Voluneering
Showing up for your community isn’t something you do when it’s convenient. It’s something you do because you believe the place you live is worth investing in.
Volunteering has been a constant thread through my adult life, long before it was professionally useful, and long before I had any political ambitions. From coaching six-year-olds who couldn’t tie their own cleats, to chairing a youth sports organization, to working on a federal election campaign, the through-line has always been the same: I want to be useful to the people and places around me. This page is a full account of that work.
Lake Country Youth Soccer Association | Coach, Vice-Chairman & Chairman | 2010–2017
Nearly eight years with the Lake Country Youth Soccer Association represent the longest and most formative chapter of my volunteering history. What started as a simple decision to give back to the sport I loved became a significant commitment to an organization, a community, and the kids who came through it.
I began coaching in 2010 with the boys and girls under-6 program, the youngest players in the club, kids who were discovering the game for the very first time. Coaching that age group teaches you things no management book can. You learn patience. You learn how to break something complex down into its simplest possible form. You learn that encouragement lands differently than instruction, and that a child who feels safe will try things a child who feels judged never will. I coached the U6 program through 2012, and those early years shaped how I think about developing people at every level.
As the players I worked with got older, so did my coaching roles. I took over the Boys U14 team in 2013, the Boys U16 team in 2014 and 2015, and the Boys U18 team through to 2016, progressing through age groups that brought increasingly complex challenges around team dynamics, individual development, and competitive performance. Coaching teenagers is a different discipline entirely. The technical demands are higher, the emotional stakes are higher, and the window you have to reach someone is narrower. I found it genuinely rewarding work.
In 2013, I also took on the role of club-wide goalkeeping coach for the entire LCYSA, providing specialist training and development planning for goalkeepers across all 20 teams in the club. It was a role that required a different kind of thinking, not just coaching one team, but building a consistent development pathway for a position that is often undertrained at the youth level. I held that role through 2017.
On the organizational side, I served as Vice-Chairman of the LCYSA board in 2013 before stepping into the Chairman role when the acting Chair stepped down mid-term. I was elected Chairman in my own right for 2014 and 2015. Chairing a volunteer-run youth sports organization is more demanding than it looks from the outside; it involves governance, financial oversight, strategic planning, conflict resolution, and the constant work of keeping volunteers motivated and aligned around a shared purpose.
During my time on the board I led the implementation of a partnership with Whitecaps FC, the first of its kind in the Okanagan, which brought professional-standard coaching education and player development resources to our club and raised the quality of coaching across every team. I established mandatory training requirements for all LCYSA coaches, something the club hadn’t had before. The years I served as Chairman saw the highest enrollment numbers and the most playoff appearances in the club’s history to that point.
I stepped down in 2017 to focus on my growing professional responsibilities, but the years I spent with LCYSA remain some of the most meaningful of my life. I learned more about leadership, community, and what it actually takes to build something lasting from that experience than from almost anything else.
Westside Youth Soccer Association | Boys U16 Coach | March–October 2023
In 2023 I returned to youth coaching with the Westside Youth Soccer Association, taking on the Boys U16 team for the season. The team came in with no wins over the previous two seasons, a record that reflected not a lack of talent, but a lack of belief. The work that mattered most that year wasn’t tactical. It was about rebuilding confidence, establishing trust, and creating an environment where players felt capable of more than they’d shown.
By the end of the season, the team had made it to the semi-finals. That turnaround is something I’m genuinely proud of, not because of the result itself, but because of what it represented for those kids. A team that had stopped expecting to win started expecting to compete. That shift doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through consistent work, honest feedback, and a coaching approach that meets people where they are and helps them move forward from there.
Stephen Johnson Federal Election Campaign | West Kelowna–Peachland | 2024
In 2024 I volunteered on Stephen Johnson’s Independent federal election campaign in the West Kelowna–Peachland riding. It was a three-month commitment and one of the most practically educational experiences of my volunteering life.
My contribution was primarily digital and operational. I built the campaign website from scratch, designed and managed the advertising strategy across digital channels, and set up lead collection systems to help the campaign identify and stay connected with supporters. I also worked on donation generation, building the funnels and messaging that turned interested visitors into financial supporters of the campaign.
But I also knocked on doors. That part mattered to me. Sitting behind a screen building campaigns is one thing, standing at someone’s door, having a real conversation about what they care about and why this riding deserves a strong independent voice, is something else entirely. It gave me a ground-level understanding of how West Kelowna and Peachland residents think about their community, what frustrates them, and what they’re hopeful about.
Working on an independent campaign, without the infrastructure, brand recognition, or resources of a major party — taught me a great deal about doing more with less, about the importance of authentic messaging, and about what it actually takes to earn someone’s trust in a political context. It also deepened my belief that local voices and local leadership matter enormously in shaping the communities we live in.
It was the most direct expression of civic engagement in my volunteering history, and it won’t be the last.
