Entrepreneur’s family’s race against time to create foundation

Article content

When her father, Paul Barber, sold his Mississauga, Ont.-based corporate performance management software company, Prophix, and was diagnosed with cancer, Thea Barber and her family fulfilled his dream of setting up a family foundation.

Thea Barber is the president of the Paul Barber Foundation, as well as a product designer, UX/UI designer and data visualist.

Thea, along with her brother, Adrian, and mother, Carol, draw on her father’s ability to pivot in times of uncertainty, a skill which served him well long before the word “pivot” was part of business vernacular.

Although her father died just a year after the foundation was established in 2021, Thea feels he was already proud of the work they had started.

Just a few years later, the Barbers have formed initiatives to help underprivileged and underrepresented Canadians, aiming to remove barriers for marginalized youth, decrease the gender pay gap, and empower artistic hopefuls to realize their full potential, such as through education and art therapy programs.

Here, Thea explains how prevention and education remain the key to avoiding “band-aid solutions” to some of the country’s most overlooked populations.

How did the Paul Barber Foundation come to be established in 2021?

“My Father, Paul Barber, was a successful business owner with a lifelong passion for philanthropy. For at least a decade he had been talking about his retirement dream of selling his company and using the proceeds to start a charitable foundation.

Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer the same month he sold his company [global investment firm Hg took a majority ownership stake]. As a family, we began planning the foundation as quickly as we could so he could see it come to fruition before his cancer progressed further.

My father was still with us to establish the foundation’s goals, and define our three pillars: elevating women, assisting youth, and support for the arts.

Unfortunately, he passed away in May, 2022, before we were really able to start making an impact, but we were lucky to have him with us long enough to establish the core goals of the foundation.”

How do you carry out your role as president of the Paul Barber Foundation?

“We are a small team, with my brother, Adrian, and I as the only employees. As a small organization I have to wear many hats: from long-term vision and planning, to reviewing reports and applications, and even maintaining the website.

A lot of it is about building relationships with charities, and getting to know the challenges they face. Neither of us had a background in philanthropy prior to starting the foundation, so we are learning a lot and constantly re-evaluating our roles and how we can work more effectively.”

As a family, how do you work together to stay true to the foundation’s values and mission?

“We are a small family, but a close family. It’s just my brother, my mother and I involved in the foundation, with our mother taking more of a passive advisory role. Luckily, my brother and I see eye to eye on our core mission, and the execution of it.

Being a new foundation, we are still learning a lot. As we delve deeper, we are constantly re-evaluating what is important to us and how to make the most impact within our pillars. We sometimes ask ourselves what our father would do if he were still with us.

One of the things that made my father a great businessman was his ability to pivot when necessary. We try to keep this same flexible mindset without straying from our core values of equality, impact, and early intervention. So I would say that our values stay the same, but we are constantly re-evaluating our mission. As a result, we have somewhat narrowed our focus over the last few years.”

Can you describe how your initiatives work toward enabling and empowering women?

“Gender inequality in Canada is a complex issue without a simple solution. There are many factors in play, such as gender-based violence, gender pay gap, and lack of representation in leadership roles.

The Paul Barber Foundation takes a multi-faceted approach that we will continue to expand in the coming years.

One of our core values includes trying to address problems early on and implementing preventative measures as opposed to band-aid solutions.

With this in mind, I am particularly proud of our current partnership with the Canadian Women’s Foundation and their Teen Healthy Relationships program, which educates teens in the signs of an unhealthy relationship to prevent it from progressing to a situation of domestic violence.

In 2024 we will be putting more of a focus on income inequality and underrepresentation in industries such as STEM. Our first project of this year will be a grant for programs that promote opportunities for girls, women, and gender diverse people in professional industries where they are underrepresented.”

Can you talk about your youth focus?

“With the state of the economy and wealth inequality becoming more exaggerated, the future can seem bleak for today’s youth. People like to think of Canada as a meritocracy, but the reality is that youth from marginalized backgrounds and low-income households may not have the same opportunities.

The majority of our grants have been devoted to youth programming, with an emphasis on finding the young Canadians who are most in need of support.”

As older donors to the arts may be slowing down, what are your goals with regards to the arts?

“One of the things we quickly realized about the arts is that we didn’t want to give grants to traditional arts programs like a theatre or a ballet company. Instead, we support programs that use arts as a vehicle to better the lives of the program’s participants.

For example, one of our grantees, The New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, is an afterschool music program for low-income youth that not only teaches them to play in a symphony, but has seen amazing results in improving grades and high-school graduation rates.

Hopefully, programs like this will create a new generation of arts patrons, while helping these bright children break the cycle of poverty.

Outside of the foundation, my mother is still passionate about donating to more traditional arts programs, such as the National Ballet of Canada. I suppose she is in that older demographic you mentioned.”

How do you and your family plan on involving the next generation in philanthropy?

“Currently, the next generation are between 2 and 9 years old, so they are still too young to get involved. However, it is something that is important to us. When they are a bit older, we have discussed bringing them along for site visits, and possibly creating a small fund within the foundation where the next generation can take the lead on selecting a grantee.”

What are some upcoming projects that you’re particularly excited for in 2024?

“We are working to have more open calls for applications this year – this will allow us to discover new charities that are outside our current network and learn about problems that may be more prevalent in other regions of Canada.”

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Please visit here to see information about our standards of journalistic excellence.