Adeola Adejobi moves mountains and touches hearts with

As a multi-faceted human being, Adeola is an attorney, entrepreneur, speaker. She is also the visionary founder and CEO of Avant-Garde Network, a social impact company dedicated to equipping entrepreneurs and executives from diverse backgrounds with the essential skills and knowledge to advance as leaders in their own businesses or within the corporate landscape.

Adeola’s academic journey, from Spellman College and later pursuing her Juris Doctorate at Cornell University (specializing in International Legal Affairs), has laid the foundation for her impactful career. Adeola went on to forge intentional relationships and continue to be a resource to those in her network.

This episode is for you if:

Connect with Adeola

Connect with Naomi

What ever happened to job security?

From the Great Resignation to mass layoffs, workers are struggling to find their fit in this ever-changing market. 

To succeed, shift gears.

Focusing not on your next job but your career instead, you’ll gain the skills, network and experience to reach your most audacious goals — no matter where you work. 

Certified Career Coach, Resume Strategist, Founder of WeApply and one of Canada’s Top 100 Black Women to Watch, Lissa Appiah shares how.

This episode is for you if:

Looking for a specific gem?

Connect with Lissa

Connect with Naomi

How will you be remembered?

When her parents suddenly passed away, 11-year-old Thusha saw how their devotion to others kept them alive — an unquenchable force, multiplied in the hearts they touched.

Today she carries their torch, seeking spaces where her impact can grow.

Building engineering teams at BlackBerry and Magnet Forensics. Advocating for diverse representation in tech. Mentoring the next generation of women in STEM. Accelerating the adoption of sustainable energy as Aurora Solar’s Director of Engineering.

Here’s how she keeps her eye on the horizon.

This episode is for you if:

Looking for a specific gem?

Connect with Thusha

Connect with Naomi

Building a business is a team sport. You’ve got the CEO’s vision, the product team’s execution, and marketing working with sales to attract and retain customers.

But when an unstable market threatens the stakes? That’s where Michelle Scarborough comes in.

Leading two of the world’s largest venture funds supporting women-led tech businesses — as Managing Partner of BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund and Women in Technology Venture Fund — Michelle is levelling the playing field: laying the steady foundation for a more inclusive, creative and resilient future.

Here’s what she thinks it’ll take.

This episode is for you if:

Looking for a specific gem?

Connect with Michelle

Connect with Naomi

Bullied, mixed-race, and living in poverty, many told a young Bree Jamieson-Holloway that hers was an uphill battle too formidable to overcome.

So she turned inward.

Heartened by her grandmother’s motto to “push on, regardless,” she crafted a vision that would anchor her life’s work: travelling the world, starting a family, and helping people.

Now a published author, mother, equity champion, international corporate lawyer and founder of her own firm, Bree has realised her dreams — and then some.

Last year, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister announced her appointment as the new Vice Chair of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal.

Here’s how she made it.

This episode is for you if:

Looking for a specific gem?

Connect with Bree

Connect with Naomi

Mass layoffs. The climate crisis. Springing, starry-eyed, from a global pandemic only to find a recession stalking our shadow.

Are we lurching towards The End? Or, as impact entrepreneur and angel investor Victoria Xu sees it, are we gearing up for The Next Leap?

Decarbonizing heavy industry with deep tech prodigy CleanInnoGen, investing in future-focused startups, and empowering everyone to join the charge with i4Green League, Victoria is helping reset, regroup and shore up the resources we need to face climate change.

Humble, visionary and relentlessly optimistic, here’s how she does it.

This episode is for you if:

Looking for a specific gem?

Connect with Victoria

Connect with Naomi

Under the careful heat of calculated risk, Shea Cole — growth marketer, brand builder, mentor, mom and VP of one of Canada’s fastest growing companies, Field Effect — has forged her own path.

Leaving her beloved small town to explore the world. Pursuing an MBA despite being “bad at math.” Scaling health tech darling Fullscript’s less than 30-person team to over 1,000 employees. Choosing to grow her family at the height of her career.

How’d she do it? By not trying to “do it all,” and getting focused instead.

This episode is for you if:

Looking for a specific gem?

Connect with Shea

Connect with Naomi

Sherrell Dorsey is the founder and CEO of The Plug—a digital news and insights platform covering the Black innovation economy. Her work has been featured in VICE, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, The Information, and more. Sherrell has been a contributing writer for notable publications like Columbia Journalism Review, Fast Company, Black Enterprise, and others. In 2018, she was named an inspiring woman in tech by CNet, and most creative people in business by AdWeek in 2021.

Prior to launching The Plug, Dorsey served as a marketing manager for companies like Uber and Google Fiber. She holds a Master's degree in data journalism from Columbia University.

She is the author of Upper Hand: The Future of Work for the Rest of Us published by Wiley.

This episode is for you if:

Connect with Sherrell

Connect with Naomi

Dimple Thomas wants you to embrace the opportunity in uncertainty.

As an Engineering Manager in Ericsson’s Cloud RAN Systems-DevOps, she does just that—with an eye to creating a high-speed, -bandwidth and low latency future where Zoom calls might be replaced by life-sized holograms of your loved ones.

Committed to building systems that truly serve everyone, Dimple has also dedicated herself to empowering diverse leaders to succeed in tech as Theme Driver of Diversity and Inclusion at Ericsson.

Dimple shared why she’s never charted her career path, why you should take risks at work, and tech’s potential for transformational good.

This episode is for you if:

Connect with Dimple Thomas

Connect with Naomi

This episode is brought to you in collaboration with Invest Ottawa, lead economic development agency for Canada’s Capital. We teamed up to produce this special series to celebrate women leading in Ottawa for International Women’s Week. In support of its Women Founders and Owners strategy, Invest Ottawa offers programs and services that enable and accelerate the growth and success of women entrepreneurs from every walk of life.

Visit www.investottawa.ca/women to learn more!

Data, machine learning and AI augments impact across sectors, creating life changing technologies that transform how we live, work and play.

But to drive meaningful change, we need equitable representation among the leaders driving its evolution.

That's why Solmaz Shahalizadeh, Shopify's former Head of Data Science and Engineering, became a Founding Partner of Backbone Angels: investing in women and non-binary founders with a focus on investments in Black, Indigenous, and Women of Colour-led companies.

She joins us to share why great career paths aren't linear, what you need to know to impress investors, and the difference between sponsors and mentors (and why you should have both).

This episode is for you if:

Connect with Solmaz Shahalizadeh

Connect with Naomi

This episode is brought to you in collaboration with Invest Ottawa, lead economic development agency for Canada’s Capital. We teamed up to produce this special series to celebrate women leading in Ottawa for International Women’s Week. In support of its Women Founders and Owners strategy, Invest Ottawa offers programs and services that enable and accelerate the growth and success of women entrepreneurs from every walk of life.

Visit www.investottawa.ca/women to learn more!