Interviews to be streamed, downloaded, or read
To find inspiration, you don’t have to look far. Local leaders are making waves in business, tech, investment, media, and beyond. We’re determined to tell their stories and share their experiences – to laugh with them and learn from them. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the Power of Why Podcast.
Host Naomi Haile is sitting down (virtually) with IWM’s featured leaders to unpack their “why” and talk about the fuel that keeps them driving forward. Tune in to each episode or take time to digest each article. They’re here for you. These women have a lot to say and we’re here for it!
“I promised myself I’d get this job the Justine way. I wasn’t going to follow someone else’s script—I was going to show up as me.”
Justine Hendricks, sits as Farm Credit Canada’s President and CEO after 17 years with Export Development Canada (EDC) and 7 years with Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Throughout her career, she has championed Canadian businesses across agriculture, agri-food, and other critical industries—helping them access the capital, risk management solutions, and strategic support they need to grow and thrive.
“It’s not just about cosmetics. It’s about economic sustainability for us all.”
Denyse Nadon is the Founder and CEO of Tribalure, a grassroots cosmetics and skincare brand rooted in Ancestral knowledge, ceremony, and community healing honoring the Seven Sacred Teachings of wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility, and truth.. An Algonquin woman from the Apitipi (Ah-PEE-tee-pee) Anicinapek Nation, a proud matriarch, Denyse isn’t just redefining beauty—she’s reclaiming it.
From an early fascination with math, physics, and aviation to leading billion-dollar programs in aerospace and defence, France Hébert has never been one to accept limits.
At 18, she joined the Canadian Armed Forces, stepping into an environment of discipline, high-stakes decision-making, and relentless problem-solving. It was there that she learned one of her greatest leadership lessons:
The biggest limitations aren’t external—they exist in our own minds.
Building a startup while in medical school sounds impossible. But Yoobin Lee, founder of Quip Medical, is making it work—not by working harder, but by working smarter. In medical school, she saw something she couldn’t ignore: Doctors losing significant revenue in unbilled work—because the system was outdated, complex, and broken.
So she started building.
For as long as she can remember, Sarah Sedgman has been fascinated by learning, creativity, and innovation. Growing up surrounded by educators and entrepreneurs, she developed a deep curiosity about how people learn best.
Instead of waiting for a solution, Sarah built one.
Growing up, Mona loved nothing more than donning her dad’s old headphones and immersing herself in his record collection for hours. She had a deep affection for the arts, theatre, and the craft of writing.
Nevertheless, she decided to pursue a career as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
From her teenage years juggling multiple part-time jobs to studying accounting— though not her passion—it provided the exposure and access to creativity she lived for. At 18, she worked at the Biological Sciences Institute, immersing herself in labs with passionate scientists and researchers. Her curiosity drove her to continue learning despite understanding only a tiny fraction of their work.
Today, Jennifer, CEO, and Co-founder Geoff MacKay are building The Aggressive Good, a technology solution that revolutionizes how people stock their pantries. Their goal? Eliminate single-use plastic packaging.
These were the words Angela Ashawasegai repeated to herself for years. They became her mantra, helping her find and build her inner strength.
Angela was removed from her mother at birth and was placed into the child welfare system. Throughout her tumultuous childhood, she had no safe place to call home. From surviving abuse and homelessness, Angela emerged as her hero, crediting her survival to education, spirituality, and art.
Today, Angela leverages her decades of training and expertise to help others empower themselves. She consults with organizations on workplace wellness, puts pen to paper on her forthcoming book, and coaches individuals on overcoming their trauma.
Here is how she identified her inner strength and resilience in adversity.
In a landscape where barriers often overshadow opportunities…
Mary Yazdani is curious about impactful results.
Drawing insights from those who have successfully carved paths before her, she studied their strategies and implemented the advice that worked. At the age of 32, she started a new life in Canada with her family.
Keira Torkko has consistently demonstrated this throughout her 25-year career across various sectors. From leadership roles in government agencies focused on science and technology research, to national sports coaching organizations and the banking sector to small technology companies early in her career. When Keira least expected it, her relationships enabled her to navigate unconventional career paths and build a compelling narrative.
Recognized as a “fixer” in the business world, Susan Odle has played a significant role in the lives of leaders grappling with complex problems through hands-on transformational change. How? By adopting the Successful Change Mindset. With a gift of discerning patterns in a business and amplifying what works, Susan’s latest entrepreneurial venture, 8020CS, and book, Successful Change, are examples of her mission in action.
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.
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.
