Flourishing Business Community Speakers Series: Stories from the Field #35
An Entrepreneur’s Lessons Learned on the Journey from Profit Making to Enabling Flourishing with Althea Branton
| Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026 |
| Time: 15h00 UTC – 08h00 PST, 11h00 EDT, 16h00 BST, 17h00 CET, 00h00 + 1 day JST. To convert UTC to your timezone, click here |
| Duration: 1 hour |
| Registration: Required via Eventbrite at bit.ly/SFF35-Register |
For our thirty-fifth monthly Flourishing Business Community Speaker Series entitled “Stories From the Field”, we are delighted to welcome Althea Branton, the founding author of Delnic Media, based in Toronto, Canada.
The Flourishing Enterprise Co-lab is grateful for the support of Social Innovation at Georgian College, Ontario, Canada to put on our speaker series.
Althea Branton (she/her/elle) writes about work based on her extensive career in people management and her experience in entrepreneurship. While Althea questions why people behave the way they do at work, why workplaces accept what the rest of society would not and whether work can actually be better, she creates stories that turn words into art. In doing so, she invites all of us into honest conversations about work, people and all the tea in between.
Delnic Media is an independent publishing company that amplifies diverse voices and stories. Delnic Media provides a platform for authors of the global majority to share their ideas and champion projects that inspire change and have a lasting impact on the world. Under Delnic’s Black Womaning in Corporate™ imprint, Althea is now writing a novel entitled “Claire Got Next”.
Before deciding to become a novelist, Althea had an idea for an innovative zero-waste skincare line called Dynastic Skincare. As she explored this idea further, she discovered the Flourishing Business Canvas and found it to be deeply aligned with her values that shaped how she wanted to ultimately run her business.
To help her use the Canvas, Althea participated in the first cohort of the Co-Lab’s Flourishing Business Model Design course in September 2025 designed and run by leading community member Flourishing Startups (Cohort 3 starts on September 18, and Cohort 4 will start in Jan 2027 – click here to be informed when registration opens).
The work she began during the course enabled her to design and test the business model for her new company. Her goal was to centre midlife women of the global majority seeking skin care in ways that respected their current life status and needs. The Canvas helped Althea clarify how her line could honour consumers, the planet and her own self whilst contributing to the Canadian circular economy.
However, despite the evidence that she gathered to prove the business model was socially, environmentally and financially viable, Althea was unable to secure the necessary resources needed to make Dynastic a reality. This is an important part of her story from which the community can learn.
In her presentation, Althea will share:
- How the concept of Flourishing Business is best suited to people who want to build entities outside of kyriarchy
- How current profit-centering entrepreneurship discourages creativity and rewards extraction
- Why the Flourishing Business Canvas is actually a blueprint for life and not just commercial ventures
- Her experience working with peers in the Co-lab’s Flourishing Business Model Design course
- How she creates powerful stories from business models design with the Flourishing Business Canvas
- Common reactions when entrepreneurs first encounter the canvas – both the benefits and the challenges
- Her hopes for the future of the canvas, including broader use among institutions and practitioners
- What she hopes to contribute to this community and the benefits she hopes to gain from participating
At the end of her talk, Althea will take questions from members of the community.
After the event, a video of the talk plus slides will be shared in the “Speaker Series” space of the Flourishing Business Community. Please join other Flourishing Business leaders and become a full member to access.