About us
“Doing more than just, ummmm, winging it”
After many years of winging it with our four active and strong-willed kids, we decided to apply some mental discipline - some honest-to-goodness planning - and create a system to help us teach them about earning/spending/saving/sharing - a system that would help them learn about making choices as part of everyday life.
Great goals! Unfortunately, it was all too easy to develop “analysis/paralysis” and go back to winging it. We learned there were tons of advice….but the great ideas required herculean effort! And the majority - the simple stuff - was (not surprisingly) simplistic. Many “experts” proposed arbitrary but silly rules of thumb - like 50¢ times age. To be charitable, that may be because better approaches were hard to implement and sustain.
So we finally created a logical system - first manually - then later on the web. We integrated our ideas with advice from experts, added a heavy dose of Web 2.0 tools so it would be easy for parents to do, and voila. Our son called it “Active Allowance”.
Active Allowance makes it easy for parents to do more than just “wing it”. Parents create and sustain an outstanding allowance and responsibility online system - their very own “Family Bank” - to help them teach their children values as part of everyday life.
Leslie was a career-driven executive at Unilever and Procter & Gamble. After the birth of her first child, she chose to devote more of her time and attention to parenting. She uses her creative energy in creating a stimulating home environment for the kids and her business experience for fundraising and improving the schools her children attend. Leslie has been extremely active on the Boards and Parents’ Associations of her children’s schools for the past 12 years, having served in a great many capacities including President and Board Chair. Leslie graduated with a business degree from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
Harvey is a past winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year award; his company, ICOM, was consistently named one of the country’s 50 best-managed private companies. In addition, he is a member of the World Presidents’ Organization, Chief Executives’ Organization, and past member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, having also served on its Chapter Board for many years. Prior to co-founding ICOM, Harvey spent nine years at Procter & Gamble. He graduated with a BSc in Mathematics from McGill University in Montreal and received his MBA from York University in Toronto.