TL;DR
At Gander we’re doing something hard but necessary: building a platform (and a company) that treats sovereignty, privacy, and trust as non-negotiables.
We sat down with our COO Jen Mitchell to get some insight into how we make decisions, how we manage tradeoffs, and why “progress over perfection” is our operating stance.
Later this week, Jen will be delivering a workshop with Alison Pearce our Head of Community and Vass Bednar, Managing Director at the Canadian SHIELD Institute at Elevate Festival.
Think of this as a warm-up — let’s get into it.
Jen, what do you do at Gander Social? And why does it matter for those of us who want a better social media experience?
Jen: I’m a generalist operator. I design and run the systems that keep Gander moving: everything from finance, revenue and cost modelling, and strategic execution to compliance, hiring, vendor risk, and the internal tools and legal workflows around all of that.
In a typical startup you pick the fastest “out-of-the-box” stack and ship. For us, the usual defaults often clash with our mission. That means the way we evaluate and buy tech is different from the get-go.
Digital sovereignty is at the centre of what we’re doing at Gander. From your perspective in operations, what does that actually look like in practice?
Jen: It means our internal infrastructure shouldn’t depend on U.S.-controlled services for anything sensitive or mission-critical. That’s hard because most fast-moving tools: email, chat, cloud, analytics are U.S.-based. So we use a simple decision hierarchy:
- Canadian-owned and hosted? Yes, immediately.
- Canadian-hosted, foreign-owned? Acceptable, for now.
- Non-U.S. (e.g., EU/GDPR) providers? Workable, especially if they are in a jurisdiction with strong protections for citizens.
- U.S.-based? Only if absolutely necessary. And we come up with an exit plan.
Where the data is most sensitive (HR, employee records), we insist on sovereignty first. For collaboration tools with lower risk, we allow temporary exceptions while we help cultivate Canadian or open-source options.
What happens when the tools you need don’t exist here (yet)?
Jen: You pause, triage, and roadmap. We can’t be 100% sovereign immediately, and we won’t ignore it either. So we document: why a choice was made, what risk it carries, how we’ll replace it, and when.
Doesn’t that slow you down?
Jen: We want to move fast but not at the cost of our principles. The mindset is progress over perfection. We won’t ship theatre. If we use a U.S. tool, we say so and we plan our exit. If there’s a Canadian option that’s close enough, we invest the time to make it work. The sequence is deliberate: secure the highest-risk areas first, then chip away at the rest.
How does this connect to the product people will use?
Jen: The trust logic is the same inside and outside. In product, that shows up as human verification, Charter-aligned moderation, and context over confusion like lightweight fact-checking and community notes. Internally, it shows up as careful vendor choices, data residency, and a bias to transparency about tradeoffs.
We’ve often said “Built in Canada, open to the world.” What do you mean by “open” here?
Jen: Not isolationism. “Open” means interoperable, ethical, and accountable. We want Canada, and others, to own more of our digital future, while still connecting to global networks.
Also, sovereignty isn’t theoretical for a lot of people. Indigenous nations and Québécois people have been doing this work for a long time. We listen and try to be good partners.
To put it plainly: sovereignty doesn’t mean solitude.
How do you define “trust” in practice?
Jen: Trust is our north star and our filter. For every system we ask:
- Would we trust this if we weren’t running it?
- What’s the jurisdiction and surveillance risk?
- If a provider flips a switch, what’s our plan for doing without? Can we keep Gander running?
That’s why we rank U.S. tools lowest for safety not because the tech is bad, but because the surrounding legal environment is risky for us and our users.
You’ll be at Elevate next week delivering a workshop. Who are you presenting with?
Jen: Alison, our Head of Community at Gander. She is leading the room: moderating the discussion and keeping us honest about how choices land with real people.
And Vass Bednar, the Managing Director at the Canadian SHIELD Institute. Vass brings the policy and market view: what “building Canadian” means in practice, where the gaps are, and how institutions can help close them.
What will you be doing in the session? What should people expect?
Jen: We’re going to do two things: crowdsource what exists and surface what’s missing.
We’ll ask everyone who attends to submit their favourite tech products that align with Canadian data residency, privacy, or ethical practices. Bonus points for women-led teams and open-source options. Think HR, CRM, storage, analytics, auth, payments, comms, moderation, fact-checking. We’ll compile and publish the list after the session so founders and teams have something practical to start from.
Then, we’ll capture the pain points (“need a Canada-hosted CRM”, “need non-US video infra”) and group them. The goal is to turn those gaps into a public build list for vendors, investors, and policymakers so the ecosystem can see where help is most needed.
It’s meant to be hands-on and useful. If you’re in Toronto for Elevate, bring your favourite tools, and your “still looking for…” items.
Before we go, any advice for others trying to sort out sovereignty?
Start small. Sovereign-up a critical domain first (HR, payments, moderation logs). Come up with your replacement plan. Be honest about tradeoffs. And ask vendors where they host; ask for Canadian options. The ecosystem moves when enough teams ask.
Join Jen, Alison, and Vass for their workshop “Elbows Up: Building a Tech Stack with Canadian Values” at Elevate in Meridian Hall on the Upper Mezzanine at 2:40PM on Thursday Oct. 9th.
Can’t make it? We’ll share the tool directory, gap list, slides, and a short write-up after the session so you can follow along and contribute.
