We build cultures and communications your people can believe in.

We started Higher Ground Collective with a simple conviction: organizations deserve narratives that match their reality, and people deserve cultures and communications they can trust.

That conviction has not changed. What has deepened is our understanding of what it takes to build them.

Over three decades of work across sustainability, ESG, safety, equity and the communications that sit under real-world scrutiny, and we keep finding the same thing. The organizations that struggled were not short on intention or ideas. They were short on underlying design.

The gap between what they said, what they did, and what people actually experienced was structural. Closing the gap required the courage to look at the structure honestly and the willingness to rebuild it from the inside.

That is why we build RESPONSIBLE NARRATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE™: the systems, stories, governance, and practices that keep what you say, what you do, and what people experience aligned, credible, and resilient over time. It is not a departure from the creative and communications work we have always done. It is the deeper layer beneath it, the one that determines whether that work holds.

We are still learning how to build this well. We experiment. We stay honest about what we find. And we do the work in close partnership with the people who have to live inside it every day.

The Team

Meet The Collective

Diagnosticians, strategists, designers, filmmakers, writers, and builders. Different disciplines. Shared conviction.

We are a community of experienced practitioners working across strategy, narrative design, brand architecture, filmmaking, content, and communications.

What unites us is not a discipline, but a way of thinking: the belief that structure and creativity are not opposing forces, but expressions of the same intelligence applied at different layers of the work.

  • Bonnie Lester

    FOUNDER & CEO

  • Cynthia Benedek

    PARTNER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR

  • Karima Mawji

    ACCOUNT DIRECTOR

  • Brian Chung

    DIGITAL STRATEGY ADVISOR

  • Julie Webster

    QUEEN OF NEXT STEPS

  • Sheila Gray

    COPYWRITING

  • Nathaniel Anderson

    PHOTOGRAPHER

  • Elisa Paloschi

    DIRECTOR, IMPACT PRODUCER, CINEMATOGRAPHER

  • Karen Beach

    DIRECTOR OF MERCHANDISING DESIGN

  • Christine Liber

    COMMUNICATIONS

Our Philosophy

Our logo is a labyrinth. Unlike a maze, which is designed to confuse and obstruct, a labyrinth has one clear path to the centre, and one clear path out. It is impossible to get lost.

That is how we think about the work. Every organization has a core purpose. The challenge is not finding it. The challenge is building the path that carries it into the world with clarity, coherence, and credibility, and having the courage to follow it even when the path requires difficult decisions about what to say, what to change, and what to leave behind.

We believe the most practical work and the most meaningful work are, in the end, the same work. That is why we named our newsletter The Stuff of Stars.

Commitments

Our work has an impact on society and the environment. 

We hold ourselves to the same standards we ask of our clients. That means treating ethics, responsibility and sustainability as design constraints, not afterthoughts.

We do this by:

  • Placing ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability at the heart of our operations

  • Treating sustainability as an essential business imperative and embedding it at the core of our strategies to create transformational change with our clients

  • Demanding integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness in our work; courage in our decisions; and dedication to Higher Ground Collective’s values and beliefs

  • Demonstrating our care, support and respect for each other and the community through equitable decision-making that is mindful of its impact on other groups and people

  • Developing a diverse team in talent, skills, gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and ability

  • Working with purpose-led businesses, sustainability innovators, and not-for-profit organizations who are prepared to address the biggest issues facing humanity today

  • Partnering with the not-for-profit sector to raise money for and awareness of charities

  • Supporting our communities: we hire locally whenever possible, provide work experience and placement opportunities to local people and source local services across Ontario whenever available

  • Undertaking initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and encouraging the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies

  • Assessing and purchasing products from local independent suppliers across Ontario who performance meets environmental and ethical credentials as well as costs

  • Working remotely to avoid unnecessary daily commutes and business travel

  • Prioritizing mental health and work-life balance

  • Limiting the use of printed materials, printer use and recommending environmentally sound papers, inks, printers for all our products and services.