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 why 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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
Solmaz Shahalizadeh, Shopify’s former Head of Data Science and Engineering, became a Founding Partner of Backbone Angels. There, she channels over a decade of experience leveraging data to support diverse businesses—like bringing Shopify Capital to life and getting $3 billion to entrepreneurs otherwise neglected by traditional financial institutions.
She shares 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).
Co-founder and CEO of Archipel Research and Consulting Inc. Sabre Pictou Lee is harnessing her team of experts to help organizations change for the better.
A highly acclaimed Indigenous speaker, trainer, liaison and researcher, Sabre’s company has supported the Canada Council for the Arts, Assembly of First Nations and Global Centre for Pluralism (to name a few). Today, she shares why anti-colonial ways and concepts aren’t radical, how she built her business from the ground up, and the frameworks you can apply to make yours more inclusive.
Dr. Ashleigh Kennedy co-founded health-tech startup Neurovine AI: combining deep tech, machine learning and the art of neuroscience to empower concussion patients and optimize their recovery process. Ashleigh joined us to share how she co-founded Neurovine from personal experience and professional need, why a values-based business is key to securing top talent, what it’ll take the health sector to adopt new tech, and how modern concussion treatment is helping patients do more than recover, to thrive.
She started her career on Broadway before founding fashion startup Kania Couture Inc., whose designs were showcased at New York Fashion Week, World Mastercard fashion week, and project Las Vegas. Today, Stacey Martin is the founder of Canadian luxe loungewear company Stacey Martin Lifestyle, at the intersection of sustainability, comfort and style.
Mari is the master of her fate. As CEO and founding board member for the Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu (WSC) — one of the fastest-growing non-profit communities in this space — Mari is propelling the next generation of women and girls in cybersecurity, helping them take the small, critical steps necessary to grow and protect their wealth along the way.
Pivots are just a part of the process for Julia Slanina. A graduate of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, she shifted careers from the foreign service to build stronger communities through connected, human-centred healthcare. As Founder and CEO of Treehouse Medical, she does just that — empowering maternal health care providers and mothers to raise the next generation of healthy, happy leaders.
Nita Tandon is changing the world, one household at a time. A seasoned sustainable health expert, Nita brings more than two decades of experience as a pharmaceutical and biotech professional to her work as the founder and CEO of Dalcini Stainless, an award-winning maker of safe, simple and sustainable storage containers and housewares made from recyclable, toxic-free Stainless Steel.
Joanne Bezzubetz is on a mission to de-stigmatize mental health and substance abuse. Drawing on 20 years of leadership experience in healthcare organizations across Canada, Joanne serves as President and CEO of The Royal – among Canada’s foremost mental health care and academic health science centres. Committed to community-centred treatment, Joanne has led close collaborations with partners, clients and their loved ones, to help get more people living with mental illness into recovery, faster.
Sem Ponnambalam refuses to settle on her dreams. The President and Co-founder of XAHIVE, Sem drives the businesses global operations, fuelled by her mission to empower people, businesses and nation-states from the devastating repercussions of cybersecurity breaches.
Sunshine Tenasco believes your business can positively transform your community. A First Nations mommy from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, this visionary social entrepreneur and author is committed to strengthening her community — by cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship within it, and drawing national attention to the critical issues they face.
Nasrin Sadeghianpour wants you to do the thing that scares you most. A Senior Smart Grid & AI Scientist at BluWave-ai, she has dedicated her career to overcoming climate change by leveraging artificial intelligence — predicting the patterns of renewable energies so humanity can master this earth-saving resource.
Sandra Ng isn’t going to wait for more women to access venture capital. As a founding investor and champion of Invest Ottawa x Capital Angel Network’s SheBoot, a Startup@Berkeley Law Venture Capital University alum, and limited partner with The51 Venture Fund, she’s leading the charge to bring them in.
Paula Whitelocke is synonymous with curly hair care in Ottawa, as a professional hairstylist and the owner of Curly Hair Designs. A mentor, community builder, and musician, Paula recently performed at the National Arts Centre and launched her debut single, “Never Thought” in 2019.
Naomi Haile
Naomi’s ‘why’ is to ask questions that reveal the heart.
As a human capital professional and talent strategy expert, Naomi Haile understands people. With 7+ years of experience spanning international tax compliance at the Canadian federal government to consulting at specialized boutique firms, Naomi leverages data about how people interact with systems and filters them through her unique lens to build responsible organizations. Using innovative design thinking strategies, she works with executives and their high-performing teams to co-create sustainable solutions for even the most complex of human capital challenges.
Naomi graduated from Columbia University, earning her Master’s in Human Capital Management. Through this program, she gained relevant experience aligning talent strategies to business strategies by designing and implementing talent development programs.
