Pier 4's co-founder and HR chief on why deliberate hiring, employee ownership, and systems discipline matter as much as hitting $1 billion AUM
This article was produced in partnership with Pier 4
Workplace culture is not something that happens by chance. It develops through leadership decisions, shared values, and the practical systems that shape daily work. At Pier 4, a Toronto-based real estate investment firm specializing in multi-family housing, culture is treated as a core element of business strategy.
The firm recognized in both 2025, and 2024 as one of Canada's Top Growing Companies for the second time, attributes its trajectory to more than expansion alone. Co-founder and CEO, Adam Ashby and Janet Bray, Director of Human Resources, point to the team they’ve built, the processes that keep departments connected, and a focus on employee growth as central to sustaining performance.
“Hiring for difference not similarity”
When Bray first met the founding partners, it was clear the introduction was as much about values as it was about skills. “Lots of organizations say the words,” she recalls. “But early on in the interview process with the founders Darrell, Adam, and Michael, I felt confident they were building a company and culture that truly aligned with those values. That really spoke to me.”
From the beginning, Pier 4 has treated hiring as central to its development. Bray describes the firm as a “culture add” organization, one that looks for people with different educational, geographic, and professional backgrounds. “Nobody does everything well,” she says. “Removing ego in the culture means people feel comfortable asking for advice, using each other’s expertise, and moving forward together.”
Ashby approaches the same point from a leadership perspective. “You don’t want to ever be the smartest person in the room,” he says. “You want to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you in what they do so they can continue to bring new ideas to the company up to help us in continuing to grow but also innovate to become better every single day.”
One McKinsey study found that “healthy” (how effectively the firm is run) organizations delivered nearly three times the total shareholder returns of unhealthy ones, and that targeted improvements to culture and systems were linked to double-digit EBITDA growth
For Pier 4, the measure of progress is not just adding headcount, but ensuring each new colleague brings skills and perspectives that raise the collective level.
Integration and engagement
Rapid growth often exposes weaknesses in infrastructure. Bray is quick to point out that Pier 4’s recognition as a Top Gowing Company is not the result of focusing on growth in isolation. “You can’t actually do that if you’re only focusing on growth,” she says. “We talk very overtly about how, in order to maintain that growth, we have to keep our eye on the culture, on the people, and on having the infrastructure and technology in place to support it.”
Integration is one way the firm addresses that challenge. Ashby describes it as a continuous goal: aligning departments around the same goals and KPIs, ensuring strong communication, and making sure execution feels seamless across the business.
Bray emphasizes the lateral aspect of integration — employees are expected to understand how their work affects colleagues in other functions. “If I do my job quickly but miss what matters to the next person, nobody wins,” she explains. “It’s about recognizing that while we’re not in the same department, we all have to be in it together.”
That perspective extends into how the company approaches engagement. Pier 4 runs quarterly town halls to review performance against goals, holds leadership workshops, and publishes a monthly People and Culture Report to keep employees informed about new hires, promotions, and community activities. A quarterly well-being survey provides feedback on what is working and what needs improvement. “We don’t want to be perfect,” Bray says. “If we’re perfect, then I don’t think we’re taking it seriously. There should always be places where we want to grow and be better.”
For Bray, Pier 4’s identity is defined by balancing collective engagement with entrepreneurial drive. “We all work for Pier 4, but we want to maintain that entrepreneurial spirit,” she says. When onboarding a new employee, she asked what entrepreneurship meant to them. Their answer was straightforward: it’s the opportunity to contribute to a strong company while still thinking independently.
Bray takes the idea further, stressing that entrepreneurship is also about personal accountability. “You can’t hide behind the company. It’s your reputation, how you work, and it’s our reputation as well. We want everyone moving forward together, but you have to do the right thing because it reflects on you as much as on us.”
Growth that people want to be part of
For Ashby, the next phase of Pier 4’s growth is clear. “That magic number of a billion is what we all aspire to achieve,” he says, referring to assets under management. “Hopefully we can do it before five years. I think we can.” Expansion into more secondary markets across Canada is part of that plan, but he underscores that the growth of the team will be just as important. “The team is what makes it fun. They keep you motivated, bring new ideas, and help us deliver consistent results.”
Bray adds a broader aspiration: to make Pier 4 an “employee destination.” She points to examples in other sectors, where people want to work for companies known for opportunities and culture. “I want people to want to work at Pier 4,” she says. “Not just because we’re hiring, but because of the opportunities and the way we operate.”
The real measure, Ashby and Bray suggest, will be whether the company can keep scaling while maintaining the values and systems that brought it this far.
