What are Canada’s best traits?
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, welcoming immigrants and refugees, clean air, and a lot of wide-open spaces.
What does success mean to you?
My greatest fear when I was young was to have gone through life without having achieved anything. Success means feeling at peace with myself.
When do you feel most powerful?
When I am at one with nature.
What gives you courage?
Having confidence in myself.
What does being Canadian mean to you?
Pride in living in a free country.
Sarah Prevette
“Feminism needs to bring persistent inequality to the forefront of everyone’s minds.”
Birthplace London, ON
What age do you feel Sometimes I am shocked I’m no longer 25; sometimes I feel absolutely ancient
Occupation Entrepreneur
Book you gift most Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Favourite drink Strong black coffee
Favourite place in Canada A secret and beautifully remote lake in Algonquin Park, ON
What will it take to achieve gender parity?
We require a conscientious shift in cultural norms, and a conscious abandonment of the ridiculous assignment of gender that we apply to nearly everything: from colours to clothing, from toys to interests, from emotions to behaviours. Society itself has cultivated these ridiculous notions of “feminine” and “masculine,” propagating inaccurate descriptions of “softness” and “toughness” that are reinforced through our child-rearing practices. It’s entirely ludicrous and has grave repercussions for how we perceive one another. Until we undo these widely accepted stereotypes, we have little hope of ever realizing a true meritocracy.
You run an organization that works in schools across the country. What excites you about the future, and what worries you?
Today’s youth are facing an uncertain future; colliding factors like climate change, rising populism, and the scarcity of finite resources, alongside of technological advancements in fields like artificial intelligence, are poised to dramatically reshape the world around us.
At Future Design School, we are working to revamp the education system to ensure we’re equipping students with the skill sets they need in order to adapt, adjust, and problem solve as required. We need to infuse our youth with the creative confidence and personal impetus to innovate the many solutions that our world requires. I am continually inspired by the optimism of today’s youth and their desire to have a positive impact.
What is your vision for Canada in twenty years?
My hope is that Canada can become a global leader and role model for other nations, demonstrating how a society can thrive based on principles of intellectualism, inclusion, and sustainability. I hope we can capitalize on the momentum we currently have, and work to develop the blueprint for how to truly champion diversity, environmental stewardship, and innovation. The world needs progressive leadership and I think our country is well poised to provide it.
What is the best investment you’ve made?
My dog, Lilly. Her companionship brings me great joy.
What does success mean to you?
Having the freedom to decide how to spend my time and with whom. Real wealth is being able to dictate the journey.
Shahrzad Rafati
“Don’t worry about making mistakes. Just make them short failures. Get better at what you do.”
Place of birth Tehran
What age do you feel 21
Occupation Founder and CEO, BroadbandTV
Book you gift most Good To Great by Jim Collins
Favourite drink Watermelon tequila
Favourite place in Canada Vancouver
What will it take to achieve gender parity?
The end goals of feminism, from my perspective, have always been about equality and fair treatment.
Firm commitments by large companies for gender equality and equal pay, as well as having employees that are willing to hold their leaders to their promises, are needed to achieve full gender parity. I think that as Canadian women—who make 72 cents for every dollar that a man makes—we still have a long way to go. We’ve made this a priority at BroadbandTV. As a woman and as a leader, I wanted to make sure that we practise equal pay for equal work, and the disparity in pay across our male and female employees is less than 2 percent. Forty-three percent of our employees are now females, a 104 percent growth from 2014. A novel idea could be to require public companies, as part of their continuous disclosure requirements, to denote their gender pay stats in the same way they’re required to provide visibility and transparency in their financial reporting and key performance indicators. If it becomes a mandate for both public and private companies—and we set really good examples—then others will start thinking this is not a nice to have, but a must have.
Tell us about a time when you had to summon all of your courage.
Looking back at my childhood, during the war in Iran, there were so many evacuations happening—everything would be dropped at a moment’s notice. Countless people had to flee to safety from their residences. What was so interesting was that it didn’t really stop parents or students from investing in their future. I still went to school and wanted to learn. Eventually I made the decision to leave Iran by myself as a teenager to seek a better future in Canada. It definitely took personal courage. I left Iran and joined a new country where I had no personal infrastructure or safety net. I do believe in “no risk, no reward.” If you want to see a difference in your life, you do need to change things.
What does Canada need more of and less of?
Canadians tend to think not as big, and it’s important for entrepreneurs to think as big as possible and go after large pools of opportunity. Don’t try to solve small problems if you can solve a larger one.
