Our local B community continues to grow! Integrated Work, a Boulder-based, woman-owned consulting firm, recently became the latest organization to earn their B certification. Get to know more about their business and their journey to B certification below. And if you’re interested in learning more about the certification process for your organization get in touch with us to learn more!
Tell us a bit about your company. What do you want the B Corp community to know?
Integrated Work has been based in Boulder, CO since 1998. We’ve been woman-owned and women-led from the very beginning and successfully navigated a Founder exit and ownership transition in 2020. As a firm, we are deeply devoted to building a just and flourishing future in partnership with our clients.
For nearly 25 years, we have provided leadership and organizational development services designed to help teams set clear direction and meet their mission in a human-first way. Now, we are also exploring the shift to employee ownership and enjoy being at the forefront of building new ways of leading and organizing.
Later this year, our CEO, Jennifer Simpson, will release her book: The KOAN Method—The Case for Connected Leadership in a Divided World, highlighting some of the best practices we have learned along the way and making the case for Kind, Open, Adaptive, Networks as a framework for leading and organizing that is deeply aligned with the B Corp commitment to harness the power of business as a force for good.
When did you first become aware of B Corp and what did you think about it?
The B Corp movement has been on our CEO’s radar for a long time as a student and scholar of leadership and organizing. She worked with a handful of B Corps as a consultant and when she took over the leadership of Integrated Work, it was something she and the founder talked about early. We had explored certification when we were much smaller and just didn’t have the resources to pull all of the documentation together, but the principles and commitments have been part of our DNA all along.
When Jennifer stepped in to lead, she looked over the B Impact Assessment and over the next few years we systematically turned things that had been principles into more concrete policies and began to gather our documentation so that when we were finally ready to go for certification, we had everything we needed in place. We’re really honored and excited to officially be a part of a community we have admired for a long time.
What motivated you to become a Certified B Corp?
From our perspective, becoming a B Corp signals to the world that we’re serious about living our values in practice. It doesn’t fundamentally change who we are, but it shows that we’re willing to hold ourselves to these standards publicly and makes it easier for other like-minded companies to find us. We really believe in this work and are grateful to be connected to a broader network of organizations and leaders who share our values and commitments.
What was your journey to Certification like? What were your pit and peak moments?
Because of the readiness work we did before beginning the official certification, the process was relatively smooth overall—no big surprises or pitfalls other than just how long it took to get from submission to certification.
Some of the peak moments were definitely the feeling of easily being able to pull together the “evidence” we needed to demonstrate goal-attainment—it really built a sense of pride and accomplishment to watch our score tick upwards and have the feeling of “Yeah! We’re doing this.”
What is your main ambition as a B Corp and what are your future commitments?
Truly, we hope that “making it official” will help us be even more fully ourselves every day. We’re also really excited to connect with other leaders committed to harnessing the power of business as a force for good.
It is meaningful and important work but can be lonely sometimes. There aren’t a lot of good maps to follow yet so finding fellow travelers who are also experimenting with new and better ways to lead is a real benefit.
For our fellow Colorado B-Corps, we’d love to coordinate to host some joint events. We have lovely meeting space right in central Boulder for anyone looking to host clients, hold team off-sites, or spur their team’s creativity by getting out of their day-to-day environments. Please reach out and/or drop by!
What advice would you give to other companies that would like to pursue a B Corp status?
I think that looking at the B Impact Assessment early is really helpful.
You might already be closer than you think, and if you still have some progress to make, the insights the assessment provides can be invaluable to knowing where you can make really high-leverage and impactful adjustments, then you can build your way to readiness before you start the official clock “ticking.”
And, talk to other B Corps. We had many friends and colleagues who’d been through the process as sounding boards and it was invaluable to know that it could be done and that we weren’t alone. It also reinforced that these were great people and a community we wanted to be a part of.
