What’s the story behind OWL?

Think of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Vancouver, an authentic south-Indian dish called dosa, and ideas being scribbled on a napkin … yes, it is the typical start-up story … except, in this case it is not a business venture that was started but one that aspired to bring “town and gown” (practice and research) together.

In October 2018, Elango (Prof. A.R. Elangovan from the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business) was visiting Vancouver and had scheduled a lunch meeting with Anirban (Anirban Kar, post-doc at Simon Fraser University) at one of the dosa restaurants in the south Fraser area. (A dosa is a rice-lentil crepe with a curried onion-potato stuffing served with coconut chutney and a tangy tomato-lentil-tamarind sauce. Native to the city where he was born (Madras/Chennai), it was one of Elango’s favourite dishes and he had invited Anirban to join him).

The plan was to talk about future research ideas. The timing was perfect since Anirban had just defended his doctoral dissertation successfully (done under Elango’s supervision) and both of them were keen on mapping out a research agenda for the future.

On the ferry ride over from Victoria to Vancouver, Elango had two realizations: (a) they would need to combine the different research projects they had underway on a range of topics (e.g., meaning in/at work, callings, wisdom, authenticity.) under one umbrella to lend cohesion to their efforts, and (b) they would need an overarching purpose to guide their studies and to allow a weaving-together of the different results and outcomes. As he shared these thoughts with Anirban, the idea of creating a research group emerged.

Elango noted that the end objective of all this research could be to help anyone and everyone who works for a living to have a work life imbued with a sense of meaning and well-being … in other words, an optimal work life. It was an objective that was deeply meaningful to both Elango and Anirban - they had been troubled over the years by the extent to which people seemed to “churn and burn” in their work lives and often had to put up with some combination of endless scrambling and overwork, dull monotony in roles and tasks, unpleasant work contexts, ineffective routines, tiring politics, dysfunctional organizational cultures, and mind-numbing drudgery at work. Having an optimal work life seemed to be the exception, not the norm. And the OWL Project was born!

The idea sat on the back burner for the next 18 months as Elango dealt with some health issues (which only served to underscore the need for the OWL Project!). In 2020, Andrea Hayes - one of Elango’s former MBA students and Managing Partner at Change Maker Academy - offered to help Elango and her stepping in was instrumental in moving the idea forward. Under Andrea’s guidance and with her support, Elango purchased the domain name for OWL ('“theowlproject.ca”) and zoomed in on SquareSpace as the platform to design and host the website. Elango and Andrea then worked together to develop the first version of the website with Andrea handling the technical aspects and offering her expert advice on web design while Elango focused on the content.

They were soon joined by five others who intuitively grasped the significance of the OWL Project and were keen on contributing to its mission - Dr. Anirban Kar, Sanaz Matin Koosha (Elango’s current doctoral student at the University of Victoria), Prof. Jia Lin Xie (Elango’s long time collaborator from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management) Michael Espinosa (Executive Director and Head Coach at The Ark Fitness in Florida), and Tim Draper (a senior executive from TELUS who had just retired). Michael’s aesthetic sensibilities and expertise in graphics and web design (and his openness to receiving feedback and thoughtfully applying it) complemented Andrea’s unique skills beautifully and supercharged the initiative. Together, this team of seven - the CORE Team - championed and moved forward the development of the OWL website with weekly meetings during the spring and summer of 2021. With a positive can-do attitude (partly fuelled by rich coffee coursing through his veins) and an addiction to excellence, Michael patiently experimented with a diverse range of imagery and colour palettes before creating the final OWL logo that marked the public emergence of the project. The OWL website was officially launched at the end of August 2021 - it reflects the collective insights, synergistic contributions, and shared aspirations of the OWL Core Team.