Inside Naqsmist Storytellers, the Indigenous-led B.C. startup teaching executives to lead differently

Elaine Alec faced the kind of decision every founder fears. She had to tell nearly 70 percent of her team that their roles were being cut. Naqsmist Storytellers, the company she had put her heart and soul into, was growing fast—but the cost of that growth had become unsustainable. For her, this mass layoff was a test of her commitment to the people who believed in her vision and the values that had shaped her since childhood.

Alec didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur. As an Indigenous woman raised in Penticton, she grew up aware of the racism facing her community. She recounts that, in her younger years, she applied for over 50 jobs and only got three interviews. “At the time, I didn’t see many visibly First Nations people working in public-facing roles,” Alec says. “Eventually, I stopped waiting for someone to hire me and started building something of my own. Entrepreneurship wasn’t the plan, it was the only path that opened.”

Raised in a single-parent household, Alec learned self-reliance and the value of hard work at a young age. Summer meant dawns in the orchard, filling pails of cherries for the small pay that became her concession money.—where her growing awareness of social justice ignited a fire within her—guiding her to uncover her purpose and helping others reconnect with their humanity. “People have to first understand that they are human in order to see us Indigenous peoples as human,” Alec says.

She spent over 15 years as an independent consultant focused on systemic change. “When I talk about systemic change, I’m not talking about new policies or awareness campaigns,” shares Alec. “I mean shifting the actual conditions that keep harm in place, how people relate to one another and how decisions are made.”

In 2023, she founded—and bootstrapped—Naqsmist Storytellers to bridge traditional teachings with business. This came as a result of realizing her consulting work was reinforcing government agendas rather than supporting true Indigenous self-determination. Naqsmist—loosely translated as in her traditional nsyilxcən language—teaches people how to take a human approach to building business and policy. “Systems, whether business, policy or government, are made up of people. And if the people inside those systems are dysregulated, disconnected or afraid of conflict, then the system itself will behave that way too,” she says.

Grounded in the wisdom and storytelling traditions of her culture, Alec is bringing humanity back to business through a framework she calls Cultivating Safe Spaces. Designed for facilitators, it teaches leaders how to regulate their emotions while engaging with diverse perspectives—a skill that Alec believes is both lost and desperately needed in today’s world. “Most of us see voices that are opposite to us as conflict, which creates division,” she explains.

The framework rapidly gained global adoption across governments, health care and education. However, the quick growth led to burnout for the team, and something needed to change. “To make the business sustainable, we had to create e-courses,” continues Alec. “That meant shifting to research and curriculum development, moving us away from advisory consulting work.”

When it reached the point that Alec had to lay off most of her team, she was struck by the resilience of the remaining members. Her core group of seven stayed committed, voluntarily accepting reduced hours and pay to keep the vision alive. “Most founders go through the financial toll alone, but my team took that hit with me because they believe in our vision,” she says.

To make it through, her team relied on the very framework Alec created to regulate emotions and stay grounded through hardship. Following the layoffs, Alec focused on stabilizing the remaining team. “I didn’t rush to bounce back,” she says. “Instead, I slowed down, practiced patience and made disciplined choices that kept us aligned with our purpose.”

Today, Alec describes her team as more lean, yet more clear. Having weathered financial setbacks, the company is now slowly recovering, with Alec intent on scaling her framework without diluting its depth. Her goal is to expand the company’s digital reach, certify more facilitators and embed the framework into more systems. “Our e-courses are growing, and we’re turning our attention to where this framework can have the biggest impact: large enterprises and organizations willing to do the serious work of leading differently,” she says.

For Alec, humanizing business isn’t a buzzword—it’s an approach she has carried from her small-town beginnings through every challenge, letting it guide how she leads her team each day.