arbitrators

In this episode, I interview Maddy Hearne and McKenzie Day, the Co-founders of First Class Conferencing Facilitation, a tech startup based in Toronto, Canada. It’s a full-service event management company for virtual events and meetings. The company helps clients and companies with planning, associating concepts, and facilitating tech logistics to make the meetings smooth as possible.

First Class Facilitation was born during the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. Maddy and McKenzie found an opportunity in the pandemic wherein most of the activities were transitioning to online platforms. With their skills, they started getting clients through referrals until they work full-time and are now a growing company. They got $350,000 in sales just a few months in 2020 and by 2021, the current sales are about $470,000 and with 12-15 FTEs.

Maddy and McKenzie say that what they love the most in growing a small business is that they’re able to continually innovate their services and they are always motivated to offer new services for their clients. They advised startups to be innovative with their service and products and always leave their clients with a good experience. 

This Cast Covers:

 

• A full-service event management company for virtual and hybrid events and meetings.
• Organizing online/virtual meetings from start to finish, associating concepts and customs.
• Being tech support for the actual event, then facilitating tech logistics and creating and implementing content and video creation.
• Offering expert-level services to clients or companies during this transition to an online platform.
• Making it as smooth as possible for clients so they are able to enjoy the transition and focus their attention on the meeting itself.
• Started during the hit of the pandemic wherein they saw an opportunity to manifest their skills in technology.
• Got $350,000 in sales just a few months in 2020 and by 2021, the current sales are about $470,000.
• The importance of caring for mental health for every business owner for them to produce a healthy business.
• How can failures drive to relearn, reroute, and reevaluate in order to ace every opportunity especially in business.
• How starting a business can boost confidence for individuals who started with little of it.

 

 

 

Additional Resources:

• First Class Facilitation
• Good To Great By Jim Collins
• The Design of Everyday Things By Don Norman
• Ask By Ryan Levesque

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Quotes: 

“Success to me is having happy workers, happy clients, and a profitable business.” —Maddy Hearne

“Leave your clients with a good experience.” —McKenzie Day

“Being healthy is the best thing you can do for your own sanity, running a business.” —McKenzie Day

“Go with welcoming your failures, that level of transparency helps you grow as a person and as a business owner.” —McKenzie Day

“You need to keep innovating your services, you need to keep delivering, refining, and offering new things, so your clients keep coming back.” —Maddy Hearne

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Music from https://filmmusic.io “Cold Funk” by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com. License: CC by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Arbitrators have many powers – express, implied, and those inherent in the very process of arbitration. Disputes that involve corruption put into question the breadth of those powers.

Arbitrators have many powers – express, implied, and those inherent in the very process of arbitration. Disputes that involve corruption put into question the breadth of those powers. The first tribunals confronted by cases involving corrupt acts were concerned about their taint bringing into disrepute the process of arbitration. A whiff of scandal thus served as a basis for dismissal. Tribunals in later cases have shown a more nuanced approach but often with apprehension about potential suggestions that arbitration could be viewed as helping one party to the corruption profit from, or profit notwithstanding, his bad behaviour. Several recent investment arbitration cases have thrown the problem into sharp relief. Dismissals have rested on several grounds. One approach has been to rely on the language of the investment treaty in question to support dismissal for lack of jurisdiction because a corruptly obtained investment is usually not lawful and thus cannot satisfy treaty requirements that investments be made “in accordance with host state laws.” Another grounding for dismissal of the claim has been the investor’s lack of “clean hands.” Another reason given has been the strong international public policy against corruption as exemplified by the multiple international conventions fighting it and the general international consensus about its insidiously damaging nature. I suggest that none of these bases is a valid ground for depriving a tribunal of the power to hear a case that otherwise falls within its purview. Rather, arbitral tribunals have the inherent authority to ensure that the quasi-adjudicatory process of arbitration is not subverted by allegations of corruption that might or might not prove spurious, but whose early dismissal will tend to hide the problem and potentially exacerbate it. Indeed, suggesting that the international public policy against corruption requires dismissal of a case defies logic, and application of the law of state responsibility requires holding state acts accountable for the acts attributable to the state, which would often (though not always) be the case. Andrea K. Bjorklund is a Full Professor and the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law at McGill University Faculty of Law. For Hilary Term 2018 she is a Plumer Fellow at St. Anne’s College and a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. In 2017 she was named one of McGill’s Norton Rose Scholars in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law. In addition to serving as an adviser to the American Law Institute’s project on restating the U.S. law of international commercial arbitration, she is a member of the Advisory Board of the Investment Treaty Forum of the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. She is on the panel of arbitrators of the AAA’s International Centre for Dispute Resolution and on the roster of NAFTA Chapter 19 arbitrators. Professor Bjorklund has a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.A. in French Studies from New York University, and a B.A. (with High Honors) in History and French from the University of Nebraska.