Scents Sensibility& Barb Stegemann is on a mission to make the world a better place—and beauty products are her weapon of choice

BY STEPHEN KIMBER

“THREE THOUSAND GOURDE,” the porter said. “For your check-in.” It was November 2016, and Barb Stegemann (a high-energy motivational speaker, author of The 7 Virtues of a Philosopher Queen and president and CEO of The 7 Virtues Beauty Inc., a Halifax-based fragrance company with a global social entrepreneurial mission) was standing at the American Airlines check-in counter at the airport in Port au Prince. She’d traveled to Haiti to meet with local essential oils suppliers, as well as to volunteer in the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Matthew, which had ripped through that incredibly poor, hard-luck country that was then still reeling—and still far from recovered—after a massive 2010 earthquake. It was that earthquake (which killed more than 250,000 Haitians, displaced 1.5 million more and damaged or destroyed close to 4,000 schools) that had brought Stegemann to Haiti in the first place. Having already made a name for herself by creating perfumes sourced from fair trade suppliers in in order to goose that war-ravaged country’s legal economic development, Stegemann was the only Canadian invited to join a Clinton Foundation post-earthquake recovery trade mission to Haiti in 2012. That mission led to the launch—appropriately on United Nations International Day of Peace—of Vetiver of Haiti, a perfume made from an essential oil Stegemann had purchased there. On this buying-volunteering trip, however, she’d encountered one of the realities often faced by those who want to bring social change to war- and-disaster plagued countries: endemic corruption. The day before she’d arrived, she’d been told a Norwegian relief vessel filled with supplies had been forced to turn away because local officials demanded “impossibly high bribes” the ship’s owners could not pay.

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And now, admittedly on a much smaller scale, Stegemann Ah, yes, the journalist part of Barb Stegemann. Which could herself was smacking up against the same dilemma. While in still lead who knows where. Haiti, she’d bought a large box of shea butter and natural oils In 1999, she graduated from the journalism school where I as a way to support the local women who’d produced it. At the teach and, while she did not spend much of her career in the airport on her way back to Halifax, she’d tipped the porter $15 traditional journalism trenches, she clearly learned a thing or USD to carry the box from the cab to the ticket counter. But two. “I learned to get on the phone, to make cold calls, interview, before he got there, he’d handed it over to another porter, who’d research, communicate.” ferried it up to the American Airlines counter and instructed She also learned the importance of stories, and how to tell Stegemann to wait at the end of a long line. Less than a minute them. She learned very well. later, Stegemann recalls, “he came back and brought me to the Barb Stegemann’s life, in fact, unfolds as a series of airline agent at the kiosk and told me she would check me in. I disconnected but interconnected narratives that, taken together, felt relieved.” create a remarkable hang-together story, one that is still Until, that is, she’d been checked in and realized the porter unfolding. was now insisting she also needed to pay another 3,000 Haitian Gourde (about $45 USD) to the agent for the speedy check- Barb Stegemann was born in 1969 in Pointe Claire, Quebec, in. Stegemann explained she’d already paid the other porter, a largely English-speaking Montreal suburb, at a time and in then said she had no more cash on her. Unabashed, the airline a place where being unilingual English had ceased to be an agent escorted Stegemann to a bank machine advantage. When she was eight, her parents outside the airport so she could withdraw moved Barb and her sister to her mother’s the money, which the agent then slipped into home province of . It didn’t her pocket before walking Stegemann back I was making real money go well. Her parents split up. “My mother through security. suffered from misdiagnosed mental health When Stegemann got back to , for the first“ time in my life. issues,” Stegemann says now, “and I think that she called American Airlines to complain. was the breaking point with Dad.” Officials apologized and refunded her money. I learned about economic As a result, Barb spent her formative But “that’s not the point,” Stegemann tells me development, and I learned teenaged years living with her mother and today. “I don’t care about the $45.” What she sister in a trailer near Antigonish. Even then, does care about is the casual corruption she from risk-takers. she says, her mother “wasn’t present. The encountered, the kind that discourages those neighbours fed us.” In school, she was bullied. who want to help. “Perhaps corruption will end,” she muses, Her 11-month-older sister, Marjorie (now the program “when North American airlines and every company working in manager at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute) Haiti refuse to participate in bribes.” helped “break the cycle” by heading off to Dalhousie University It can be done, she says. Consider Rwanda, the genocide- after high school. “I used to visit her,” Stegemann says, “and I blighted country where Stegemann also sources essential oils remember, on one of my visits, seeing this place on the campus. for perfumes. “When I visited Rwanda, the fastest growing and ‘What is that?’ It was [the University of] King’s [College]. I safest country in Africa, they had a billboard, interestingly just knew right away I had to go there.” before the airport that said, ‘If you see corruption, you are safe. During her first week of her first degree on King’s postage- Please report it.’” stamp-corner of the much larger Dalhousie campus in September As we talk, it is clear Barb Stegemann is already “ramping 1987, she met the man who would change her life. Trevor up” her rant on the issue of corruption. “It’s my new obsession,” Greene was a fourth-year journalism student: tall, blonde, she jokes. “That’s the journalist part of me.” athletic, popular, smart, with a passionate interest in the world

