What is Hearth?
Hearth Ethics Studio helps organizations determine what they ought to do—and develop the structures to do it well.
We are a Newfoundland-based ethics consultancy helping organizations navigate complex ethical, regulatory, and governance challenges. Rather than treating ethics as an abstract exercise or a compliance checkbox, we specialize in translating ethical principles into practical policies, decision-making frameworks, and organizational practices that support human flourishing, mitigate organizational risk, and ensure organizational value alignment. Hearth helps organizations facing complex ethical challenges determine what they ought to do and develop workable structures for doing it.
At Hearth, we believe that ethics isn't merely compliance or abstract philosophical analysis; it's disciplined reasoning about what organizations ought to do.
What is Ethics?
Ethics is a discipline of philosophy that is concerned with helping people understand what they should value, how they should act, what rules they should follow, what sort of person they should be, and other key questions for living a good life.
While philosophical ethics can be abstract, ethical questions and challenges are found throughout every aspect of our lives, including our businesses, healthcare facilities, and other organizations. The discipline of “professional ethics” comes about when philosophical ethics are applied with the intent of making these organizations ethically better.
Professional ethics is a practical discipline that helps organizations to align their internal practices and policies with the organization’s own understanding of their ethical responsibilities and values.
Organizations are complex structures that host a huge number of relationships between people. Any time there is a relationship between people, that situation is ethically relevant. Each of the following are common examples of ethical challenges faced by organizations:
· Should we deploy this AI system?
· How should we obtain meaningful consent?
· What risks are acceptable?
· How should competing stakeholder interests be balanced?
· Does this policy actually respect the people it affects?
· Are our practices consistent with our stated values?
· How should we respond when something is legally permissible but ethically questionable?
All this being said, ethics is not about telling organizations what to think. It is about helping them think well about what they ought to do.
Ethics & Compliance
While ethics and compliance are closely related and overlap, they are two distinct areas of professional practice.
Law tells you what you must do.
Compliance helps you meet those requirements.
Ethics helps you determine what you ought to do.
Hearth helps you turn that ethical judgment into organizational practice.
How We Approach Ethics
At Hearth, we understand ethics through the lens of human flourishing. We believe that ethical reasoning ultimately concerns the conditions under which human beings can live and act well, individually and together. Questions of justice, rights, duties, responsibility, dignity, and institutional practice can therefore be understood in relation to the broader question of what enables people and communities to flourish.
What does Hearth actually do?
We don't treat ethics as a collection of policies and documents. We develop coherent ecosystems of governance policies and organizational practices grounded in a shared ethical framework.
Our team brings together expertise in philosophy, healthcare ethics, AI governance, organizational operations, and public policy. Together, we help organizations move from ethical questions to practical action.
Meet Our Team
Principal Ethicist & Co-Founder
Kyle Barbour, PhD
As the Founder and Principal Ethicist of Hearth Ethics Studio, Kyle leads a specialized bioethics and policy consultancy designed to solve the ethical challenges of modern healthcare and biotechnology organizations. His advisory approach is defined by an authentic dedication to helping our communities, organizations, and people to flourish through rigorous ethical analysis and evidence-informed policy.
Holding a PhD in Philosophy alongside specialized graduate training in healthcare ethics, he is certified in TCPS-2, PHIA, and GBA+. Kyle’s practice is built on translating rigorous bioethical frameworks into practical, legally robust ethical policy that mitigates risk, protects professional standards, and safeguards institutional integrity.
Beyond his consulting work, Kyle is an active scholar within bioethics and has published peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and acts as a frequent reviewer for the Canadian Journal of Bioethics. He is also a successful university lecturer and has taught courses in ethics, critical thinking, and the philosophy of law. This experience helps him to translate complex ethical theory, regulations, and legislation into actionable organizational strategy.
Chief Operational Officer & Co-Founder
Kara Osmond
As the Chief Operational Officer and Co-Founder of Hearth Ethics Studio, Kara directs the operational, financial, and creative infrastructure that powers our specialized consultancy. Her approach is defined by a commitment to organizational excellence, ensuring that the behind-the-scenes mechanics of the firm run with the same precision, integrity, and rigor that Hearth brings to every client engagement.
Bringing a diverse background that spans clinical leadership and graduate-level academic training in religious studies, Kara’s work focuses on translating Hearth’s high-level strategic vision into seamless internal workflows, robust outreach, and a cohesive, impactful brand presence across all platforms.
Beyond her role at Hearth, Kara is a dual-certified clinical professional (PVTAP and COVT) and serve as the Lead Practical Vision Therapist at a private clinic. This experience in leading dedicated care environments informs her management approach, allowing her to bridge the gap between structured financial and digital operations and the deeply human, empathetic focus central to Hearth’s mission.
Associate Ethicist (AI and Emerging Technology)
Dylan White, PhD
Dylan works at the intersection of artificial intelligence and ethics, helping organizations navigate the moral and regulatory questions that AI systems raise. This has become urgent work in healthcare and biotech, where AI is rapidly reshaping how care is delivered, research is conducted, and decisions are made.
He hold a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Guelph, where his research specialized in the ethics of AI. Dylan currently serve as AI Governance Lead for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, where he develops practical policy for the responsible use of AI in the public sector. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s Digital Policy Hub, a leading Canadian think tank, where his work focuses on AI policy.
Alongside his applied work, Dylan teach university courses on the ethics of artificial intelligence at Memorial University of Newfoundland and has taught at the University of Guelph, giving him the ability to translate complex ethical theory into terms that organizations can act on.