The Grit & Grace Leadership Podcast
What fuels the heart of a leader? Leadership isn't just about guiding—it's about persevering, learning, and growing. On the Grit & Grace Podcast, we shine a spotlight on the stories behind the leader. Leaving listeners with the inspiration and tools to do the same.
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The Grit & Grace Leadership Podcast
Architecting Balance and Impact: Joanne Kearney's Inspirational Life Blueprint
Whether you’re navigating personal struggles, professional setbacks, or seeking inspiration to lead a more impactful life with meaning and balance, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom and motivation.
Joanne Kearney, co-owner of Smithcom Limited and Vice Chair on the UHN Foundation Board, shares her profound story of transformation, beginning with the life-altering gift of a kidney transplant from her husband.
Listen as Joanne unveils her unique strategies and intentional living approach that helped her not only to thrive in the face of adversity but also to find joy and fulfillment amidst life's storms. Her insights provide a roadmap for anyone seeking to balance health, well-being, and a desire to make a meaningful impact in the world.
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On the Grit and Grace podcast. We shine the spotlight on the stories behind the leader. What is that like when you say you're completely transformed In?
Speaker 2:transplant, you get an entirely new lease on life. You need to do good with that.
Speaker 1:Today, I'm excited to introduce Joanne Kearney. She is the co-owner of Smithcom Ltd and serves as vice chair on the UHN Foundation Board. In 2017, she faced end-stage kidney disease, with none of her friends or family being a match for transplant. It was then that she learned about the Pair Kidney Exchange Program. This program allowed for her husband to donate his kidney to a stranger so that she could receive her match. Her story inspires us all to think about the big questions. How do we want to architect the life we live now? How do we set ourselves up to make the biggest impact with the time we have today? This episode is transformative on so many levels, so let's begin. You have crafted an incredibly intentional life, with a lot of flexibility and leisure amongst your busy schedule. Would you mind just sharing with everyone a little bit of your backstory and how this has all come to be?
Speaker 2:When I was four I was diagnosed with kidney disease. It was congenital, so it was bad luck kidney disease. I had a structural issue that they found and I then needed to have my left kidney removed and lived with chronic kidney disease. From that stage on it really wasn't a big part of my life. I had to take one powerful medication. I had to go and see the sick kids every six months. I had to do lots of blood work. It was living with a chronic illness. I never really associated it as being sick. I never associated it as having a chronic illness.
Speaker 2:But I think it gave me more. I think as a child it gave me superhero powers. My mom and my dad would come with me to every appointment. I was so incredibly supported through it. But I would tour my way through the huge hospital and I felt good about that. I felt like I knew where I was going. I knew the surgeons. I'd see, oh, that guy took out my kidney, or there's my doctor, or the most amazing nurse. I knew how to do or get my blood taken and just deal with health issues from a really young age.
Speaker 1:What happened at 30? That changed things for you.
Speaker 2:That one mighty drug that I was living on. You couldn't get pregnant with it. At that time, in my late 20s or my 30s, I had met Brendan. We were starting our life together. We got married and we were thinking about that next phase of what do we want to do with our lives and do we want to have a family? We wanted to see what my life would be like off of that medication. It moved me from just being living with mid-stage kidney disease for just under 30 years to being an end-stage kidney disease. I didn't want to be defined by living with this illness.
Speaker 2:The transplant was what I was absolutely focused on and because they have the option of living organ donation versus deceased, you can try to have it a little bit more in your own control where, if you can find a living donor, you don't have to go on a wait list and wait. I would have had to wait up to eight years for a deceased organ Because Brendan was there with me right away in the appointment without me ever having to ask. He was talking about what he could be the donor. I immediately felt very supported and knew that going down a transplant route rather than dialysis was for me. There was bumps on the roads, there was unexpected challenges. Brendan was a match to me and then it turned out he wasn't a match to me. We had to figure out okay, how do we move forward? We managed to get us navigated the healthcare system a bit more and found the kidney-paired exchange, where it allowed for Brendan to come into a pool and donate his kidney to a stranger. In that same pool. I would receive one from a stranger.
Speaker 1:That's how it came to be.
Speaker 2:It's a very innovative solution. It's only really been happening since about 2008 in North America and it's done through AI. It's done through machine learning algorithms Wow when the computer sort of simulates with these people who would match and whose histocompatibility would work best with each other, and they produce chains. So the optimal chain is about 12 people, or else it starts to break down. Someone gets too sick, someone pulls out various reasons, breaks down the chain, and so Brendan is an amazing person to put into that. He's an old blood type, so it's the best type of donor. So he could match with everybody. And I had become classified as very difficult to match and I wouldn't have matched my siblings. I wouldn't have matched. I knew I didn't match my siblings and if other people had started to continue to come forward, it was very unlikely statistically for me to match them. But this program looks at 155 people at the same time and says, okay, could we find one? And we managed to.
Speaker 1:What was in that decision point? It sounds like it was very aspirational and he wanted to do it. But I've just been thinking about this for the last week and I'm thinking about what fear might have come up for me, how I might have been afraid in that moment. Is there anything there that you had to confront and overcome?