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around him. By contrast, Barb thought of herself as the poor, tells me now. “I leaned over to the girl beside me and said, ‘Uh- under-educated kid from the country. For reasons that don’t oh. I already have a kid and a full-time job.’” She managed to make sense and probably don’t matter, they almost instantly manage jobs, a kid and journalism—and do it all quite nicely. became soul mates. Just as she now found a way to navigate the new reality of Their relationship was never romantic (“we were more her second pregnancy. “My boyfriend at the time said, ‘the party like brother and sister”) but it was as intense as any romantic has to continue.’ I told him it didn’t.” Instead, in the late fall of relationship. She and “Bubba,” as he was known around campus, 1999, she and her son Victor moved to the west coast where her rowed together on the university’s rowing team. Greene, who’d ex-husband lived, and she gave birth to her daughter Ella there. already volunteered with Ethiopia Airlift and World University “It was the fairy tale divorce,” she laughs. “My ex lived down Service of Canada, introduced her to David Wilson. Wilson in the hall,” and they co-parented. “It worked for a while.” Long turn introduced her to Peter Dalglish, a Dalhousie law grad who enough. specialized in international humanitarian causes (he and Wilson After a brief, unhappy stint working for a syndicated TV show, would later co-found Street Kids International). She began to however, Stegemann found herself applying for a call centre job imagine a larger world beyond that tiny campus. Even after just to make ends meet. While she waited for her telephone job Greene graduated and went off to Japan at the end of her first interview (“they kept me waiting for 45 minutes”), she randomly year, they stayed in close touch and she picked up on his interest Googled “self-employment” and up popped information on an in the world. entrepreneurial education program at nearby Douglas College, After her own graduation three years later, which was designed to help people receiving Stegemann knew only what she didn’t want to employment insurance benefits—people like do: “sit in a cubicle, work in some nine-to-five her—create their own businesses. She applied… job.” She toyed with the idea of social work, Perhaps corruption will and the rest is the next chapter. but a volunteer stint at a local youth facility “By the time I graduated, I was doing (“one of my duties was to check behind the end when“ North American marketing for the college.” shower curtain to see if anyone had slit their airlines and every company In June 2000, she launched Acclimatize wrists”) quickly convinced her “that wasn’t Communications Corp., a boutique PR firm, me. I wasn’t strong enough to handle that kind working in Haiti refuse to and spent the next seven years “making real of work.” participate in bribes. money for the first time in my life. I learned So she became an airline flight attendant. about economic development, and I learned A flight attendant? “I poured coffee on from risk-takers.” airplanes,” she jokes, but is quick to add the job became her own She also reconnected with her university best friend. Trevor kind of business degree. “When I took those [career aptitude] Greene had returned to Canada in the mid-1990s and was now tests as a kid, it always came back ‘business’ as my career path.” living on the west coast too. Greene and Stegemann became There were all sorts of businessmen on planes, of course. “It was co-presidents of the King’s B.C. alumni association. “I also met like a flying boardroom,” she recalls. “I’d pick their brains.” At Debbie (LePore), Trevor’s girlfriend,” she says, adding, “his first night, she’d take copies of business and current events magazines girlfriend I approved of.” (Greene and LePore, who have a child from the plane’s seat pockets and read them in her hotel room. together, married in 2010.) Which led her to… journalism? “I always wanted to be a By the time he and Stegemann reunited, Greene had already journalist,” she insists. After she graduated with her Bachelor turned his experiences in Japan into his first book, Bridge of of Journalism degree, she began working as a documentary Tears: the Hidden Homeless of Japan, and become one of the filmmaker (“I was making $6,000 a month”) but then, very first journalists to connect the dots in the deaths of ’s quickly, “I fell in love and got pregnant.” sex trade workers in his 2001 book, Bad Date: The Lost Girls She already had a child from a previous relationship. Oh, yes, of Vancouver’s Low Track. In between—shades of the eclectic- right. We forgot to mention that. She’d been a single mother yet-always-focused Stegemann—Greene had also done a brief when she took the one-year journalism program. “I remember where-did-that-come-from stint in the Canadian navy before you standing up at the front of the class telling everyone not to transferring to the army reserve, where he was now an officer in even think of taking on a part-time job during the program,” she a reserve infantry unit.

