have their own transformation internally themselves, and then collectively together, whether we’re bringing people together and they’re collectively arriving somewhere, that’s really potent. If we can be seeding that more and more out in the world right now, that’s exactly what we need to be doing.”
Cortes Currents: Have there been changes in your life, now that you’re in the Director’s seat?
Heather Deeth: “We’re feeling Peter’s departure. I really loved working with Peter. I learned so much from him. It was a total gift to have two years of working and learning from Peter. I miss working with him very much and I’m thankful that he’s become a dear friend and is a deep ally of Hollyhock and will be for a long time. I feel that in his continued relationship with me as well.”
“For me, the change is in being with the people. I haven’t worked on site since before the start of the pandemic. I worked remotely, many people worked remotely during the pandemic and it’s my first time coming back. I’ve been out here a few times, but not for longer stays, always as a visitor.”
“I arrived last week. It feels very different for me this time, really connecting with our staff who are here on the island.”
Cortes Currents: Where are you living right now?
Heather Deeth: “I’m in Shivon Robinsong and Bill Weaver’s house. That’s where my family’s been staying.”
Cortes Currents: What’s happening at Hollyhock right now?
Heather Deeth: “This is the first summer where it’s felt like we were back at strong peak summer numbers, the way it used to be. It’s nice to see our guests returning.”
“Today’s a changeover day. We have ‘The Art Of Leadership’ starting. I have Dan Siegel coming in on Friday to offer two workshops back to back, which is very exciting.”
Insights Meditation will also be this week and Cortes Island’s very own Bill Ophoff will be running his naturalist program.
“We had Sophie Gregoire Trudeau to start July off, which was a really incredible experience. Many of our programs were running through the month of July. We had our Canadian Psychedelic Summit in July as well, which was our third year of running. There were a hundred people this year and the feedback from that gathering was that it was extraordinary. We’re almost through our peak season and so that’s feeling really good because the last couple of summers we were still in pandemic recovery.”
Cortes Currents: Tell me about your day. When do you start in the morning? What do you do first?
Heather Deeth: “I’m an early bird, especially because I’m from the East Coast. Usually I’m up around five. I love the birds, and so usually if I am lucky in the morning, I listen to the early morning bird song. Coffee is very important. Then usually the first thing I do is I look at my calendar, to refresh my memory about what’s on and what’s happening. So I can come in clear headed and ready. On a good day, I can get out for a walk in the mornings.”
Cortes Currents: At what time?
Heather Deeth: “I don’t know because my family unit split our time between Seattle, Toronto, and now Cortes. We have a fairly fluid morning routine depending on where we are. My son is seven, so I have a young child. So depending on what the needs are at the two loves in my life, my son and my partner – they drive a lot of it.”
Cortes Currents: Where’s home?
Heather Deeth: “Toronto is home for me. My son is in Toronto.”
Cortes Currents: When will you be returning?
Heather Deeth: “I’m not sure yet. In September for sure, probably the end of September.
“Right now it’s very long hours because I’m learning so much and everything takes a little bit longer. I also find that being on Cortes and being in flow here, it is a little bit challenging to keep up to the digital needs as well of what’s happening.”
“We’re planning for 2025. So much of my time is going into looking forward. We’re going into our budget 2025 process right now. So there’s a lot of financial review. There’s a lot of thoughtfulness in our people structures and what changes we need to be making. At the same time, we’re still operating this year. It’s a real mix right now of being in the present and looking forward. I’m thinking about all the changes we need to be making and how to enhance our experience. How do we lay the groundwork for this new strategic plan and direction that we’re heading in?”
Cortes Currents: Tell us a little about your life before Hollyhock. Where do you come from and what have you done?
Heather Deeth: “My mother is from China and my father is Canadian. I grew up in the countryside outside of Toronto, which now is not so far from Toronto, given the development that’s happened. I worked on farms as a child, and eventually pursued a degree in business.”