Speaker 2:It was very natural. He because Brendan, was in all the appointments with me, we were learning on this journey together, right, both about the options of once you sort of you get to end stage kidney disease. But he was also living with me and saw what I was suffering from, even though I never said I was suffering or I never thought I was suffering, I never identified a suffering, and but he could kind of see it and he from day one, just said you know, we're in this life together and I want it to be a life together and I want it to be as vibrant as possible. And so, because it was, it was in natural conversation. I never had to make an ask of anybody, and that would be. I can see that being a big fear. How do you ask someone to donate an organ to you?
Speaker 1:You can't.
Speaker 2:My other fear was you know how do we find that right balance moving forward, when Brendan has literally saved my life? He's transformed my life in the short term and in the long term he's he's given me my life. How do I balance that with him being my husband?
Speaker 1:Yes, this was the other thing, and put it back in my mind. It's like can you ever have an argument?
Speaker 2:Can you?
Speaker 1:ever have conflict Like yeah, and how did you approach this?
Speaker 2:Well, so you know I have to first say Brendan's absolutely amazing. In the seven years next February since the trans men, he's never once used it against me. He's never once. There might be jokes, but he's never once said like you know, I did this for you, right. So he's incredible. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:My fear was how do I say thank you every day but then also want you to take out the garbage and all those? You know we, all you know living with your loved one, like there's always gonna be finding a way to to live your life together, and we had this incredible time Recovering from the surgeries. It's painful. You're watching your loved one who become very weak because of what they did for you. You know I, I was flying around because I got a new kidney and they give you a bunch of steroids for the first, for the first of the while. So not only are you, do you feel amazing, you also are even more up because of the, the treatment, and Whereas Brendan he was, he was, you know, he couldn't walk as well, he was in a lot of pain and we spent this very quiet.
Speaker 2:In retrospect, within two weeks, we should have taken longer together where nothing else mattered, where it Literally was this life transforming moment Between the two of us, and our moms were there helping us, or family or siblings Everyone was around. But it really was this quiet time for us to reflect and sort of say nothing else matters more than life and the life that you want to live. And how do you? How do you get there? And in that time we reflected a lot about how lucky we were to have gotten there. In transplant you get a Entirely new lease on life. You literally with it. For me it was within seconds. Some people it does take a bit more time, but fine, in days you are a completely different person.
Speaker 1:What is that like when you say you're completely transformed?
Speaker 2:you know the symptoms that you've lived with in in Organ failure and for kidney. It can be very long time in mine was years, you don't? You just kind of they become part of your life and you don't realize that you're fighting that and then all of a sudden you wake up and it's gone. All of those symptoms are gone, like I. Literally they wake you up in the OR to make sure everything went well and then you kind of Wake up again in the post-op before you go up to the sort of your hospital room. In that moment, in that, in that in the post-op room, I kind of Was the first time I was really alert and I focused and I had lived with like extreme itchiness for three or four years and it was instantly gone and you don't realize what you're living with until it's gone.
Speaker 1:You get so used to it. Is that how I'm kind of here?
Speaker 2:you say it like that, yeah, exactly Wow, and you have new energy and I had not ever really wanted to acknowledge that. I lived with those and it wasn't that bad compared to a lot of people and it really wasn't. But you, all of a sudden, you take something away, you give them, you give someone, some, a new functioning piece of your body and I think you're just energized by what you can do with it and that, what you want to do with it, because you have this unique gift and you've been given this opportunity, and someone whether it's your loved one and living, doing you don't know, or, tragically, someone who Donated their organs upon on death you need to do good with that.
Speaker 1:You, intentionally, have created a life of balance and you've architected this for yourself, and when I speak to people who know you, this is the thing that comes up that they admire what have been some things that you've been mindful of to ensure that you architect balance in your life.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be defined by what I do for a living or that I didn't ever want to be defined as someone who lived with a chronic illness. I want to Be defined on the impact I have in my life the impact I have a friend and I and that life that he's enabled us to be living, and the impact that I can have on my clients and the advice that I'm giving and in the, in the strategies we try to execute. The impact on my family that I have. I can spend time with them and I can be there and and support them through their challenges, just like they supported me. And so when you look at that it's it's less about balancing everything, but it's saying this is who I am and this is who I want to be. What do I need to do to make that happen and what do I not need to do? What can I leave out? And and it's always reflecting on am I living the life I want to live and is this how I define myself?
Speaker 1:When you started to ask those questions together, where did some of the answers take, you guys, because you've done a lot since your surgery and I would just love for you to share a little bit of that journey for folks Space and time.
Speaker 2:I try to treat people as the adults that they are and to sort of say you have a life that you're living while you're doing this work and so take the space and time you need to be that person and just be accountable to your deliverables. Everything else doesn't matter. So I tell a joke like I don't need to know if you're going to the dentist. Great that you're going to the dentist. You don't need to put that in my calendar. You don't need to tell me that Should someone be dealing with their own health issues, trying to support their family or their loved ones, it's take the space to do that, because nothing else matters and if we're not healthy people and that also means supporting those around us we can't do a good job in our daily lives for clients or how we want to be. So I try to define that as I needed space and I needed time, and if I can give that to other people while still making a living, while still trying to have a vibrant consultancy, then that's a gift I hope to pass on.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people don't feel like they can ask for it and people tend to pace to the leader that they are working for. With entrepreneurship, you could work around the clock. You could take on any old client that comes your way. I'm assuming there's a ton of no's in how you structured your business Far too many Okay. So can we talk about how to structure positive?
