How abm works
1. ABM Online Connectors
ABM Online Connectors take place weekly, bringing decision-makers together for up to five private, pre-scheduled twenty-minute one-on-one appointments.
They provide a consistent rhythm for strengthening relationships, creating new opportunities, and pushing one another toward better leadership. Each Connector is designed to cultivate opportunities for learning, business, dialogue, partnership, personal growth, and friendship.
Unlike webinars, networking events, or conferences, there are no presentations, breakout rooms, group discussions, or random introductions.
Every Connector is intentionally curated by ABM based on the work, experience, interests, and priorities of the participants. Our role is not simply to arrange meetings, but to exercise judgment in bringing together people whose conversations have the greatest potential to create value for one another and for the community.
The final composition of each Connector continues to evolve as registrations are received and meeting requests are confirmed. Every new participant influences the conversations, meeting opportunities, and relationships that emerge within the community.
ABM's proprietary custom-built software reflects years of experience bringing decision-makers together. It supports scheduling, meeting requests, notifications, and private video appointments, while the judgment behind every Connector remains distinctly human.
For guests, ABM creates a complete schedule by identifying Members whose work, experience, and expertise align with each participant and inviting them to make themselves available to meet.
ABM Members participate in at least one Online Connector each month to remain visible and accessible within the community. As relationships develop, Members increasingly shape their own Connector schedules while ABM continues to facilitate introductions, suggest meaningful connections, and provide scheduling support whenever it adds value.
The topic of a Connector provides context, but the real value comes from the people brought together around it.
2. ABM Spheres
ABM Spheres are trusted circles of Members who share an interest in a particular area of work while recognizing that today's opportunities and challenges rarely exist within a single sector.
The current ABM Spheres are:
Cleantech & Renewables
Creative Industries
Education & Training
Environmental Stewardship, Emergency Management, and Resilience
Finance
Food Security
Forest Value Chain
Governance
Community Wellbeing
Land Development, Infrastructure and Housing
Ocean and Freshwater Resources
Procurement
Technology & Innovation
Tourism, Hospitality, and Retail
Knowledge, perspectives, opportunities, friendship, and support move throughout the community, often in unexpected ways. A conversation in one Sphere may create opportunities in another. Relationships formed around one shared interest frequently lead to collaboration in an entirely different context.
Each Sphere contributes to the strength of the whole community. Members often participate in multiple Spheres because meaningful innovation happens where different perspectives, experiences, sectors, and disciplines intersect.
Networking becomes collaboration. Collaboration becomes partnership. Partnership creates the conditions for innovation and opportunity.
Each ABM Sphere meets by Zoom approximately every three months and is led by an ABM Member. The conversations are designed to strengthen relationships, exchange insights, and surface opportunities across the community.
Sphere Principles
Every minute is interactive and member-driven.
No preparation is required before the meeting.
No post-meeting work is expected unless a specific, actionable collaboration emerges that supports the priorities of one or more members.
The focus remains on strengthening Sphere connections, sharing insights, providing support, and surfacing opportunities.
3. Uncensored Dialogue Forums
Hard Conversations. Rethinking Business.
The Uncensored Dialogue Forums are where ABM most fully lives its purpose.
We seek to provide dialogue and connection in retaliation against the colonial attitudes that strive to maintain the status quo of inequality. These retreats strip away politeness and pretense, creating a space where frank conversations explore the realities of colonial legacies, Indigenous perspectives, stewardship, governance, human relationships, culture, business, money, and the work needed to build stronger relationships.
As ABM Members engage with one another, they develop increasingly sophisticated perspectives on the relationship between business, land, power, and responsibility. This often requires confronting the reality that business in Canada largely operates within settler colonial systems that are fundamentally different from Indigenous ways of relating to land.
Rather than avoiding this tension, participants examine it honestly. They embrace discomfort, speak with courage, challenge assumptions, and engage respectfully with perspectives that are often avoided in conventional professional settings. Genuine friendship is recognized as one of the most powerful drivers of change.
Innovation at ABM is not only about new technologies or new markets. It also comes from developing increasingly sophisticated ways of doing business while navigating the compromises required to operate without undermining the right of Indigenous people to exist.
These retreats are where insights are sharpened, critical thinking is tested, and members grow as both human beings and leaders. The purpose is not to reach consensus. It is to deepen understanding, strengthen relationships, and expand our collective capacity to respond thoughtfully to complexity.
Uncensored brings together a community of peers who hold one another accountable, strengthen the ABM Community, and push toward our shared vision of prosperous people on a livable planet.
What Makes Uncensored Different
Dialogue that disrupts the norm: Guided conversations create space for honesty, discomfort, and clarity beyond what is typically possible.
Hard conversations about the systems we work within: Participants critically examine the assumptions that shape business in Canada, including the tensions between settler colonial systems and Indigenous ways of relating to land. Rather than seeking easy answers, they develop a greater capacity to navigate complexity with integrity.
Human growth through humility and courage: This is not a workshop. It is an opportunity to show up as a full human being, stretch your worldview, and practice showing up differently.
Cultural competency developed through friendship: Understanding is not transactional; it is personal. Awareness grows through relationships rather than curriculum, and ABM Members continue those relationships long after the dialogue concludes.
Realignment with purpose: Participants leave with a recalibrated sense of what matters, what is possible, and how they want to influence their work, relationships, and communities.
Clarity: Unlike extractive networking or performative professional gatherings, Uncensored replenishes the spirit while sharpening focus.
Through this dialogue, we evolve how we do business in service of a livable planet.
4. Annual Community Gathering
The Annual Community Gathering is ABM's flagship in-person event.
Over three days, we come together in an intentionally designed environment that fosters meaningful dialogue and relationships, leading to outcomes that range from new friendships to mutually beneficial partnerships. It is a space to deepen collaborations, reconnect with friends, forge new relationships, and see projects take shape around shared values and a commitment to collective action.
Curated one-on-one meetings, dialogue circles, shared meals, and informal conversations strengthen the relationships that make meaningful partnerships and opportunities possible.
We also encourage participants to invite a young person from their family or close circle to join the Gathering. This initiative grew out of conversations within the ABM Community and reflects our belief that the decisions we make today should include the perspectives of those who will live with them tomorrow. Creating space for young people to share their perspectives, questions, and lived realities helps us recognize blind spots, challenge assumptions, and make wiser decisions. Intergenerational dialogue strengthens relationships, builds shared understanding, and creates continuity between today's leadership and the future we are working to build together.
Unlike other conferences, the Annual Community Gathering is not a standalone event. It is part of our activities throughout the year. The Gathering brings all of us together in person, and when it concludes, the conversations, relationships, and collaborations continue to grow through ongoing participation and our shared Vision of Prosperous people on a livable planet.
The Annual Community Gathering is where the ABM Community experiences itself as a community.