Dare to dream a different dream

When Ieda Del Bianco learned she was being honored with a Horticultural Industries Leadership Award (HILA), she thought she was the target of a hoax. Then she dug a little deeper and discovered it was true. “It was really a beautiful surprise,” she says.

The first thing she did was tell her two teenage daughters. For Ieda and her “super-proud” kids, the award reaffirms she’s doing things right at work and at home. And it reinforces that the lessons she’s teaching them — and the people she leads and mentors — will follow them and help them throughout their lives.

As director of operations for Van Belle Nursery, Ieda has earned a reputation for skillful operational management and identifying and empowering new leaders among her team. She took an uncommon route to horticulture, both professionally and geographically. But her propensity for leadership and caring has been a constant throughout the journey.

From finance to young plants

Before Ieda came to horticulture, her career was in finance. She spent 15 years in banking in her home country of Brazil before immigrating to Canada seven years ago. While in Brazil, some permaculture courses with famed researcher Ernst Götsch led her into the Brazilian jungle and triggered the idea of working with plants in some way. As she explored educational opportunities, she discovered Canadian short courses where she could accelerate the learning process for a new career.

When she moved to Canada, she was 33 years old. With eight pieces of luggage and her two kids, she left Brazil behind to start something new. She was accepted to Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, earned a degree in horticulture and started work in the plant department at Home Depot.

Her timing coincided with Canada’s legalization of cannabis and the boom in horticulture it begat. When cannabis companies recruited university students, she seized the opportunity. Her first position was in quality assurance, supporting the growing team at one of North America’s largest cannabis companies at that time.

When inventory issues arose outside her department, Ieda stepped forward. She explains that she’s not the kind of person who’s in a silo when someone needs help and she has skills to support them in some way. Fifteen years in the highly regulated banking industry had honed her business skills, which were quickly put to use.

“I don’t think there’s any skill set you can’t use; it doesn’t matter which industry. And I was always really willing to learn, to ask questions,” she says. “This helps you a lot in developing yourself. Your listening skills need to be good because you’re learning as you go.”

A few years later, when she grew tired of the cannabis industry’s instability, she applied for a position at Van Belle. Her move to ornamental horticulture was temporarily delayed when the cannabis company gave her a big promotion. But when Van Belle called a few months later with a position they felt was an even better fit, she knew the time for change had come again.

Building on a culture of leadership

Historically, Van Belle Nursery has been known for its strong, people-oriented culture that elevates leadership and mentorship. Standing out as a leader in a culture like that, as Ieda has done, is exceptional in and of itself.

Van Belle Marketing Manager Kevin Cramer explains that Ieda went beyond simply honoring the culture to directly improving it through her drive to develop people.

“I had the fortune of witnessing her come to Van Belle from outside our direct industry,” he recalls. “She had the chance early on in her career at Van Belle to step into a leadership position. It was not something that was expected, and I just saw her rise up to that challenge and that opportunity in a very professional way and in a way that showed great leadership with our company.”

Kevin emphasizes Ieda’s focus on building people up and helping them grow personally and professionally. “I’ve just seen her really be intentional with that focus of taking our core values and our culture, which I did feel is pretty good, and just really run with it and try to take a leadership role within the culture to make a difference and build upon that foundation.”

Lucas Phibois first met Ieda when they were banking interns in Brazil two decades ago. News that she is being honored for her leadership and her passion for empowering others came as no surprise at all.

“That’s exactly who she is,” he says. He remembers she started at the bank a short time before him, and she immediately took him under her wing and helped him succeed. “I’ll never forget that,” he says. “I’m really grateful for that. She was like this back then, 20 years ago. I’m not surprised to hear that she is still like that. That’s very much how she is.”

Ieda believes opportunities for growth and development are for everyone, not just the full-time folks. For her, this applies especially to her crews from Mexico. “For me, how can we empower them? How are we going to give them the possibilities not just to be pushing benches, pushing racks?” she asks. “They can do more. They want to do more. So, when you find the people who really want to do more, you train them.”

A story about training one of her crew members on the ISO robots reflects her approach. He resisted the opportunity at first, saying he’d never used a computer. She pointed to his smartphone. “For me, it’s breaking down the very complex things into simple things that people can digest,” she says. “If you say we’re going to do programming software, who would do that? So, you break it down to simple things. Let’s start small. The first step is this.”

