ABOUT

Groundswell Project Services at a Glance

Private company founded in 2006 in Alberta and a division of the Groundswell Group Inc.
200 employees and consultants with offices in Calgary, Edmonton , Vancouver, and Seattle.
Deep expertise in Program/Project Delivery, Business Analysis and Organizational Change Management.
Services include expert consulting and depth of experience in establishing practices or centres of excellence in our domain areas.

History

As IT leaders in Western Canada, it was not uncommon for us to hire and leverage the Calgary and Vancouver IT contract community. Other times we were the independent project resources that were looking for our next opportunity. In both roles we were regularly dissatisfied with how the traditional recruiting companies treated our requests for resources.

Often times it felt as though our requests were not being heard and we were left to plow through stacks of unrelated and “fluffy” resumes. We asked ourselves, what value add is the recruiting agency providing if they are making us pick the best candidates out of a stack of resumes.

In 2006, the concept of Groundswell Project Services was created. As a team we understood the specific challenges our clients wanted to solve. With many years of experience in the IT market, we turned to our Connected Community to find the right person for our clients.

Today we are a thriving group dedicated to building on our strengths in client relations and candidate selection. We have grown carefully over the last 10 years by working with clients and consultants who value our business model. We take great pride in our extraordinary team, 100% of which have joined GPS through trusted referrals from our expansive Connected Community.

Leadership Team

Darren Sartison
Partner
President

Darren leads the business development and account management teams at Groundswell and is also responsible for our partner relations. He provides strategic direction focused on people, training and process, while acting as an advisor to the steering committee, project sponsors and business managers. Darren has been widely recognized for his excellence as a business leader, most recently as a finalist for the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Morgan Arndt
Partner
Chief Operations Officer

Morgan leads operations and his diverse business experience has been integral to Groundswell’s strategic direction and extraordinary growth. Prior to founding Groundswell, Morgan was a successful serial entrepreneur in the IT recruitment industry, founding Questus Recruitment and Conduit. Morgan has been widely recognized for his strength as a business leader, most recently by Calgary Magazine as a Leader of Tomorrow, and by Ernst & Young which recognized him, along with Darren, as a finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Scott Wilson
Principal Partner

Scott has 20 years of project management experience and brings a strong background in understanding various frameworks and models for delivery. Perhaps his greatest asset has always been his ability to bring clarity to challenging situations and his overall capabilities to deliver successfully. Scott has been active in a variety of leadership roles within Calgary and internationally and is extremely active in all areas of GPS strategy and operations.

Jack Taillon
Director,
Operations and Professional Services

Jack comes from a long history of IT project delivery. Jack started his professional career as a systems analyst and progressed through roles that included Business Analyst, Project Management, Program Manager, Sr. Manager, General Manager and Director. While Jack brings breadth and depth of experience in various business domains, his strength and focus has always been in delivery. Jack has played roles that varied from small projects where he was the top middle and bottom of the project team, to multi-year and multi-million dollar programs with complex delivery. Jack has also been a functional manager of teams of 40-plus; his unique blend of experience allows him to evaluate talent and opportunities to ensure the right people are considered for the right role.

Andrew Schuchardt

Senior Account Manager

Andrew is a staffing and recruiting professional who began recruiting for the Calgary IT Market in 2003. He has worked in both large and small agency environments supplying IT consultants to Calgary biggest and best and with both large and small companies building strong internal teams. Over the years has learned that the recruiting business is about matching the right person to the right company at the right time.

Craig Slack
Principal Partner and Director,
Operations and Professional Services (Vancouver Office)

Craig is a project management professional with over 22 years of experience in the IT industry. He got his start in IT systems administration, but very early in his career he changed focus to delivery roles in project, program and PMO management. Craig has managed a vast array of projects ranging from infrastructure projects to multi-million dollar software and hardware development programs. As well as managing projects, Craig has held positions including PMO Manager and Director of Product Development where he managed departments as large as 130 people spread across the globe, and portfolios of projects worth upwards of $92 million per year. Craig comes from a project delivery background and thoroughly understands what it takes to deliver on complex projects and build diverse teams. Craig’s professional experience combined with his strong network in the Vancouver IT market contribute to his consistent success in finding the right people for the right role.

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