In Rwanda, The 7 Virtues works with supplier Nicholas Hitimana who has mobilized co-operatives to empower farmers to rebuild their communities.

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In 2006, at the long-past typical- rescue them. After being briefly assessed soldiering-age of 41, Greene volunteered at the Canadian-led multinational field for duty in Afghanistan as what is known hospital at Kandahar air base, Greene as a civilian-military cooperation officer. was immediately airlifted to a U.S. Essentially, his military job was to medical facility in Landstuhl, , connect with Afghan civilians in the war and placed in a medically induced coma. zone and work to improve their lives. “I No one knew whether he would live or was there when he signed the papers,” die, or, if he lived, whether Trevor would Stegemann says now. “I wanted to join still be Trevor. too,” but a hearing impairment kept her Within hours, Stegemann had swung from enlisting. into action—it is who she is—first “You’ll find your own way to be part working with MacIntyre to help protect of the mission,” Greene told her. Debbie from the hordes of reporters Little did he—or she—know. who wanted to talk to the family, and then rallying Greene’s friends for “A “Babs, are you OK?” The voice at Positive Thoughts Gathering For Captain the other end of the phone belonged to Trevor Greene” on Vancouver’s Jericho Clare MacIntyre, a journalist and another Beach just four days after the attack. King’s journalism grad who was friends “Please dress warmly, bring an umbrella, with both Greene and Stegemann. It a covered candle, a flashlight and your was March 4, 2006, and she was calling positive thoughts,” she wrote. about news reports she’d just read about After that, Stegemann put her own a Canadian soldier named Trevor Greene professional life on hold to focus on who was “in critical but stable condition Greene’s recovery and rehabilitation. after being attacked by a man wielding She refused to accept the possibility he an axe during a meeting with tribal elders might not survive to rehabilitate, or that [in Afghanistan] today.” he might not find his way back to the Trevor of her memories. There were many difficult days. One day in the middle of his long and painful rehabilitation, Stegemann remembers watching Greene standing, propped up on a wooden sled, his head lolling forward. She’d bought along the soundtrack to The Mission, a movie from their college days. She played the uplifting Ennio Morricone theme song Your mission is not in vain. “we’d both loved,” she says now, “and I said, ‘Come on, Bubba! Come on!’ I will take on that mission. He lifted up his head, made this face “ and then he roared like a lion —so loud Barb Stegemann was not OK. She’d everyone around stopped what they were also seen the reports on her computer doing and just stared.” (“we didn’t have TV”) but she’d Stegemann remembers telling her best assumed/hoped/prayed/pretended friend, “Your mission is not in vain. I will beyond all logical pretending that it take on that mission.” couldn’t be her best friend and soul mate Greene’s mission, as Stegemann Trevor. It was. interpreted it, was to bring peace to Greene had traveled with a group of Afghanistan. Which meant, in part, Canadian soldiers to the Afghan village empowering Afghan women, who’d of Shinkay that day to meet with elders been denied even a basic education by and discuss how they could get clean the Taliban, so they could take their water and improve local health care. rightful place in their country’s society There’d been greetings, there’d been tea. and economy. Which meant—you need Greene had removed his helmet and was to follow the dots carefully because sitting on the ground taking notes when they will connect—writing a book a 16-year-old boy came up behind him, about women’s empowerment in order raised a home-made axe, brought it down to “empower women (and men) to live hard on Greene’s head, pulled back, raised with the stoic wisdom taught through the the axe again. Within seconds, stunned centuries…” That stoic wisdom came Canadian soldiers responded, killing from the “old books” taught in the first- the boy and then engaging in a firefight year ‘Great Books’ Foundation Year with local fighters while others tended to Programme that Stegemann and Greene Greene and waited for the helicopter to had taken at King’s. Some of those

