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The Culture 100 just named Foundation one of the top 100 companies to work for in Canada.
For a remote agency with people spread across almost every continent, this is a huge moment.
What the Culture 100 Actually Measures
There are a lot of workplace awards out there. Most of them rely on nominations, applications, or carefully curated testimonials. The Culture 100 works differently.
They reviewed thousands of companies across Canada and gathered anonymous responses from over 20,000 employees. Their ranking is built almost entirely on open-ended survey responses — what people actually say about their employer when no one’s watching (and no company leader is hovering nearby). They analyze the sentiment behind those responses, looking for specific keywords and phrases, and factor in both current employee initiatives and future commitments.
The result is a list of 100 companies that employees would genuinely recommend to their friends and family. The kind of place worth paying attention to.
We’re proud to be on it.
Building Culture Without a Building
Here’s the thing about being a fully remote, globally distributed agency: you can’t lean on proximity to build bonds.
There’s no shared office or impromptu hallway run-ins. No spontaneous lunches that turn into great ideas. When your team spans continents and time zones, culture doesn’t happen by default. It has to be built deliberately, consistently, and with real intention.
We’ve put in the work over the past 12 years and it’s paying off in a big way. As our COO Jessica Everitt put it when the award was announced:
“This is the best company culture I’ve ever worked in, and for that to be achieved by a fully remote, fully global company is amazing.”
That doesn’t happen by accident.
What Intentional Culture Actually Looks Like at Fully Remote Agency
Department standups, Looms, and Slack channels are the prerequisites to operating a decentralized business. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to do the work. But to build a truly great company culture, you need a lot more than just communications software.
Here’s a look at some of the things we do to build connections across continents and time zones.
The Bureau of Silly Geese
Every month, our culture committee — affectionately known as the Bureau of Silly Geese — organizes themed team socials. These aren’t mandatory morale exercises. It’s an hour dedicated to everything from holiday celebrations and trivia to shooting the breeze about favourite snacks and movies. It may not seem like a lot of time, but it’s a key way Foundationites build relationships that go beyond their immediate day-to-day work.
In very special cases, it also includes story time with our Marketing Manager Pat Blakely:
Random Coffee Chats
We use a randomized coffee chat system to pair people across the team who might never naturally cross paths. The idea is simple: the more people know each other as humans, the better they work together.
Senior Account Manager Lara Leung, who joined Foundation just weeks before this award was announced, put it best:
“Randomly assigned coffee chats with people you’d never otherwise meet… I already feel like I belong.”
The Culture Index
We use the Culture Index to understand how each person on the team thinks, communicates, and does their best work. It’s not about putting people in boxes — it’s about making sure we’re setting everyone up to thrive in a way that actually fits who they are, not just the role they’re in.
What the Team Is Saying
The response from the Foundation team when this award dropped was something.
Operations Coordinator Liliana Escobar, who’s been with Foundation for nearly two years, shared:
“I never imagined a company could care so deeply about its people while being so committed to delivering results for its clients.”
And Lara, still in her first month at Foundation, wrote one of the most honest takes on what it actually feels like to join a new company as a working parent:
“You don’t know if the warmth is real or just a good interview. You don’t know if the ‘we care about people’ actually shows up on a Tuesday afternoon when things get hard. But here I am, one month in, and I can boldly say this: Foundation Marketing is the real thing.”
That’s the bar we hold ourselves to. The awards and recognition are nice, but the Tuesday afternoons are what really matters.
A Halifax-Born Agency, a Global Team
Foundation was built in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2014. Ross Simmonds started this company with a simple mission: do great work and create things worth talking about.
The belief from day one was that great content marketing — the kind that shapes culture, drives real business results, and actually gets distributed instead of dying on publish — could only come from a team that felt genuinely supported.
We’re a team of strategists, creators, and tinkerers. We work with ambitious B2B brands to build content marketing engines fueled by research, data, and creativity. Brands that are tired of publishing into the void and want their content to actually move people.
But none of that work happens without the people behind it. And this award is a reflection of what they’ve built together, across countries and time zones, without a shared office or a whiteboard in sight.
We’re proud to be on the Culture 100. And even prouder of every person at Foundation who earned it, wherever in the world they’re reading this from.
If that sounds like the type of digital marketing agency you want to work with, let’s talk.