What has been a defining moment in your professional life?
Professionally, becoming the largest player in our space globally. Because then you say, “Now what?” Then you have to do everything else the right way, and define and really advance the space while inspiring to achieve excellence across all levels of the organization—we’re building a quadruple bottom line business.
What message would you put up on a billboard?
My personal mantra is: “You become what you believe.” I also think you can take it a step further, and go a level deeper, to: “Have the audacity to believe, and then you become what you believe.”
What advice do you have for a young woman interested in pursuing a similar career?
If you’re a first-time founding CEO, surround yourself with good people and make sure you listen to them. Be willing to make mistakes because you’re going to learn from them quickly. Pivoting and short failures are my favourite things when it comes to both my personal and professional life.
If you were to get a tattoo of one word, what would it be?
“Believe.”
Justina Ray
“Success is resolving a problem that first seemed insurmountable.”
Birthplace London, UK
What age do you feel 35
Occupation Wildlife biologist and President, Senior Scientist of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada
Book you gift most A Primate’s Memoir by Robert M. Sapolsky
Favourite drink Margarita
Favourite place in Canada Any wilderness area with no roads within 100 km
How has your view of feminism changed over your lifetime?
I was alive and paying attention in the 1970s during the so-called “second wave” of feminism, which we all called “Women’s Liberation.” I saw feminism very much through the lens of my mother—who was one of the smartest people I have ever known—as she tried to re-enter the workforce after an eleven-year absence. Although she was able to obtain fairly high-level positions, they were always in support roles. The stories she brought home of her sexist treatment at work were astoundin
g to me, as I knew—and took for granted—her tremendous capabilities, and could not understand why these were being downplayed or overlooked. My life experience since then has included living and working in many places around the world. This has broadened my view of feminism considerably, because of my acute awareness that most women and girls of the world don’t have even the most basic of rights.
What will it take to achieve gender parity?
We need a full generation who can experience women in leadership positions across all sectors of society, so that this and accompanying leadership and management styles become the new normal.
Tell us about a time when you had to summon all of your courage.
For my PhD field research in the Central African Republic, I set up a field camp in what was just a clearing in the rainforest, thirty-five kilometres from the nearest village, by a barely-used logging road. I had never been there before the start of the project, because I had initiated this work in the Democratic Republic of Congo; at the last moment, serious civil unrest forced me to find a new field site in a different country. With no vehicle of my own apart from some bicycles and no means of communication, I was faced with the monumental tasks of establishing myself in this remote area; managing a small cadre of field assistants from the village; setting up a field project that involved figuring out how to live-trap small forest carnivores that were unknown to science; establishing a trail system to get around the jungle; and design-ing and executing a pioneer research project that would yield sufficient data in a two-year period.
What has been a defining moment in your personal or professional life?
When I was six years old, someone came to my grade one class and presented the story of whales, including the threats to this animal group. I remember this so clearly—as an awakening of sorts to the fact that we are sharing the planet with so many other creatures, and that their very survival is really up to us in the end.
What is the best investment you’ve made?
Building a family and being a mother.
What are Canada’s best traits?
Canada’s best traits by far are the gifts of the vast expanses of as yet untrammelled land and water, which are in such short supply worldwide that what we have in Canada is globally significant. This is not due to any great foresight on our part to conserve this real estate, as they hold much value from an economic standpoint; we just haven’t gotten to them yet.
If you were to write a book, what would its title be?
Changing the Paradigm: Trade-offs and Alternative Futures for Biodiversity in Canada.
Alison Redford
“I’m happy we’ve returned to being a country that welcomes people: refugees, immigrants, people who want to be part of our country.”
Birthplace Kitimat, BC
What age do you feel 52, and happy about it!
Occupation Facilitator, translator, and mediator
Book you gift most Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown
Favourite drink Variations of coffee
Favourite place in Canada My garden in Canmore, AB
How has your view of feminism changed over your lifetime?
My view has changed tremendously in the past ten years. I want to tell younger women to not play the “game.” When I started in politics, I really believed we had gotten to a point where women could succeed on their own terms. It wasn’t about playing a “gender card” or being a “token” woman. Now that I have left politics, I understand that we are far from gender parity.
I’m very happy that our prime minister considers himself a feminist and will say it, so that we now have parity in cabinet. We can say as a country that our development assistance program has a feminist agenda, which is important. My concern is that as long as it’s mainly men saying that it’s okay for there to be a feminist agenda—whether they are feminists or well-intentioned—we will still not have achieved parity.