“When I talk professionally, my background is in supply chain. I worked in chocolate and cosmetics prior to my work at Hollyhock. I affectionately used to say that I like to work at places where the product for me is really good, and that’s how I worked in chocolate and then cosmetics.”
“I was the head of ethical buying and sustainability at Lush cosmetics. I did that for 13 years in senior leadership with this company and brand that operates globally. I worked with farmers and communities all over the world in pursuit of finding out what an ethical trading relationship looks like for the people in the ecosystems that we touch.”
Cortes Currents: So what did you find out?
Heather Deeth: “People need income. That economic development side is really critical in all communities around the world and there’s a way of operating and seeing the people and understanding that’s really important.”
“We would go to see the people. I went to 40 different countries, sat on farms and we talked about ‘how are they living? What’s the landscape like?’”
“In 2013, I trained all my buyers, a team of 26 people, in permaculture. We wanted to see permaculture in all the materials that we grew all over the world and all ecosystems we knew or didn’t know. We changed all our buying portfolios to be by climate zone, so that we could start to think more holistically about where materials would go into cosmetic products, which became many little things in some bigger purchases. How do you grow those materials and have good jobs for the farmers and the communities and the factories that they’re coming from? We went into who was doing regenerative farming and permaculture.”
“We found out in the volumes we were buying out, you really have to show people how it’s done. You’re talking about people’s livelihoods when you’re converting over to organic farming or regenerative farming practices. We built four farms, one in Northern Uganda. Guatemala, Peru, Arizona, so that we could help show that there’s a new way of growing things, a new way that’s better for the environment.”
“That’s more sustainable because everyone around the world unilaterally wants to live in a healthy environment. People want to be able to send their kids to school. People want to be healthy. That’s a universal want and need. So we just tried to do that wherever we could. Our operating procedure was to go into the places that were the hardest to work in. I was trying to divert 40 percent of our dollars into the lowest human development index countries in the world because that’s where you actually had the biggest impact.”
Cortes Currents: Why did you leave?
Heather Deeth: “I hit 40, and I was working on our climate portfolio for Lush. Coming out of the pandemic, it just really became clear that we know we have solutions, but for some reason we don’t have the courage to do something. We can’t do anything until we have the inner skills and we can let go of the things that hold us back, or the fear, or the ego, and that nothing will happen alone.”
“I took a big career change. I’d actually never been to Hollyhock before. I’d never even been to a retreat center before I took this job, but it turned out that many of my close friends and people I trusted and loved in my circle of friends, my partner, had been here. People said, ‘ that’s the place where people go.’ Everyone who I loved and really deeply admired had spent time here and had a transformational experience.”
“When this Director of Programs position came up, Peter took a bit of a chance and brought me in. That was two years ago now.”
“I started at Hollyhock in June, 2022, as the Chief Product Officer. Product is a little bit of a funny title, but I was really coming in to look after programs. What is our programmatic offering here? This is where I feel like the team took a risk on me because I didn’t come in with a programmatic background, but I’ve been working in the space of ethics, climate and equity for a long time. So I think I had a view of how we could be in service to people.”
“We have a great programming team. They’re all really exceptionally talented people and so I was really thankful for them because they really knew what they were doing. I took over marketing as well at that time.”
“Where I think I’ve been most concentrated is around our financial durability.”
“Hollyhock is no different than a lot of businesses and retreat centers coming out of the pandemic that were coming out of a really tough financial time. I’m coming in with a business background and the language I like to use is around our financial durability.”
“Hollyhock has been around for 42 years. So how do we go forward 42 years? How do we think about it longer term?”
“We only operate six months of the year. Someone explained it to me perfectly. We’re sitting here on Cortes Island, in the very southeastern corner of the Great Barrier Rainforest and ecosystem. The forest eats the campus in the winter. Then in the spring we kind of prop it all back up and get it going. That requires investment in infrastructure.”