She is a Senior Talent Strategist, Office of the CEO at WritersBlok, a premiere celebrity ghostwriting agency hired to ghostwrite books, keynote speeches, and op-eds for some of the world’s most influential leaders. In addition to her consulting work, Naomi is the producer and host of the rising Power of Why Podcast (which boasts over 40K downloads), where she interviews top global and local industry leaders. Business Insider featured her recent interview with Netflix’s Chief of Human Resources Officer.
BDC Capital’s Thrive Venture Fund
Embedded software in high demand with Crank Software:
Crank Software helps easily develop and embed UI designs. With over 350 clients from startups to Fortune 500 companies, Crank Software has helped launch 500 million UIs. A day in the life of a Software Developer at Crank Software includes becoming an expert on its award-winning platform, Storyboard, and developing interface layers from UI to backend code. Taking home an award as one of Ottawa’s best places to work at the 2018-2019 Employee’s Choice Awards, a career at Crank Software is sure to be fun and rewarding.
DevOps are in high demand with these companies:
Evidence Partners is changing the way researchers work. Its systematic literature review system, DistillerSR, helps deliver reviews up to 60% faster than spreadsheet-based processes. The SaaS company is exploding with growth, outgrowing its last office in just four months and taking home a Best Ottawa Business (BOB) award in 2019. This growth is driving Evidence Partners to look for Fullstack Developers and DevOps Engineers that are passionate about streamlining research in the academic and medical fields. Full benefits from day one and flexible work options are just a few of the perks you get working at Evidence Partners.
K
ivuto helps schools go digital. Kivuto Cloud streamlines the management of educational resources such as e–texts and license keys, saving 20K+ schools an average of $50K. Kivuto partnered with educational giant Pearson in 2019 to bring digital education resources to academic institutions. A passion for education paired with skills in .NET Core Web API, AWS, Azure, React, SQL, and other tools and technologies make Kivuto a great place to grow your DevOps or Fullstack Engineering career.
Rewind Backups provides automated backup services, so businesses don’t lose their hard work. The development team at Rewind is made up of four teams of two to three people. Developers implement, test, document, and maintain back-end systems for high-traffic back-up services, delivering quality code and improving the development and deployment processes using AWS. A day at Rewind on the development team could look like anything from supporting Shopify’s new bulk APIs to creating Rewind-Connect; a wrapper for AWS SSM for connecting to Rewind staging and production systems. As the winner of the Ottawa Business Journal’s Employee Choice Award two years in a row, Rewind is an ideal place to work and grow.
Recently securing $10M in financing, Tehama is on the cutting edge of developing tools for the remote workforce. Tehama’s service delivery platform enables organizations to easily onboard, manage and scale a distributed workforce in a secure way. 150 companies are using Tehama. 600,000+ hours of IT services delivered. Zero breaches. Under the leadership of VP Engineering, Jacopo Toccacieli, you’ll be working as part of Tehama’s agile development team and immersed in developing new features for its cloud-based solutions. This will include helping define company-wide API standards, working in React and Angular, and having the ability to work with SQL. You’ll have the option to work remotely or at Tehama’s beautiful offices in the heart of Westboro, steps from some of the best shopping, coffee shops and restaurants in Ottawa.
Mobile developers are in high demand with these companies:
Field Effect monitors cyber threats. Amongst many organizations who trust Field Effort to safeguard their cybersecurity, Canadian Internet Registration Agency (CIRA) teamed up with this scaling Ottawa firm to deploy its new API. Talents with an agile and test-driven approach as well as skills in C/C++, Objective-C, and Java are invaluable in helping build and improve Field Effect’s key security products: Covalence, Cyber Range, and Noble. As one of the top Ottawa employers who scored the highest in the Employee Net Promotor Score Initiative commissioned by Invest Ottawa’s Scale-Up program, Field Effect is appreciated by its employees for its commitments to transparency, trust and openness.
Foko Retail helps retail stores manage tasks. Used by 60+ of the largest names in retail including Nike and Dyson, Foko Retail’s mobile-based task management software is easy to use from operations to visual merchandising. With a growing user base, Foko Retail is looking for mobile developers that are adaptable and passionate about retail and SaaS. While Foko Retail’s culture can be relaxed with office dogs and casual attire, it means business when it comes to its team, customers, and products. A competitive salary and benefits package doesn’t hurt either.
Shoebox enables hearing care around the world. It creates, sells, and supports products that help clinicians identify hearing loss. The maker of Shoebox, Clearwater Clinical, hit a huge milestone in 2018 when they entered a strategic partnership with international hearing device company Sivantos. Shoebox lives by the work hard play hard ethos, and offers an array of benefits, team sports, bean bag chairs, and video games at their Glebe Annex office. If you want to be part of a team that does well by doing good, Shoebox is looking for developers with first-hand experience in AWS hosted solutions.
