Which qualities do we look for in a teammate?

Our first three official employees were varsity swimmers at the University of British Columbia.

I was one of them.

I remember training for two hours in the morning and then spending the day cleaning windows and gutters.

Haha, it was definitely an adjustment that first summer. My coaches were less than impressed when I showed up to the pool for afternoon practice looking exhausted.

I remember my forearms would burn from hauling ladders around over my head.

After those first few years, when we started to really grow, of course, we had to hire people with diverse backgrounds.

Sure, we still had athletes. Some of them even went to the Olympic Games!

But we also had world travellers, artists, and Vancouver-born young people back at home for the summer from their studies at places like McGill or Western.

In the last four years, we’ve added even more texture to our team. Our current General Manager, Elliott, has a long-standing background in theatre, so we’ve had a lot of actors, performers, playwrights, and even people trained in clowning join our team.

It’s been a lot of fun to meet people as passionate about the arts as I am about sport.

The other resemblance I see is commitment to a dream.

I was training to make the national team and Olympics. And many of our current team members have dreams they are aspiring to as well.

Sometimes I showed up at my second practice of the day and couldn’t lift my arms over my head.

Today, our Green Grads teammates may go off to rehearse a play, or work on a piece of theatre at night.

To me, it’s all under the same umbrella of work ethic and passion.

So, that’s a long-winded explanation of who we hire, but it means a lot to us, and hopefully, you see the difference in the work that we do.