Jocelyn Da Silva Came Home With a Marketer’s Eye for What Makes Trust Stick

The parting gift was a pair of work boots prepared for a life change. Jocelyn Da Silva’s colleagues at Steel Blue put her name on them and added insulation for the Calgary cold. After nearly a decade in Perth, the company’s chief marketing officer was heading back to the Canadian city she called home. The boots made a good farewell joke. They also compressed a career into one object: a useful product, a human story and a detail people would remember.

Da Silva’s route has crossed unusually different categories. She marketed tax preparation at H&R Block Canada, worked with global names including Thule and Campbell Arnott’s, led marketing for the automotive member organization Capricorn Society, and ran the brand function at Australian safety-footwear maker Steel Blue. Back in Calgary, her work now sits in new-home warranty, where builders and homeowners depend on information they may not think about until a problem arrives.

Look past the category changes and the assignment is remarkably stable. A tax service, a member benefit and a warranty are all promises. Even a boot carries claims about comfort, durability and safety that a buyer cannot fully test from a shelf. The marketer has to translate those promises into proof, language and experiences that people can use. Da Silva has spent more than 20 years doing that translation.

Start with the friction

An early example appeared during the 2009 Canadian tax season. H&R Block’s television creative showed people struggling to grab money that was plainly within reach. The absurd obstacle made a dry service proposition legible: a refund is your own money, so getting it should not feel difficult. A parallel student campaign followed five young travelers pooling their refunds for an episodic road trip, with a microsite that invited visitors to plan routes and contribute photos and video.

The technology now feels tied to its time. The instinct does not. Begin with the customer’s frustration. Turn it into a scene. Let the service resolve it. Da Silva described the organizing idea in direct terms: “It really shouldn’t be that hard to get money.” No lecture on tax administration was required.

That bias toward usable clarity also appeared outside formal corporate roles. From 2014 to 2017, Da Silva volunteered as communications director for Calgary’s Bridgeland-Riverside Community Association. The work included a website, social channels, a newsletter and a community-management platform. It was less glamorous than a national campaign and arguably closer to the basic contract of communication: tell people what is happening where they live, make it easy to participate, and keep the information current.

A brand written on the product

Perth widened the scale of the work. Da Silva led marketing at Capricorn Society, which serves businesses in the automotive industry, and later became chief marketing officer of Steel Blue. The bootmaker sold in more than 40 countries and produced more than a million pairs a year. Its challenge was not simply awareness. It needed a position that could travel across markets without losing the connection to tradespeople who judge footwear through long days on their feet.

The result was the 2022 platform “A Mark of True Skill.” It paired the craft inside the boot with the craft of the worker wearing it. In the launch film, an audience gathers as tradespeople build something. The reveal does not linger on the structure. It moves toward the creases, marks and wear on their boots - evidence that skill leaves a trace.

The move is worth borrowing. Technical superiority by itself is inert. Steel Blue made it social by treating worn boots as a record of earned competence. The product’s premium position became less about polish and more about respect for the person doing the work. Da Silva said the company wanted a creative platform that could grow, not a slogan trapped inside one campaign cycle.

The accompanying content hub extended the same logic. Product-care guides sat beside stories about tradespeople, design choices, materials and community projects. “We hear such great stories from our customers,” Da Silva said, describing the hub as a place to share them. The brand became a publisher because its customers already carried the raw material.

Da Silva also gave the next generation a look at the client side of the table. In 2022, she and Steel Blue marketing manager Michael Ellis helped brief and judge participants in JumpStart, Advertising Council Australia’s Western Australian graduate program. Student teams had five hours to prepare their first pitch. Her verdict was compact: “The future of advertising is looking bright!”

Study in the middle of the work

By then, Da Silva had also returned to the classroom. She completed an MBA and a Graduate Certificate in Strategy & Leadership in 2023 after a three-year course of study undertaken while working full time. She credited executives, faculty, classmates and, most pointedly, her husband for taking on more at home while she studied.

Her stated motivation was advancement, but her explanation of organizational support reached further. When a company backs someone’s development, she observed, it can encourage other people to study and bring “a different level of thinking” into the business. That is a more useful view of credentials than collecting letters after a name. Learning changes what the surrounding team believes is available to them.

The degree arrived during a busy professional stretch. Da Silva presented Steel Blue’s corporate social responsibility work at an ESG strategy conference and served among the judges for the RISE Business Awards. These were roles that asked her to explain a company’s choices and assess those made by others. Formal study did not interrupt the work. It became another lens on it.

The decision that does not fit on a résumé

Then came the return. In 2024, Da Silva wrote that her family had made the difficult decision to leave Perth so their children could have a Canadian experience. She called Calgary her hometown and thanked the colleagues, executives and agency partners who had shaped almost ten years in Australia. The announcement was celebratory, but it did not pretend departure was easy.

That tension matters. Career profiles often turn moves into clean upward arrows. Real decisions include geography, family, identity and timing. Da Silva left a chief marketing officer role at an established international brand and a professional community she had helped build. “Good-bye Perth | Hello Calgary!” was a new beginning with an honest seam down the middle.

At the Alberta New Home Warranty Program, the setting changed again. ANHWP is a nonprofit insurer founded in 1974. It says it has protected more than 640,000 homes and works with more than 400 builders. Its materials cover warranty claims, maintenance, construction performance and the moments when builders and homeowners need a clear answer. In 2026, Da Silva joined ANHWP colleagues during meetings at Alberta’s legislature, where the group was formally welcomed for work described as protecting homeowners and strengthening housing.

Home warranty is a fitting next chapter because it makes the old assignment explicit. The customer is buying confidence about events that may never happen. Trust must be built before a claim, maintained during construction and tested when expectations collide. Marketing cannot manufacture that trust on its own. It can make the operating promise visible: what is covered, who responds, what good maintenance looks like, and where help begins.

What carries home

Da Silva’s career does not offer a single neat industry specialization. It offers a method. Find the friction customers actually feel. Respect the knowledge embedded in the product and in the people who use it. Build a platform roomy enough to carry stories, guidance and proof. Invest in the team’s capacity to think. Keep the language plain.

The method has survived tax season, community news, automotive services, global footwear and warranty insurance. It has also survived a round trip of more than 14,000 kilometres. The insulated farewell boots belong to the personal part of that story, but they contain the professional lesson too. The best brand detail is not decoration. It is useful, specific and true to the person receiving it.