Laurel Gain’s Journey with Integrative Thinking

Every year we help facilitate the RJS Scholarship in Integrative Thinking. The scholarship is for students who have become better thinkers and problem solvers because of their experiences with Integrative Thinking. Successful candidates are able to describe what they learned from Integrative Thinking, how their behaviour and thinking has changed, and why that is important to them.

Through this scholarship we got to meet Laurel Gain in 2022, as she was a recipient of the scholarship.

“You can’t work through and solve a real-world problem that really matters on your own. Integrative Thinking not only showed me the benefit of looking beyond my own thinking but also how to do it, and how to to seek out other perspectives, especially if they’re different than mine, and how to make sense of that. A significant part of engineering is about collaboration and having that open mindset, thinking from different perspectives and using different models of brainstorming that get us to think creatively to solve a problem. Integrative Thinking gets us to look at the best parts of different ideas and perspectives as opposed to choosing one idea over the other, to get to a creative solution. Integrative Thinking has really allowed me to change my mindset and outlook on problem solving in every aspect of life.”
— Laurel Gain

Once we met Laurel, we knew we had met a brilliant and kind person who we would be lucky to have working with us. As she is an engineering student who is also involved in academic clubs on campus, we find ourselves missing her dearly every school year but incredibly lucky to have gotten to work with her in the summers when the timing makes sense.

During late spring and summer of 2023, Laurel joined our team as our Climate Action Engineer, running the pilot of our latest Climate Action Challenge Kit in partnership with Oshawa Centre. This Challenge Kit explored how mall property teams could make the mall environmentally sustainable.

Property teams at shopping centres want to contribute to reducing their environmental footprint, in terms of limiting how much waste is generated, how much carbon is produced and how much energy and water is used. They also want to create a space that supports health and well-being, along with biodiversity and ecosystem health. Property teams are trying to do as much as they can within the spaces where they have control.

During the Oshawa Centre pilot, students were able to recommend incredible options to the Oshawa Centre team! These ideas included converting the top level of the parking garage into a community garden and more.

We were so impressed by the students during the pilot that we hired two as summer interns to refine the Challenge Kit and create a series of resources to expand student understanding moving forward. Leading this team of summer interns was our fearless (unless it’s heights) and brilliant Laurel. As our summer interns had just finished Grade 9 this was their first office job, and Laurel got to teach them skills and give them advice they will carry on in their future roles and eventually their careers.

As Laurel said in her application to the RJS Scholarship, “Integrative Thinking has really allowed me to change my mindset and outlook on problem solving in every aspect of life.” Laurel has embraced Integrative Thinking in a way that has transformed how she moves through life and has transformed our work through our collaborations with her.

We are honoured to have Laurel share her brilliance with the team, and can’t wait to see where her journey takes her, and of course how Integrative Thinking will help her on the way!