April Glavine is a bright, dynamic, enthusiastic young woman—exactly the type employers across the region would fall all over themselves to attract to their teams. She has sales skills, people skills, vision, compassion, and entrepreneurial spirit in spades. What she also has is a driving desire to be her own boss and to make a difference.

 

In 2004, armed with a business degree from Saint Mary’s University, Glavine, now 26, started Lean Machine Healthy Vending Service, a vending-machine company with a conscience. Not only did she set out to replace junk-food machines across Nova Scotia with healthy-snack machines, but she also wanted to share her drive with other young people who might be considering a career as an entrepreneur. Her idea was that by fundraising and offering an entrepreneurship opportunity in the schools, while at the same time encouraging students to choose healthy snacks, she could play an important part in helping create healthy and sustainable communities.

 

“The healthy vending machines are in five schools across Nova Scotia, mainlyin the HRM, with a few in the Annapolis Valley,” says Glavine. “P.E.I. has also expressed a strong interest.” Lean Machine Healthy Vending Service is franchised, and Glavine hopes the machines will one day be in schools and offices right across Canada.

 

Countless reports from provincial Departments of Health show that childhood obesity is a growing problem, both in our region and across the country. The social implications of continuing to encourage a sedentary lifestyle and poor food choices are huge. In an effort to combat and reverse this trend, the Nova Scotia Department of Education recently passed a new provincial school food-and-nutrition policy that set standards for food and beverages served and sold in schools. This will include the elimination of junk-food vending machines and the increase in the availability of nutritional food. Glavine keeps her vending machine stocked with items such as almonds, raisins, fruit, natural fruit juices, and soy beverages.

 

Many schools have junk-food vending machines and rely on the income generated through their sales to support extracurricular activities and to fill in other revenue gaps. It makes sense, then, that healthy eating should become part of a holistic school approach. From the traditional vending company’s perspective, refitting machines for the school market is not cost effective for the size of the market. Thus, an opportunity is born.

 

In fact, Glavine is ahead of the curve. By the time Nova Scotia’s Department of Health implemented a healthy-eating policy in February 2006, she was already well into establishing her business, and the policy, advocating exactly the service she was selling, helped tip her plans toward growth and expansion. Her business has grown 300% in six months, from five machines in schools to 15. As well, you can find Lean Machines in some gyms and corporate offices, including the Halifax branches of the Nova Scotia Workers’ Compensation Board, The Prince George Hotel, and Grant Thornton. “I’m the only person in Canada who has branded healthy vending,” says Glavine .

 

What I find particularly interesting about Glavine’s story is not only how, like so many successful entrepreneurs, she has been able to turn her passion into her living, but also that so early in her career, she assumed that that is exactly what she could do. And I was just as impressed that she never considered spending her days building something that wasn’t socially worthwhile. 

 

I started thinking about how “making a difference” is becoming such a driving force in the choices that the new generation of entrepreneurs is making—not only because there are tremendous business opportunities but also because they wouldn’t have it any other way. Rebecca Ryan, the author of the soon-to-be-released book Live First, Work Second: Getting Inside the Heads of the Next Generation, believes that that mindset applies not only to entrepreneurs but also to this entire generation of workers. As established entrepreneurs or employers faced with labour shortages and out-migration, how do we encourage, enable, retain, and attract talent such as Glavine? The answer: make sure the work they do matters.

 

The really good news here is that all kinds of young fearless entrepreneurs and leaders are taking a look around, seeing ways to do things better, making what they do matter, and, as a result, having a positive social impact on the world. Let’s hope for all of our sakes that they keep it up.