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books, she admits with a laugh today, “I Although the fragrance itself is was reading for the first time. I realized important to her perfumes’ commercial the wisdom in those old stories, and I success, of course, so too is the reality— took refuge in all that wisdom as I wrote in these environmentally, socially every day from 4–7 a.m..” She self- conscious times—that her vegan, natural published the book, Seven Virtues of a oil products contain no cancer-connected Philosopher Queen, which she dedicated phthalate, parabens or sulfates, and are to her friend. It’s now in its sixth printing. not tested on animals. “Women tell me While promoting that book, she all the time, ‘I haven’t been able to wear discovered a much more direct—and a fragrance for years and now I can wear practical—way to take on Greene’s yours,’” Stegemann tells interviewers. mission. She happened to hear a National “Because it’s natural, people are Public Radio interview with an Afghan discovering fragrances again.” man named Abdullah Arsala. He’d been But Stegemann herself is quick struggling to convince Afghan farmers to acknowledge the most important to replace their illegal but profitable ingredient in her formula for success opium poppy crops (which they grew at as an independent entrepreneur in the insistence of the Taliban, who used a $29-billion, marketing-driven-and- the proceeds from sales to buy weapons, controlled industry is the story of how it and then threatened the farmers and their all came to be. families with reprisals if the harvest failed to meet their expectations) with “Hi, I’m Barb Stegemann. I’m from legal orange blossoms. As difficult as Halifax, Nova Scotia. My company is that had been, Arsala told the interviewer, The 7 Virtues and I’m here to ask for he now faced an even greater obstacle $75,000 for 15 per cent of my company.” trying to create an international market Stegemann’s company was officially for the essential oils of the orange barely two months old in May 2010 when blossom crop. she made her big ask of the notoriously Within the week, Stegemann had cranky investors on CBC-TV’s Dragon’s traveled to Ottawa, plunked herself Den, “where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch down in the offices of the Canadian their business concepts and products to a International Development Agency and panel of Canadian business moguls who demanded they help her track Arsala have the cash and the know-how to make down. They did. Squeezing the last it happen.” $2,000 out of her Visa card limit, she Stegemann had spent months crafting, bought up Arsala’s remaining stock of honing and refining her personal story organic oil. (“humble roots… don’t believe in With the help of a Toronto perfumer, charity… my best friend was severely she then created her first fragrance— injured… we all want to know what we Afghanistan Orange Blossom—and can do to make a difference… I figured launched 7 Virtues Beauty Inc. Its mission out one way… every litre impacts statement: “Make Perfume, Not War.” 400 people in the community…”) Within two months, she’d sold out her and seamlessly melding it with her initial run of 1,000 bottles from her garage. entrepreneurial pitch (“perfumes have Today, 7 Virtues’ $70-plus-a-bottle one of the highest profit margins… fragrance line also includes Noble Rose $30,000 in sales in first two months… of Afghanistan, Vetiver of Haiti, Middle break-even in four weeks… need to East Peace, Patchouli of Rwanda and boost production and supply department Lisa Ray Jasmine of India, all of them stores… like to make money… believe “sourced to economically support our it can be both a successful business and suppliers in countries experiencing war have a social purpose…”). or strife… to encourage a cavalry of By the time it was over, there were businesses to come and do trade with tears but also enthusiasm. Dragon Brett nations rebuilding.” Wilson immediately agreed to pony up the $75,000 Stegemann was seeking— Barb Stegemann’s company, The 7 Virtues making her the first woman in Atlantic Inc., seeks to promote global peace and Canada to land a Dragon’s Den deal. prosperity by doing business with nations It was a serendipitous bonus that rebuilding after war or strike. They buy essen- tial oils distilled from orange blossoms and Stegemann’s segment, including plenty of rose petals from Afghanistan (shown top and couldn’t-be-bought product placement, bottom), vetiver from Haiti, sweetie grapefruit aired on February 9, 2011—just five from Israel, lime and basil from Iran, patchouli days before Valentine’s Day. from Rwanda (middle photo) and jasmine from India—paying up to $12,000 USD per Award followed accolade. In 2011 litre for the essential oils. (the same year Hudson’s Bay agreed

