She Breaks The Mold

Tina Alexis Allen's book is not about women in the workplace. It's about her life, growing up with an authoritarian, staunchly Catholic father who one day acknowledges he knows about her relationship with a woman and shares his own background with her as a gay man, leading a double life. The story is full of intrigue, secrets, Tina's road to recovery from sexual abuse, and so much more.

So no - it's not a business book or even meant as guidance for women dealing with work-related issues.

But it is about the power of standing up for ourselves. And telling our true stories, and using our voices to own our ambitions. It's about how much we accept when we don't know better and how we hide ourselves, our abilities and what we have to offer in the process. And so, it's extremely relevant for working women. We talk about all of this and more in this episode!

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Katherine Dean, Founder & CEO of Living Your Worth Inc., has an ambitious goal: to impact one million women with her message of financial empowerment. And its not just an audacious business goal. It’s a purpose driven statement that she hopes will impact these women’s daughters and families so that the important message of women’s financial independence becomes commonplace.

After the totally unexpected breakdown of her first marriage, Katherine had an epiphany: she was completely financially unprepared for the worst-case scenario which, at the time, was her spouse walking out. 

She was working in the financial services industry then and thought, “If this can happen to me, if can happen to anyone.” And after spending three years to get her own financial well-being in order, she started telling others about it – being vulnerable and honest about it for the first time.

And that’s when people began asking her how she did it.

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Entrepreneurship is hard.

That's a given but what most people don't realize, is just how much harder it can be for a woman than a man because men don't face as many hurdles in their road to success. Indigenous and other women of colour have many more hurdles to clear and its long past time to be talking about these problems openly.

In this episode, Janice McDonald and I get into the nitty gritty of what makes this conversation so difficult, what many incubators, accelerators, financial institutions and investors in Canada haven't yet figured out about serving their female clients, and how getting all of this right will help everyone - not just women, but the entire Canadian economy. This is not a women's problem. It's a global problem and it's going to take all of us to fix it.

I love this conversation because it focuses on Canadian women entrepreneurs and what they really want and need. Many accelerator programs these days are focusing on what they think women lack. Instead, they should try recognizing the unconscious bias that makes accessing support services difficult for women.

Janice McDonald is President and founder of The Beacon Agency, a boutique advisory firm working with innovative brands to make the good they do count. It offers customized breakthrough insights in entrepreneurship, business strategy and leadership training. She also is an Advisor for Cornell Queens EMBA program and works with international executives on New Venture/Management Consulting Projects and she is an advisor for Sprott School of Business Carleton University.

She is the co-author of two national studies on women as entrepreneurs in Canada:

1. A Force to Reckon With - Women, Entrepreneurship and Risk (2016), which debunks the myth that women are risk averse and;
2. Everywhere, Every Day, Innovating - Women Entrepreneurs and Innovation (2018), examining how and where women are innovating in Canada.

Both were conducted in partnership with Carleton University and BMO, and both uncovered systematic unconscious bias, and additional challenges women face in running their businesses that men simply don't face.

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Jenn T. Grace, in her own words, is “a get shit done kind of gal” and she excels at recognizing an opportunity that’s right for her, and going after it. Jenn even named her company, Publish Your Purpose Press, accordingly. She’s purpose-driven, purpose-centred and has a lot to teach those of us looking for how to master this discipline. She has a fabulous blog post on her site called The Power of Commitment, if you want to know more about what makes Jenn awesome.   Jokingly referring to herself early on as “The Professional Lesbian”, this line wound up being both a personal and professional stake in the ground when she realized she had insights for small businesses and corporations that no one else was really talking about: how to teach companies to market to gay people, and how gay people should market themselves. Jenn built a consulting business on this topic and hasn’t looked back.

After consulting in this space for a while, Jenn realized she was passionate about business owners who had a mission to tell a story so she founded Publish Your Purpose Press. The story of how she came up with the idea, and how it drives her decision making today around what’s really important for her, and what fits (and doesn’t) in her business is nothing short of inspiring.

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Jennifer Brown's personal diversity story isn't obvious at a glance. A blond, white woman, she admits people are often confused to find out she's the diversity & inclusion keynote for the day and they wonder why she was hired to speak about the challenges people of colour or other visible minorities have in the workplace. As a member of the LGBTQ community, Jennifer says she separated her true self from her work until she couldn't anymore.

Jennifer believes everyone has a diversity story - for some it's visible, for others it's more hidden like socio-economic disadvantage, or mental illness or even a physical disability. Today's episode is your opportunity to learn from one of North America's leading diversity & inclusion speakers and thinkers about how important it is for all of us to bring our whole selves to work.

Jennifer is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the founder, president and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Jennifer  is a highly sought-after expert on changing demographics, specific communities of identity including women, people of color, LGBT individuals, generations like Millennials, and the role of male leaders in change efforts.

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Have you ever wondered how many opportunities you've missed out on because your network is too small? I'm willing to bet most of us have. But have you ever considered the diversity of your network and how it's impacting your work, your business or your opportunities?

