Women of Innovation: Look How Far We’ve Come!
On March 8th, we held an International Women’s Day celebration to honour some remarkable women in the London business community and hear how they got to where they are today. While some of us have had pretty clear-cut career paths, a lot of us have not, and our speakers highlighted some of their peaks, valleys, twists, and turns to enlighten and inspire a packed (Round)house.
Those of you who have been following along since our chapter relaunch and attended our London events know that we have designed our gatherings around three pillars: network, learn, and teach.
Network.
The London WCT-FCT community has embraced purposeful networking, and this event did not disappoint as new faces were welcomed by some of our regular attendees, and new connections created a tangible buzz. We kicked the evening off with great conversation, refreshing brews (thanks Steam Whistle!), and tasty sandwiches from Wich is Wich. And that was just the beginning….
Learn. Teach.
Celebrating women is just as much about applauding success as it is about empowering those who need a boost. Our first speaker, Diane Wiles, introduced us to some inspiring work that the London InterCommunity Health Centre is doing to help remove barriers for refugee and immigrant women returning to school in Canada. The Women Empowering Women Scholarship program helps professional women to get the schooling they need to work in the professions they were practicing in before they arrived. Of the ten women who have gone through the program to date, nine are working in their original professional fields.
Next up, Liz Gray shared her journey to becoming a respected educator with the Lawrence Kinlin School of Business at Fanshawe College. The only woman in her department when she started teaching 17 years ago, Liz has pioneered Search Engine Marketing and Google Analytics coursework at Fanshawe and built a direct connection with Google so that she could bring an AdWords spending allowance into the coursework to keep students engaged. Liz was proud to celebrate her impressive roster of former students who have started businesses, gone on to exciting jobs at Google, and placed first in the Google Online Marketing Challenge. In her own growth Liz, regularly takes time learn and keep the circle of learning alive by working with people she has taught in the past, like ATMOS Marketing (a division of Northern).
Another pioneer, Mona Lam-Deslippe’s started and grew MLD Solutions from a strong foundation of lifelong learning, integrity and caring. She was supposed to be a piano teacher, but knew it wasn’t the right path for her. As it happened, teaching was still in the cards as she started out leading a WordPerfect course (just after graduating from the typewriter!). By learning as she went and acting with integrity, Mona has navigated new technologies, challenging partnerships and changing markets to build a successful business (she even kicked off the day with a major product sale). Mona has grown a business that features two products (Edge4 and Mosaik Online), a great relationship with Microsoft and a caring team that eats together daily and was proud to show their support in the front row at our event.
Trisha Beausaert, Voices.com’s PR pro, knows how to forge her own path, too. Inspired by Sex and the City’s Samantha, Trisha knew she wanted to be in PR, and she hacked her degree at Western University to get there. Trisha had some great stories of both strength and vulnerability as she shared how asking for exactly what she wanted and letting people know when she needed help removing barriers led her to great roles at London Hydro and the London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) before landing her dream job at Voices.com. The thing about going after what you want is that sometimes you learn your true values along the way; while Trisha loved the experience of working in Manhattan for a couple of months and building some great media relationships, she’s learned she’s not a Samantha. Her #LDNONT pride won out, and she’s happy to be here with the local Voices team.
As another woman of action, Colleen Sharen has navigated a varied career to learn her essential truth: she likes to think and get shit done. She has worked in government, where there is a lot of thinking. She has worked in the nonprofit space, where a lot needs to get done and action is a constant. She learned what did and did not work for her in the private sector, in larger organizations and startups. She found her place as a professor at Brescia University College, where she gets to write, think, and talk for a living. As a tenured professor, she gets to do what she wants to do and she doesn’t have to do what she doesn’t want to. Colleen’s thoughts on teaching also served to tie all of our talks together as she noted that all of our speakers were teachers in one way or another, and that teaching is a way to engage and make a difference. It shapes leadership, it creates opportunities for discovery, and creates the space of innovators and activators to thrive so we can be and see the change.
Look How Far We’ve Come…
Colleen’s thoughts do an excellent job of summing up the evening’s talks. On behalf of all of our speakers, we have made a donation to the Women Empowering Women Scholarship. We are grateful to all of our excellent speakers, our sponsors, and all of our attendees for creating such a vibrant celebration of International Women’s Day and our biggest event to date. Stay tuned for more about our next event.