52 | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 ATLANTICBUSINESSMAGAZINE.COM | 53 The 7 Virtues Inc. is helping to rebuild Rwanda after the Genocide: farmers earn three times the income of the next crop of coffee with the patchouli harvest. Each farmer is also given a cow for milk and cheese, and each new heifer is given to their neighour so as to continue empowering the community.

to sell her perfumes in its 90 Canadian rest. Its ultimate goal was even bigger There were practical outcomes too. retail stores), Stegemann was nominated than that: to create an empowerment After six months of working with as Chatelaine’s Woman of the Year network of next-generation women Sephora’s top buyers, Stegemann will in the entrepreneur category, won the beauty entrepreneurs. launch “a brand new contemporary Women’s Innovator of the Year award Stegemann applied, but despite—or fragrance collection exclusive to from the U.S. State Department at a perhaps because of—her success to date, Sephora” and aimed at millennials in conference hosted by then-Secretary of she wasn’t initially accepted. In a world the retailer’s 60 stores across Canada State Hillary Clinton, was nominated increasingly geared to millennials, she and online in February. While “made for a Manning Innovation Award for was told she would need to “‘let go of with the same essential oils from nations the company’s philanthropic business the old.’ They had to see that I was not rebuilding,” she says the new line will model and even found herself appointed attached to my own ideas.” boast “completely new scents, packaging honorary colonel of 14 Wing at CFB and look.” Greenwood. And the news only gets better. After The next year, she was included in Accelerates Demo Day in October when Profit Magazine’slist of Top 30 Fabulous Sephora’s graduates got to present their Canadian Entrepreneurs and nominated Hi, I’m Barb Stegemann. I’m companies “to industry experts, potential as Ernst and Young’s 2012 Entrepreneur from Halifax, Nova Scotia. My venture partners, and senior leaders of the Year. “ within Sephora,” Sephora Europe reached Oh yes, and in 2016, award-winning company is The 7 Virtues and out to talk to her about the possibility of director Michael Melski’s Perfume I’m here to ask for $75,000 for adding her line there. “We’re hoping to Wars—an inspirational documentary film meet in Paris,” Stegemann says, adding about how the abiding best-friendship 15 per cent of my company. she’s busy boning up on her French with between Greene and Stegemann led to the Babble online lessons. “If we get that 7 Virtues social enterprise phenomena— As usual, Stegemann did not give up or meeting, who knows…?” had its international debut. go away. She not only sold them on herself Who knows indeed? Not bad for a bullied kid who and her do-good/do-well ambitions but “I’d love to create a whole roster of scrambled her way out of an Antigonish also on her openness to new ways of natural beauty products,” she says of trailer. working. She was eventually chosen as her company’s future. “Vegan lipstick, And Barb Stegemann is still writing one of just 10 women from around the face products, aroma therapy oils to her story. world for Sephora Accelerates’ Class complement the perfumes.” And then, of 2017. The six-month experience— of course, there are her larger dreams. Barb was back in Haiti when she hanging out at the campuses of Google Remember corruption? Someday, she first learned that Sephora, the world’s and Facebook, learning the advanced ins admits, she might want to run for office. largest prestige beauty retailer (with and outs of YouTube and Instagram from She already has a slogan: Business, jobs, 2,300 outlets around the world) had world-class experts, getting mentored by dignity… launched a new program called Sephora those who’ve already been-there-done- And she has a story to tell. Accelerates to teach and mentor female that in the beauty business—was mind- beauty-business entrepreneurs, using exploding. “I feel like someone had

the “well-established model of a tech splashed a cold bucket of water on me,” FEEDBACK accelerator,” in the fine but mysterious she told one interviewer at the time. “I * [email protected] new-old arts of research, analytics, focus feel recharged, energized and not alone a @AtlanticBus; @skimber; groups, fundraising, marketing and the anymore.” @BarbStegemann; #PerfumeNotWar

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