Amy C. Waninger is the founder of Lead at Any Level, LLC, and the author of the new book "Network Beyond Bias - Making Diversity a Competitive Advantage for Your Career". In this episode, she helps us see the risk associated with a network that's too homogeneous, how we can start to connect with those outside our current networks, and why it's so important we do so.

My personal review of her book:

"With her new book Network Beyond Bias, Amy C. Waninger offers a new perspective on expanding our networks that’s useful and practical for the most junior employee right up the ladder to the executive suite. Her advice and examples are real and actionable, and will make you wonder how you didn’t recognize your network blind spots before. Even those of us for whom diversity and inclusion is top of mind can benefit from Amy’s approach which is generous and forgiving while still reinforcing the urgent need to diversify our viewpoints, connections and partnerships."

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When I started this podcast, I imagined all my guests would be women. But David Smith breaks the mold in a unique way - as a much needed expert male voice in the gender equality conversation. I couldn't wait to meet him and hear about his work helping men learn to be better allies and more effective mentors for women at work.

David and his co-author, Brad Johnson, wrote Athena Rising - How and Why Men Should Mentor Women when they realized many of the gender equality policies and programs being implemented by the US military weren't working as well as expected and they began to research why. What they found was that the issues plaguing women at work across society (bias, stereotypes, discrimination) were affecting the ranks in the military as well. Their idea is that teaching men how to be effective allies and mentors to women at work will help everyone become better leaders and build stronger organizations.

David is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the National Security Affairs Department at the United States Naval War College. His research focuses on gender, work, and family issues including dual career families, military families, women in the military, and retention of women. A former Navy pilot, Dr. Smith led diverse organizations of women and men culminating in command of a squadron in combat and flew more than 3,000 hours over 19 years including combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

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Mary Chaney is Vice President of the International Consortium of Minority Cybersecurity Professionals (ICMCP), founder of her own law practice at The Law Offices of Mary N. Chaney - The CyberSecurity Law Firm of Texas and a former special agent with the FBI, working in the cyber crimes unit in Los Angeles. She has also had a successful corporate career in information security for companies like Discovery, Comcast, Johnson & Johnson and GE Capital. The combination of all this experience and her varied interests has led to where she is now, running her law firm and using every skill she learned throughout her career.

This episode is a fabulous opportunity to learn from a woman who spent the majority of her career in the male dominated fields of information systems and security and law enforcement. And as an African American woman, she has often been the "only" in rooms and in meetings in several ways. 

In addition to working in her law firm and at ICMCP helping to improve both diversity and inclusion (hear more about the difference in this episode) in her industry, Mary also mentors a group of about 30 young women and men in areas of confidence, leadership and more. She looks at it as a responsibility to prepare the next generation of leaders to step into their roles ready to face challenges, as and as a way to give her mentees a role model she never really had.

Mary's ideas about leadership and generosity are still, sadly, unique in our corporate world where independence and territorial behaviour still seem to rule. I know you'll be inspired by her perspective!

Dana Bookman, Founder and CEO of the Canadian Women's Baseball Association (including Toronto Girls Baseball, Manitoba Girls Baseball and Nova Scotia Girls Baseball), and co-founder of Girl Expo Canada.

This is an amazing story of a mom who couldn't find a girls-only league for her baseball loving daughter and didn't let that stop her. With zero baseball experience, she has created a blossoming league of over 600 players in three provinces that in two short years has caught the eye of the Toronto Blue Jays and landed Dana on the Canadian Baseball Network’s 2018 list of most influential people in Canadian Baseball - a list with very few women on it, that includes names like Joey Votto, Russell Martin, Justin Morneau and Alex Anthopoulos.

Dana is passionate about teaching girls (and their parents!) the benefits of participating in sports, and especially team sports. In short, Dana's approach is "Toronto Girls Baseball teaches girls how to play to win and learn how to lose. I look at this not just as sports and exercise, but as a way to create future leaders and to give them the skills that come with teamwork"

Hear how she took her new league from 42 players in 2016 to over 600 in 2018 and what she has planned for its future!

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Bola Onada Sokunbi is a Certified Financial Education Instructor (CFEI), a money expert for women and founder of Clever Girl Finance and  “Clever Girls Know – a podcast for women on all things money”.

Bola decided early in her career that she wanted to help other women be accountable for their financial independence, get out of debt, save for the future and learn how to build wealth. She watched too many of her mother's friends face financial ruin following divorces or losing their husbands and became determined to make sure her generation of women is more independent.

Her mom was a great example of this for Bola while she was growing up in Nigeria and she wants to pay those lessons forward now. She tells the story in this episode, but briefly, when her father had to retire early due to health concerns and a job loss, her mother decided to spend her personal savings to send Bola to college in Europe and the United States. She was able to save after years of spending only on what she could afford, and saving wisely from her various jobs and side gigs.

Bola took those early saving and money lessons, and personally saved $100,000 in her first three years of work after graduating from college, all on a salary of considerably less than 6 figures. To find out how, you’ll have to listen! It’s a great story of perseverance, goal-setting and independence that we’re not teaching to enough young girls.

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