When Kristy O’Leary went to visit Vancouver, she often heard people describe the city as “thriving.” But in Halifax, where she lives and runs Scout & Burrow, an ethics-centric market expansion consulting group, she often hears Halifax and Nova Scotia described as “resilient.”

After noticing the different attitudes between the two coastal cities and talking to a friend heavily involved in Vancouver’s social justice scene, O’Leary came across THNK, a school of creative leadership. THNK created a six-month accelerator for people already heavily involved in their fields, but who want to develop their creative leadership.

O’Leary applied and will be one of the 35 students in the second Canadian THNK cohort.

After speaking with the THNK organizers, she has opened up a Vancouver office for Scout & Burrow.

However, O’Leary made it very clear that she doesn’t want to abandon the East Coast. She will be in Halifax when she isn’t participating in her THNK accelerator to run Scout & Burrow.

“This feels like a really good fit for me and Scout & Burrow because we’ve been working here in Nova Scotia, trying to create our own little centre for social innovation and do unusual things,” O’Leary said. “I want Nova Scotia to thrive, but in order to thrive, we have to be willing to break some rules and remake them, and step outside normal and forget what we’ve known. What we’ve known has got us in this situation; what we’ve known no longer serves us.”

The six-month THNK program is divided into four modules, each of which goes for seven to 10 days. Each module contains the core elements of THNK: Forum, which asks the cohort tough questions through games and simulations; Challenge, which gives teams within the cohort a real-life problem to solve; Quest, which includes feedback and conversations with the THNK practitioners; and Accelerator, which helps the students develop their businesses or projects.

Overall, it challenges its participants to think in new ways, often with unconventional missions. For example, the first task for O’Leary, who began THNK on Wednesday, will be to Vancouver’s Chinatown and find a girl with a red balloon.

Like the THNK developers, O’Leary sees social justice and creativity acting in a mutually symbiotic relationship with economic development. With Scout & Burrow, she tries to explain that to Nova Scotians every day and convince them that economic problems can be solved through empathy and community.

O’Leary said that she’s currently bootstrapping the Vancouver Scout & Burrow office. She hopes that through THNK and its network, she can gain interest from investors.

With Vancouver being the most sustainable city in the world, O’Leary said that she thinks there would be a lot of interest in an ethics-focused company like Scout &Burrow.

“To nourish ourselves and to nourish Scout &Burrow and to nourish our clients and Nova Scotia,” she said, “it makes sense for us to go coast-to-coast.”