“I feel like my purpose over the last two years was to really be building our financial durability and to look at the systems in which we hold our organization and that also includes the people. How do we change and how do we build this organization to have a really strong longevity – because it’s a time for retreat centers.”
“The pandemic has been very hard for spaces where people gather and at the same time, we know from our experience in the world that people are more desperate than ever for connection. So the market demand is there, but we have to also care for ourselves and the number one thing is our people here.”
“How can we have all this come together in a really good way, so that we can sustain ourselves in this next phase that Hollyhock is in. I actually can’t even articulate to you what the next phase will be, but I think we’re in it already.”
Cortes Currents: Is becoming the Executive Director a progression of what you were doing before?
Heather Deeth: “I see it that way. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to be here, I’m really grateful for the trust that the board has put in me. I think I have a really good function. I’m here as interim CEO. The board has kicked off a robust recruitment process, which will have lots of consultation. In looking at that process, I think they’re doing a really good job at designing it. I’m here on an interim basis to really hold the people through the change.”
Cortes Currents: How is Hollyhock changing and why?
Heather Deeth: “Peter wrote about this in his last blog post for Hollyhock a few weeks ago. He had been sitting on the need for change for some time. First off, from a financial side, our business model does need to change. We’ve been trying to be many things at the same time to different groups of people. In July, the board signed off on a new strategic plan and the vision is ‘a living and loving planet for all.’”
“What’s interesting about the new strategic plan is there are all the same old themes. I’ve been reading some of the old documentation from Joel Solomon, Shivon Robinsong and Rex Weyler. A lot of it feels the same. We were laughing about it internally. The strategic plan has four priorities: Programming; People and Community; Land Stewardship; Financial Durability.”
“The last strategic plan was done in 2016. We were going to embark on another one and then the pandemic came. So the work got pushed off because everyone was surviving the pandemic.People were not gathering for those years. We started doing very small gatherings. Even when I started in 2022, it was still an abbreviated year.”
“We weren’t back up to full capacity. What we’re realizing is that our market, the people who want to come here, has changed. There’s a lot out in the world that has changed and so how do we serve our audience.”
“I think many of the things that we’ve been doing for so long that we have such a long history in doing actually will hold. So being a place where people can come and find community beyond the land, really seek deep wisdom and to hit a place of expansiveness together, I think that’s all the same. I think we’re just trying to have our organization be the service organization for the times we are in.”
Cortes Currents: What’s different about that vision?
Heather Deeth: “We know that people are feeling disconnected. We know that climate change is going to have huge impacts on the lands and communities that we’re in. The economic models are going to shift. So how do we keep providing spaces and gathering sites for those people to come together, to find solace in being together, to find each other period and to dream up new ways of being?”
“One of the changes in the strategic plan that I hope will have a real benefit is that we really name community as part of how we need to be, and that is one of the focuses of Hollyhock. I think that’s going to take shape in several different ways. We want to be a really great employer here on Cortes. I want us to provide good jobs for people and that will take some time to build.”
“We’re in this recruitment process for a new Executive Director for the organization, but I know that it is something much deeper and bigger than even one individual. The calling from our staff, the board, and even our funders, is that we can be embedded in the community differently than we are now.”
Cortes Currents: Are you one of the applicants for Executive Director?
Heather Deeth: “I’m committed to there being a really excellent process.”
Cortes Currents: Is your hat in the ring?
Heather Deeth: “I’m not sure yet.”
Cortes Currents: Do you have any idea about how long it’s going to take for Hollyhock to choose a new Executive Director?
Heather Deeth: “The plan is to have someone new in by the start of the new year.”
Links of Interest:
- Peter Wrinch moving on from being CEO of Hollyhock
- The Hollyhock website
- Hollyhock Facebook page
- Articles about, or mentioning, Hollyhock on Cortes Currents
Top image credit: One of the sessions – courtesy Hollyhock Facebook page
Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:
To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:
- Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
- Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io