Speaker 2:no's. What do you want to spend your life doing? And make it happen. And if I don't want to spend my time doing that or, more importantly, I don't actually think I'm the best suited for it and there's probably better people out there pay it forward, because it's going to come back, right?
Speaker 1:what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:You know, if you have an opportunity to take on a new client, which is an entrepreneurial shift in always wanting growth, growth, growth, it's say yes to everything and figure it out. But if I'm not the best person for that, I'd rather say no and refer to the best person because I'm not committing to something I can't deliver, which hurts my reputation and will ultimately hurt the reputation of the person I'm working with, and it will come back around because there's an area that you are the expert that someone else is going to say you know, I'm not like pass it to Joe, so I think a graceful no is can I provide value to you? And if I'm not happy with that value, if I don't think it's valuable, I don't want to do it. Yeah, and so how we try to set up our life allows for that balance of we can be in a few different places and be vibrant parts of our communities and our families in those places and have the best of all worlds there.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm listening to that and I think how many times have I been, you know, in a chapter of my life where I didn't feel like I had the authority in my own life to ask the question how do I want to set up my own life? I want to kind of look at this through the lens because you bring a special focus on, like health, the health care industry. People in the health care industry are often taking care of everyone else, but where do you think the leaders in the industry need to focus so that they can be the best leaders?
Speaker 2:So it's sort of taking a step back and saying what impact are we having on people's lives today?
Speaker 2:And they are saving and transforming people's lives every single minute.
Speaker 2:And it's very humbling not being someone whose day-to-day life is in health care, getting to be a small part of that and getting to be a fly on the wall to say, wow, they have to be in this very difficult condition but they are still motivated to get up every day and to transform people's lives and to face the most devastating stories and where there often is an answer, and go finish the clinic and go into their research labs and spend a significant amount of time saying how do I fix this in the future?
Speaker 2:And then they still don't go home. They then go into the universities and they teach the next generation on how to not only care for us but how to think about the world in the future, how to solve health care globally. And it is very humbling when you say, well, okay, I'm just a consultant to corporates to be able to see and champion people like that because they deserve so much more credit and support in our society, but our structure is in such a way that health care workers they're just on a ledge and I can't imagine how hard the day-to-day are. So I want them to know the impact that they're having is immense and that's something that's very important and I hope gives them perspective to say well, it may be a challenging time, we saved Joe's life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if those stories come back often enough. So even in this podcast, hopefully, we can deliver that message so that the impact of what they are doing every day fuels them and regenerates their own energy to be able to get up and give and give, and give. So 2024 is upon us. That's on the horizon for you, joe.
Speaker 2:Well, the vision is getting through 2023. Yes, I always find this time of year quite busy and you fit a lot in. So, getting through 2023 and a big mantra I'm kind of on, both in my personal life and in my professional life, is it's going to sound so cliche, but be the change you want to see and I'm very much focused on that mantra in some of my client work. I do a lot of work in Canada's mining industry, which is a very large sector for our economy. It's a very large employer for especially our northern regions and it really gives Canada a global presence. However, it has had its challenges in the past. It also has a perceptions around it that aren't necessarily true in modern society.
Speaker 2:But what's being done to tell people differently? As consultants, all we can do is advocate and hope that they listen. But let's advocate for doing things differently and doing things in a way that will get the industry to where it needs to be, because it really is an amazing one. It's going to be critical and it is critical to the green energy transition, but sort of saying, okay, we got to act now for where we want to go and then, on the same time, on our work in philanthropy.
Speaker 2:With healthcare, there needs to be change and there is change and there's great innovation and opportunity. But let's get there now. So let's address some huge barriers, let's tackle some systemic issues today in action, so that tomorrow is really as bright as healthcare innovation promises. So I think it's rather than sort of being passive and saying this is the world around us, I can't really control it, we can't control what happens to us, but we can control the decisions we make and I've always believed that and that's how I looked at my health. You've been like that since you were a child, right?
Speaker 1:Absolutely yes.
Speaker 2:And that's allowed me to sort of define the life that I want because I'm in control of those decisions.
Speaker 2:I can't control getting chronic kidney disease, I can't control a lot of things that happen in life, but you can control how you react. And so now it's taking that and sort of saying how do I continue to cause change? I think change agent can have a bit of a negative connotation, but if I can be someone who causes change for the good, then and I do that in 2024, then I think that's a year well spent.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that is the perfect note for all of us to think about that for ourselves and how can we bring about that in our own lives. Thank you so much for being with us today. Your story is incredibly inspiring. So much to take away from this episode. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn, where we transform the wisdom from our podcast into practical tips, tools and takeaways for your leadership journey. Find us at grittgracepodcast. See you next week.