Designing Your Board of Advisors with Rachel Mielke of Hillberg and Berk

The Boardroom 180 Podcast

Host Munir Haque, in partnership with ActionEdge Executive Development, welcomes guest Rachel Mielke, Founder and CEO of Hillberg & Berk, recipient of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for 2023, Top 40 Under 40 2017, and co-chair of Women Leading Philanthropy, among many other achievements. Rachel talks with Munir about the challenges of starting and growing Hillberg & Berk, and what makes for good governance on a board of directors.

Rachel Mielke’s success story has made her somewhat-of-a Saskatchewan legend, but it isn’t simply the fiscal achievements and scale-up of Hillberg & Berk that Rachel celebrates. From the beginning, her desire has been to work from a social enterprise model and to that end, Hillberg & Berk have made combatting gender-specific issues their mandate and part of the company values. Rachel tells Munir which organizations Hillberg & Berk supports, why, and how she and the board work to ensure every level of the company is infused with these same values.

By forming her own board of Advisors and sitting on the boards of several other organizations, Rachel has honed a keen understanding of what makes a good board run well and what stumbling blocks a board can encounter. She shares insights that may seem fundamental but can profoundly impact a board’s success and discusses with Munir what effective governance looks like in her experience. Rachel’s determination to maintain Hillberg & Berk’s social and community commitments is instrumental to how she and her board make decisions and this conversation shines a light on how she and her company have inspired such loyalty and success.

About Rachel Mielke:

Rachel Mielke, CEO & Founder of Hillberg & Berk, began the company at her kitchen table. Over 17 years, H&B has expanded to 15 retail stores across Canada, gaining recognition from Dragon's Den to the Olympics and even Queen Elizabeth.

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Resources discussed in this episode:

• 'Dragons' Den Update: Hillberg & Berk - Flagship' CBC YouTube video uploaded November 10, 200

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Contact Munir Haque | ActionEdge Executive Development:

• Website: AEEDNow.com
• Linkedin: Action Edge Executive Development Inc.
  
  

Podcast Production

• Recording: PushySix Studios
• Production Assistance: Astronomic Audio
  
  

Contact Rachel Mielke:

• Website: HillbergAndBerk.com
• Instagram
• Linkedin
  
  

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Transcript

Rachel Mielke: [00:00:13] I will always go into a board meeting fully convicted on whatever I'm presenting, whatever my beliefs are, and I try and balance that with the reason why I am spending time with them is to learn from their experiences and their, quite often, their failures. We've always managed to be able to get to like a consensus and a good place through, like, respectful dialogue and conversation and debate. And I try and just like always balance my conviction of what to do with just hearing out advice and really thinking through feedback and advice that I'm given from my board.

Munir Haque: [00:00:52] Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Boardroom 180 podcast. I'm your host Munir Haque, an executive coach and senior board strategist. I have partnered with Action Edge Executive Development to lead their governance and political acumen division. In each episode, we meet with governance leaders and step into their boardrooms where decisions shape the world around us. We'll hear the good, the bad and the ugly, but with a keen focus on where the gaps are, discover emerging best practices and real world tools to better evaluate, guide, and grow you and your boards.

Munir Haque: [00:01:22] Today, our guest will be Rachel Mielke. Rachel is a founder and CEO of Hillberg and Berk Jewelry, an iconic Canadian company that was founded at her kitchen table in 2007. She grew her one-woman brand to a multi-million dollar enterprise that now has stores across Western Canada and customers globally. Hillberg and Berk goes beyond fashion. Rachel is using her company as a tool for combating gender-specific issues women face through philanthropy campaigns and organizing her business around a social enterprise model. Hillberg and Berk has proudly supported hundreds of organizations across the globe that uplift women, and has contributed over $10 million in cash and products. She's been recognized numerous times, to name a couple of them, she has a Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal for 2012, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal for 2023, class of winning women for 2015, Top 40 under 40 2017, Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2016 and 2017. She has an honorary Doctor of Law and she is an honorary captain in the Canadian Royal Navy. She is the honorary Chair of the Women's Leading Philanthropy and sits on various boards and committees which support economic development. We're happy to have her with us today. Welcome, Rachel.

Rachel Mielke [00:02:40] Thanks. Great to be here.

Munir Haque: [00:02:41] Yeah. No, thanks for coming on. You know, I'm from Saskatchewan too, and Rachel's a bit of a kind of a local hero there, a homegrown hero. Everybody in Saskatchewan knows who Rachel is. And I think that's evidenced by, you know, the kind of the amount she's been able to accomplish over a very short time. So let's start a little bit, well I'll tell a little bit of story about how I kind of know you. I actually bought a used car from Rachel's husband. And Rachel's husband, and Rachel contested Rachel's husband's a great guy, and he still texts me every once in a while when he comes across a hack that's good for the car and stuff like that. But I do remember when I brought the car home and I opened the glove box, he'd actually put three jewelry boxes in there, and he had left some jewelry for each of my three children. So if you get a chance, buy a used car from Rachel. It was a pretty good experience.

Rachel Mielke: [00:03:39] That's funny.

Munir Haque: [00:03:41] So I don't know if you, you know, maybe we can start a little bit of your, kind of your start, your background. Admittedly, I got your intro from the Dress for Success website. That was your bio. Is there anything else that you want to bring to that, or?

Rachel Mielke: [00:03:55] Yeah. I mean, my story is starting this business sort of in a way that was really unknown. The industry was unknown to me. Corporate governance was something I had learned from a textbook in university, but I would say I had pretty limited knowledge on and over the course of the last almost 20 years that I've been growing this business, I've learned by making a lot of mistakes. But I think that's also the, like, richest knowledge that you can get is just really going through it and learning things. So yeah, I would say to anyone who's listening, you...