Full stack developers are in high demand with these companies:
BitHeads builds custom software solutions. With an impressive roster of over 500 projects delivered to Fortune 1000 companies, a career with BitHeads is dynamic with so much room to learn and grow. You could be working on projects ranging from designing an interface for a leading forensic ballistics company to building support for a mobile game with 10 million active users— it’s truly different every day. Whether you are a full stack, server-side, or front-end developer, or prefer to validate developed software, BitHeads is in constant need of skilled resources to build games, apps, and backend support.
Field Effect monitors cyber threats. Amongst many organizations who trust Field Effort to safeguard their cybersecurity, Canadian Internet Registration Agency (CIRA) teamed up with this scaling Ottawa firm to deploy its new API. Talents with an agile and test-driven approach as well as skills in C/C++, Objective-C, and Java are invaluable in helping build and improve Field Effect’s key security products: Covalence, Cyber Range, and Noble. As one of the top Ottawa employers who scored the highest in the Employee Net Promotor Score Initiative commissioned by Invest Ottawa’s Scale-Up program, Field Effect is appreciated by its employees for its commitments to transparency, trust and openness.
Rewind Backups provides automated backup services, so businesses don’t lose their hard work. The development team at Rewind is made up of four teams of two to three people. Developers implement, test, document, and maintain back-end systems for high-traffic back-up services, delivering quality code and improving the development and deployment processes using AWS. A day at Rewind on the development team could look like anything from supporting Shopify’s new bulk APIs to creating Rewind-Connect; a wrapper for AWS SSM for connecting to Rewind staging and production systems. As the winner of the Ottawa Business Journal’s Employee Choice Award two years in a row, Rewind is an ideal place to work and grow.
Recently securing $10M in financing, Tehama is on the cutting edge of developing tools for the remote workforce. Tehama’s service delivery platform enables organizations to easily onboard, manage and scale a distributed workforce in a secure way. 150 companies are using Tehama. 600,000+ hours of IT services delivered. Zero breaches. Under the leadership of VP Engineering, Jacopo Toccacieli, you’ll be working as part of Tehama’s agile development team and immersed in developing new features for its cloud–based solutions. This will include helping define company-wide API standards, working in React and Angular, and having the ability to work with SQL. You’ll have the option to work remotely or at Tehama’s beautiful offices in the heart of Westboro, steps from some of the best shopping, coffee shops and restaurants in Ottawa.
Data scientists utilize their analytical, statistical, and programming skills to collect, analyze, and interpret large data sets. They then use this information to develop data-driven solutions to difficult business challenges. Data scientists commonly have a bachelor’s degree in statistics, math, computer science, or economics. Data scientists have a wide range of technical competencies including: statistics and machine learning, coding languages, databases, machine learning, and reporting technologies.
Companies currently hiring data scientists
Transforming our data-driven world takes talent, and MindBridge is where it’s happening. This is where you’ll take artificial intelligence to enable and inspire humans to do more and be better. Our people, our customers, and our investors agree: No one else is accomplishing what we’re doing with data-driven AI right now. Learn more and Apply.
On the most basic level, software engineers write, debug, maintain, and test software that instructs a computer to accomplish certain tasks, such as saving information, performing calculations, etc. A software engineer will convert what needs to happen into one of many programming languages, the most common of which being Java, C++ and Python.
While many are self taught, most software engineers have obtained an undergraduate or graduate degree in computer science or computer engineering. The career of a software engineer typically follows one of two primary paths: they either progress through greater responsibility and ownership over technical architecture and systems or they progress into managing teams of software engineers and help orchestrate larger projects and help develop and mentor more junior engineers.
Companies currently hiring front-end developers
Tehama is enabling the digital workplace of the future. 150 companies are using Tehama. 600,000+ hours of IT services delivered. Zero breaches. The company’s head office is in the heart of the highly desirable Westboro neighborhood of Ottawa where you have your pick of the best of Ottawa’s cafes, restaurants and shops. Prefer to work from home? Tehama offers remote working options and flexible core hours. Join a team of the best and brightest and enjoy competitive salaries, benefits and a commitment to YOUR long-term success. Learn more and Apply.
Spartan Bioscience aspires to unleash the power of DNA testing for everyone. Like the Spartan warriors of Ancient Greece, our smart, hard-working, and honorable team members get things done. Learn 10 reasons for joining Spartan and apply today.