Strategic clarity. Creative leadership.

Driven by meaningful work, Johnathon Vaughn Strebly founded JVS Consulting Inc., a strategic consultancy working at the intersection of design thinking, organizational leadership, and service design, JVS Consulting partners with executives and senior leaders to do the work that matters: building the clarity, culture, and brand governance structures that allow organizations to grow with integrity and communicate with purpose.

Based in Vancouver and working across Canada and internationally, Johnathon brings more than two decades of senior leadership experience to every engagement. His practice spans strategic advisory, stakeholder and community engagement, intergovernmental and Indigenous relations, brand and communications strategy, marketing strategy, brand governance, and system and service design. He has worked with public agencies, Indigenous governments, non-profit boards, NGOs, cultural institutions, hospitality enterprises, and mission-driven organizations, from discovery and planning through implementation and long-term advisory. The thread connecting all of it is a conviction that the most effective outcomes are built collaboratively, through rigorous process and genuine human engagement.

A Career Built at the Intersection of Leadership and Design

Johnathon's career has never been a straight line, and that breadth is precisely what makes him effective. He has spent decades in environments where strategy, creativity, and organizational complexity meet: boardrooms, community halls, multi-stakeholder workshops, and long-table discovery sessions where the goal is never to arrive with the answer, but to help the room find one together.

He founded The Notice Group in 2000, building a brand strategy and communications agency grounded in strategic clarity and meaningful narrative. He served as Director of Creative Services for HCMA Architecture and Design, one of Canada's most respected design firms. As COO of Tomorrow Creative Services, he helped mission-driven organizations shape brands and communications with lasting impact. He held national leadership roles with Design Professionals of Canada and the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators, and was a founding committee member and co-host of CreativeMornings Vancouver and Interesting Vancouver, two of the city's most enduring platforms for creative and professional community.

His work has taken him deep into the hospitality sector, where he has partnered with restaurants, hotels, and hospitality brands on brand governance, communications strategy, marketing, public relations, and the narrative work that gives an experience its soul and its staying power.

At the international level, he served as President of the International Council of Design (ICoD), championing advocacy and the evolving role of system and service design within the global applied arts community, and continues in senior governance and advisory capacities. As Chief of Staff for the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), he provided strategic oversight across project management, governance, policy, change management, communications, intergovernmental relations, and Council support. Johnathon has continued working with Nch’kay Development Corporation, one of Canada's most dynamic Indigenous economic development organizations and other indigenous led organizations.

What Executives Can Expect

Senior leaders bring Johnathon in when the work is complicated, the stakes are high, and the need is for more than an outside expert with a template. They come when they need a trusted thinking partner who will stay rigorous and human at the same time.

His engagements typically begin with listening. He leads Phase 0 discovery processes that give organizations the clarity and confidence to move forward, having asked the right and often tough questions before committing to the answers. He designs and facilitates multi-stakeholder workshops where diverse interests and competing priorities need to find shared ground. He develops governance frameworks, engagement strategies, and board-level planning processes that are built to hold up long after the engagement ends.

Process integrity is not a byproduct of the work. It is the work. Johnathon's practice is shaped by the belief that the how is inseparable from the why, and that organizations deserve a collaborator who will hold that standard without compromising the human warmth that makes real collaboration possible.

His philosophy is captured in a phrase he returns to often: step up, then step aside. The consultant and facilitator's role is to create the conditions for collective clarity and then get out of the way. To bring structure without rigidity, and direction without dominance. It is a principle that has shaped every engagement he has led, and it is why the organizations he works with tend to return. Not because they need him, but because they trust him, and because the work they build together holds.

Grounded in Vancouver. Informed by the World.

Johnathon lives and works in Vancouver, BC, a city he considers one of the most compelling intersections of Indigenous history and future, global markets, creative culture, and pragmatic optimism. His practice reflects that specificity. At the same time, his work with ICoD, his international client relationships, and his genuine appetite for the ideas emerging in organizations around the world mean he brings an internationally informed perspective to every engagement without ever losing the groundedness that defines how he works. He is a sought-after speaker, mentor, and facilitator, and has shared his thinking at CreativeMornings Vancouver, International Council of Design events, and design and organizational leadership forums across North America and the world. He mentors emerging leaders not out of obligation, but because sharing without expectation is one of the tenets he believes in most.

Let's Talk

If your organization is building something that matters, navigating a complex transition, or looking for a senior strategic partner who will engage with the full weight of what you are trying to accomplish, Johnathon would welcome the conversation.

The work is always better together.