Clearing a New Path™

I have often found it challenging to find statistics, not just about rural women entrepreneurs but also the intersection of further marginalized groups. The Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada or WEOC, is spearheading a comprehensive Canadian survey, collecting information specifically about women entrepreneurs. The survey is looking to collect individual details about access to capital, fi...

The 2nd annual StrikeUp Digital Conference for Women Entrepreneurs is coming up next month. I’m joined by two of the many dynamic speakers that will be presenting at the event. Both of these women are in rural or remote Canada. Joella Hogan is the sole proprietor of the Yukon Soap Company . The Indigenous owned and operated business, creates beautiful, hand-crafted soaps, shampoo bars, essential o...

Sascha Boulet Devost is the CEO of Capture Therapeutics (& PhysioFirst ). She started these practices with one purpose: to offer accessible healthcare for all. Her goal is to provide rural communities with accessibility to an interdisciplinary team, without being added to a waitlist. Transforming healthcare from reactive to proactive. Sascha has a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from UNB, a...

Shayna Jones is a multi-disciplinary professional spoken word artist, specializing in the traditional oral storytelling of African and Afro-Diasporic Folklore. As an award-winning actor and emerging poet and playwright, Shayna has written and performed for theatre companies, schools, and festivals across Canada. As a folklorist, Shayna combines her passion for live, theatrical performance with the...

When I put out a call for folks to suggest someone as a guest on the podcast, Stella Sehn’s name came forward. And as luck would have it, Stella was speaking at an Alberta Women’s Entrepreneur Event the following day so I signed up for the free event.  The group is called WESTEM and the event was called Inspire 2021 - Celebrating Women’s Entrepreneurship in Southern Alberta. There was a diverse gr...

In 2017, after fifteen years as a geologist and senior leadership professional in the Energy Industry, Kiersten Mohr embarked on the most significant challenge of her life: gender transition. Gender transition was life-changing in many ways. Kiersten's publicly authentic and vulnerable approach to her transition allowed her to see how authenticity in the workplace could build connection and s...

THE EQUAL FUTURES NETWORK is a national initiative through the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health or CanWaCH and it connects national, regional, community and grassroots organizations, agencies and projects from across Canada. They are all committed to advancing gender equality and to ensuring equal futures for all! As CanWaCH and Equal Futures Network CEO, Julia Anderson champio...

Heather Taylor is a fourth-year student at the University of Ottawa with a Major in Honour's English and a Minor in Public Administration.  She is a Co-Founder of Rural and Ready, alongside her two other Co-Founders, Kayla Han and Ava Kucera. Heather is the Chief Marketing Officer.  They started Rural and Ready because of their own struggle as rural high school students, and later as post sec...

Susan Wagner-White lives in rural Eastern Ontario and is a pointillism artist. Pointillism, if you’re not familiar with it, (I wasn’t) is a painting technique using tiny, distinct dots of colour, sometimes in layers, creating images. Susan is also a thalidomide survivor born with no arms. During our interview, she explains what thalidomide is, how it affected a number of children in Canada and aro...

Heather Hallgrimson is the Business Development Lead for Co-operatives First, a nonprofit organization that supports groups in creating co-operative businesses in rural and First Nations communities in Western Canada.  Her passion is helping groups find what success looks like for themselves as they start co-operative business ventures. Heather's educational background includes a BA in Lingui...

Justine Anderson says she is a folk herbalist, soap maker, artist, writer, flower sniffer, garden and cat care-taker, astrologer and tarot card reader.  She owns and operates Wildflower Co. Botanicals in rural Newfoundland in the scenic Codroy Valley, where she sells body care products and hosts workshops and retreats. The story of how Justine wound up there, though, is fascinating. She left the f...

Season Kirkwood calls herself a bit of a nomad. She spent much of her adult life, living in different cities and towns, working in different sectors to develop her entrepreneurial passions. She worked for the City of Winnipeg before leaving to pursue land-based recreation entrepreneurial development. Season provides mentorship and leadership to Indigenous communities to create and run recreation p...

Lucy Sloan is the Founder of Lil Steps Wellness Farm , an animal-assisted therapy facility in Manitoba. She and her staff work with children, youth, and adults experiencing mental health difficulties including anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  The farm offers a range of services & programs including play therapy, animal-assisted therapy/counseling, and equine-f...

Ashley O’Neil is a wildland firefighter in British Columbia. She says they had a helluva season in 2021. But not only was Ashley fighting fires, running into the flames as others were running out, but she has been growing her business,  AshFireWear When Ashley started firefighting several years ago, she was one of only a few females fighting fires in her region. There were no companies that made f...

A trigger warning: This episode makes indirect reference to domestic violence (13:30) and there is a brief reference to the discovery of thousands of children’s remains at some of Canada’s residential schools (15:40). This may trigger some of you and is in the second half of the episode if you’d like to skip that part. National Indian Residential School Crisis Line for former Residential School st...

Shivani Dhamija moved to rural Nova Scotia to be with her partner. Armed with a degree in Public Relations from Fanshawe College, she was shocked when she couldn’t find a job. She was very determined though and took jobs where she could. One of those jobs was at the Canada Games Centre and when a friend of Indian descent visited, and told Shivani a trucker friend was looking for home cooked Indian...

This year Terrena Rizzoli celebrates 10 years as an accomplished Indigenous business owner and denturist at Rizzoli Denture and Implant clinic. Not bad for someone who says she was an ‘okay’ student and that she felt she had to work much harder than most to get the grades needed for the denturist program. But now it’s a labour of love. After being in business for several years, she realizes now ju...

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