People-focused, but process-oriented

As a people-focused leader, Ieda is very clear that she doesn’t take building people or hitting key performance indicators for granted. “I am a process-oriented person,” she says, explaining that the processes she implements also build people, who then develop new skills that empower them for more responsibility and more rewarding roles in leadership themselves.

She has one-on-ones with her people every week. “I always want to listen,” she says. Through asking and listening, she can understand their struggles and — most importantly — respond. “I always circle back. We need to have a solution. There is no such thing that I’m going to listen to something and something’s not going to be done.”

Her leadership style is to lead up and down. When a new person comes on board, as her supervisor or someone she supervises, the response is the same: to speed up the person’s learning process as much as possible, convinced that the faster they learn, the faster they can help her be a better leader.

“Along with being people-focused, she is our operations director, and so her job and role is expected to impact the business results in that way,” Kevin says. He says Ieda focuses on both the qualitative and the quantitative as she strives to improve results and achieve more and more each year. Her impact on Van Belle’s young plant business has raised the company’s quality and consistency — both things they were known for before — to new levels.

“I would say our quality has improved, and the consistency of that top quality has improved greatly, along with bringing in automation, our new ISO sticking robots, and then just the way that she and her team structure the systems. How do plants move about? How do we structure the propagation stages? How are we measuring and tracking and finding improvements? How are we testing? It’s all those types of things that she’s very focused on,” Kevin says.

Plant quality is up. COGS and waste are down. Shrub propagation has seen “unprecedented success” with ISO robots, and young growers have been molded into achieving managers, he adds. As the company becomes more efficient, that in turn fuels an improved work-life balance for the team. Hours are spread out and consistent, even in the rush of spring, and turnover has gone down as well.

Welcoming change and the future

When asked how she responds to change, Ieda laughs and says, “I got divorced. I got married again. I have two teenagers. I changed my career. So, I’m more than willing to change.” She points out that change is part of nature, and even the seasons represent change. When someone avoids change, everything becomes harder because nothing ever stays the same.

“I am a pusher for change,” she says. “Go find yourself. Discover how you can do better. How can you dream a different dream? About change, I welcome it in the workplace. I welcome it in my personal life. But I don’t change just for change. I change when I think it’s important.”

Lucas, her fellow banking intern, notes that, like Ieda, he also changed careers in his 30s and understands the hurdles a change like that presents. Given that, her HILA selection is even more remarkable.

“She is an amazing person. That may sound suspicious because I am her friend, but I think she is an amazing person. She’s caring in many ways — more caring than the average — and she is hardworking. She perseveres in her goals,” he says. “Plus, she’s fun to be around.”

For people considering a change like she made, Ieda advises, “Listen. Learn as much as you can. Ask questions and ask different people. The best way to learn is to ask and do your own research. There’s so much out there. Even the magazines that you have for horticulture, they’re so full of information. There’s so many opportunities of learning for free.” She encourages people to explore and not be afraid if, in the beginning, the pay isn’t there. Take the opportunity to upgrade your skills and work to upgrade the industry as well.

She hopes to see more people-focused leaders in horticulture. “Our industry is an industry that came from technical skills, but technical skills are not going to move the needle,” she says, especially when it comes to seeing younger faces in horticulture. It’s time, she says, to elevate being people-focused and let leaders know that’s OK. She hopes to see more people come from other industries, though she underscores it’s not all rainbows. It’s hard work, but joy comes with it.

At this point in her life, Ieda doesn’t have hobbies. “I think raising teenagers is a sport itself. So, I do their hobbies,” she says. “The thing for me is this is the window for my kids to develop. In six years, they’re not going to be with me. This is one of the things very different for women in the workplace and men in the workplace. I am a full-time employee and a full-time mom.

“If you ask me how I do it, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s a little more to the work, sometimes more to my kids, and we’re balancing. I’m a very process-oriented person and have a process at my home so the kids understand as well. We support each other.” She adds that it’s only with their support that she’s been able to achieve the professional success she’s had, so the HILA is theirs as well.

Jolene Hansen is a freelance writer specializing in the horticulture and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) industries. Reach her at jolene@jolenehansen.com.

Meet the other members of the HILA Class of 2024:

• Mark Sellew, Prides Corner Farms
• Jim and Kathy Deal, Pender Nursery
• Elias Mejia, Costa Farms
• Christa Orum-Keller, Midwest Groundcovers
• David van Wingerden, Express Seed