Born from Community
From: Shane Lapp (Co-Visionary)
For as long as I can remember I’ve had an internal drive to understand how things worked. I spent a decade in renewable energy, learning systems from first principles – how energy flows, where it’s lost, what makes a system resilient. Then I moved into high-growth venture capital, where I learned a great deal, but “sustainability” too often meant maximizing shareholder returns. So I went back to school to study community – only to find classrooms full of activists fighting “the system”, with little appetite for building real-world alternatives.
I kept looking for the place where rigorous systems thinking, entrepreneurial capacity, and genuine community benefit converged. I couldn’t find it — so we started building it.
In the fall of 2020, as the world faced massive disruption, we posed the question: How might we build a resilient community economy that can scale to meet the needs of all its members?
To find out, we convened a Community Design Lab at the Okanagan coLab — an ambitious experiment in civic innovation. Over six weeks, diverse leaders, entrepreneurs, and change-makers gathered in circle to reimagine our economic future. We stripped away inherited assumptions, worked from first principles, and drew on leading-edge community economic thinking. What emerged was the initial blueprint for the Community Enterprise Framework.
Following this groundwork, we incorporated as a Federal Not-For-Profit Corporation with the purpose of generating community wealth and wellbeing. The initial blueprint attracted the right people and resources – evolving, deepening – slowly at first, and then it began to build momentum.
New systems always start with small seeds, visible attractors, containing the potential to spawn entirely new systems. Those visible attractors pull investors, collaborators, government, innovators and entrepreneurs to explore the space they have opened up. – ‘Investing in Systems Innovation’ 2022
That’s exactly what Circularity.One is becoming – and the Okanagan is just the beginning.
Meet the team
COMMUNITY ENTERPRISE PARTNER
Shane Lapp, P.Eng., M.A.
Shane is a mechanical engineer with over a decade at the forefront of green buildings and renewable energy systems. He combines leadership experience in high-growth organizations with the analytical rigor to build complex financial proforma’s. Uniquely, Shane also holds a Masters in Community Depth Psychology, examining how economic and social structures impact human potential. As an applied systems thinker, he integrates these diverse perspectives to co-design resilient business and community ecosystems.
DIRECTOR
Michelle Rogers, CPA, CMA
Michelle is a financial strategist and governance leader dedicated to bridging the gap between capital and community impact. As a fractional CFO for high-growth tech ventures and past Director of the Okanagan Angel Summit, she brings deep expertise in investment structure, risk management, and economic scalability.
ACCEPTING BOARD APPLICATIONS
A Call for Conscious Stewardship
We are expanding our circle and inviting new voices to help guide the relational heart of Circularity.One. As a member of our Non-Profit Board (Visionary Council), you will hold the integrity of our purpose, ensuring that as we grow, our work remains deeply rooted in community well-being.
We are looking to weave a council that collectively brings:
- Deep Community Commitment: You are grounded in the realities of our region and dedicated to its long-term flourishing.
- Systems Thinking: You look beyond symptoms to understand the interconnected patterns of change.
- Organizational Wisdom: You bring experience in legal, philanthropy, or organizational growth to help us navigate complexity with grace.
- Conscious Leadership: You lead with self-awareness, deep listening, and the courage to unlearn old models.
- Diverse Cultural Perspective: You bring cultural wisdom – particularly from Indigenous or racialized communities – that enriches our collective understanding of community wholeness.
Interested in learning more?
Please let us know what gifts and perspectives you bring. Contact us at hello@circularity.one
Returns That Ripples Out
A new rhythm for how we live, work, and share prosperity, rooted in people, place, and possibility.
The Okanagan has always moved to its own rhythm
Blossoms, harvests, gatherings, renewal. Lately, that rhythm feels out of step. Too much value drifts away while the communities that create it run dry.
Did you ever notice…
how we talk about “the economy” like it’s weather—something that just happens to us?
The reality is, we shape it every day when we start a business, fund an idea, host a gathering, or lend a hand.
When those choices align, prosperity doesn’t trickle down; it circles back.
Circularity.One helps communities find that flow again.
Through community ventures, ownership transitions, and hands-on learning, we turn purpose into tangible outcomes that nourish both people and place.
Our first ventures are already proving what’s possible
Our community-owned solar project is providing local jobs, clean energy, and shared returns that stay in the region.
Because when prosperity moves in rhythm with people and place, it naturally begins to root, renewing what it touches, feeding the soil it comes from.
We learn from the ancient wisdom of circle
Listening first, ensuring every voice belongs, and making decisions together that stand the test of time.
Each venture is designed to return more energy, wealth, and wellbeing to the community than it takes.