My very engaged fifteen-year-old daughter, Sarah, says, “I don’t understand why all these really smart women in Canada are doing things around the world, but not so much in Canada, where we still need to do better.” For young women and teenagers, many social issues, such as diversity, poverty, LGBTQ rights, and gender equity, are not being dealt with as progressively as they should be.
I often think about what it will be like in a time when we don’t have to apologize for being women. We’re not there yet. What does gender parity look like? It means that women will not have to conform to a traditional style in the business world; women will be able to truly be their own personalities and have a uniquely female style of leadership and a skill set that will be valued, and even then be able to hold the most senior leadership roles in our country.
What is your vision for Canada in twenty years?
My vision for Canada in the next twenty years is that we heavily invest in building a culture that will support diversity, and particularly support girls, in becoming leaders. We need more public dialogue about how men and women differ and how that is not a bad thing. We can create a better sense of community dialogue in our public institutions that promotes those basic ideas. Canada is held up as a model for equal rights around the world. When I was in South Africa, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a standard by which South Africa judged every piece of legislation that they passed. Sometimes we forget that it is so important, and we don’t defend that value in Canada as much as we should.
If you were to get a tattoo of one word, what would that be?
I have a tattoo—it’s a semi-colon. The idea of transitioning in life. For me, it was leaving a world of being a public figure and a politician and thinking about what I wanted to do next.
Mandy Rennehan
“One woman in the trades is equivalent to an army. They are amazing!
Birthplace Yarmouth, NS
What age do you feel 35
Occupation Blue-collar CEO and founder of Freshco (not the grocery store!)
Book you gift most Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl
Favourite drink 21-year-old The Dalmore Scotch whisky
Favourite place in Canada The deck of my windmill home in Yarmouth, overlooking a lake, and the Bay of Fundy
If you had the gift of a year off, in a paused world, what would you work on?
I would launch a cross-country program to help more women get into the trades. I would start with the eastern part of Canada and move west, offering workshops and educational platforms to women specifically in rural areas to give them the tools, confidence, and training to enter the trades and start a lucrative and rewarding career. I would also put energy into changing industry hiring practices and push industry leaders to employ more women.
What message would you put on a billboard, and where?
“Stand up on your own feet, give mine back, and I’ll walk you to your destiny.” Traditional billboards are antiquated. I’d share the message on social media for anyone to access.
If you were to write a book, what would its title be?
Poor, Gay, and Funny—How’s That for a Resume?! The Mandy Rennehan Story.
What does Canada need more and less of?
Canada needs more natural visionaries and collaborators in government to lead the country into the future and truly effect change. Canada needs fewer traditionally schooled people in leadership positions who have similar backgrounds, experience, and thought processes—we need fresh thinking and fresh blood!
What advice about taking risks would you give to aspiring young female entrepreneurs?
It takes your breath away almost every day—like the feeling of falling in love times twenty! Being a risk taker sets you apart from the pack. When you pair that with business smarts and personality, it is a recipe to revolutionize any industry. My advice would be this: if you are different (and most entrepreneurs are), be brave and challenge your audacious mind to go for it! Find a woman you admire, who’s made it, and knock on her door until she listens. If you are
the real deal, any self-made woman will help because we know the world needs more of you!
If you were to get a tattoo of one word, what would it be?
I have a Japanese symbol representing “strength.”
Jennifer Reynolds
“We really have to be active feminists if we’re going to actually get there.”
Birthplace Toronto, ON
What age do you feel 35
Occupation President and CEO of Women in Capital Markets (WCM)
Favourite drink Grapefruit-flavoured Perrier
Favourite place in Canada Whistler, BC, or Banff, AB
How has your view of feminism changed over your lifetime?
I’ve always been a feminist, but while I was in university and when I graduated, I assumed that all the hard work had been done, that women had already achieved gender parity from an economic perspective. The shocker to me over the next decade was realizing that we hadn’t achieved economic equality, and that we had a long way to go to get there. I’m a much more active feminist now and I’ve realized that we all need to be active feminists. Every time we wait and think it’s fixed and don’t do anything, we just fall backwards. It’s like pushing a rock uphill. It’s not going to happen organically and it’s not just going to improve, generation after generation. We need to be intentional about it.
Canada 150 Women_Conversations with Leaders, Champions, and Luminaries Page 21