Hi, I’m Hilary Martin.
I design and deliver workshops to develop strategic clarity and capacity to move from planning to results. I do this work through my company, Hilary Martin Projects.
As a creative strategic leader, my methods prioritize consent, community consultation, user-focused design, and resourcing programs to measure participant outcomes and long-term effects using a whole-systems approach.
My clients and partners work with non-standard approaches to creating value beyond profit, within capitalism. To meet the needs of my clients, I have developed a method to generate strategic clarity within this niche. I call this method the Clarity Machine.
For individuals, I offer 1:1 facilitation sessions to generate creative strategy at a personal level. I call these Solutions Sessions.
In the bigger picture, I bring a solution-focused, strengths-based point of view to all of my work. I write about that here.
I turned my go-to facilitation mottos into visual prompts that I call Completion Cards. You can read about them here.
I’m interested in how small actions can have large knock-on effects, and how small positive changes can have ripple effects across a team, division, company, or sector. I believe that our actions make a difference in the face of challenge and uncertainty.
In this tenacious space with my clients, where small + mighty initiatives meet creative strategy, I co-create custom playbooks for generative outcomes and deepening effects without burnout.
I earned professional certificates from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in Adult Learning and Development (ALD) (2021) and Brief Coaching (2025), and trained with Solution Surfers in 2014 and 2022. Learning and development for people and organizations is a core theme in my work. It’s the foundation.
I have 20 years of experience in governance, management, and strategic consulting with nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in Ontario, and a decade developing strategic initiatives for business and economic ethics programs in university environments. These required cross-sector partnership design and complex grant funding applications and reporting. I conduct research and thematic analysis, and apply these skills in participatory and story-based program evaluation.
Between 2006 and 2014 I worked as a knowledge mobilization specialist for a university-based, cross-sector network moving research into action for business and economic ethics broadly defined, the Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN). I worked with +1500 senior faculty and emerging scholars across Canada, and leaders in industry, government, and NGOs with an active interest in socially responsible investing, business and human rights, and governance, law, and public policy, largely in the extractives sector.
This was practical training in how to measure the outcomes and deepening effects (aka impact) of programs designed for positive social and economic change, beyond profit.
During the pandemic, with some intrepid colleagues, I co-launched a startup delivering training for values and integrity in the workplace. This was built out of research and strategic initiatives at a business school on game-based learning for ethical leadership. My experience in that program of what didn’t work, combined with a decade of solutions-focused coaching and facilitation, fuelled my commitment to deliver Solutions Sessions.
I’m influenced by: Mary Gentile’s mentorship on “Giving Voice to Values“, Robin Cory’s recommendations in “5 Good Ideas for Greater Strategic Clarity” hosted by Maytree Foundation, Peter Levesque’s mentorship on knowledge mobilization and strategic design, and Peter Drucker’s “Managing Oneself.”
You can always contact me here or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Welcome!
My top 10 Clifton Strengths
Activator, Command, Communicator, Futuristic, Individualization, Strategic, Self-assurance, Learner, Relator, Restorative
Perspective, Aesthetics and Excellence in Performance, Creativity, Curiosity, Social Intelligence
Hilary Martin is a seasoned arts and culture sector leader with 25 years of experience, currently managing Make the Case, a national initiative to advance arts advocacy and investment in arts and culture. She also serves as the Research and Evaluation Lead for SCALE / LeSAUT, collaboratively developing a Relational Habitat framework for integrating climate response into Canadian arts sector leadership. With a background in philosophy, theatre arts, and restoration masonry, she is also a practicing artist and game designer. Her diverse portfolio includes work with various arts organizations and educational institutions including the Digital Arts Resource Centre (DARC) in Ottawa, and the Blended Learning Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto. She is currently co-chair of the Eastport Peninsula Agricultural Exhibition in her home province of Newfoundland and Labrador.