Her Megaphone

This week, I’m chatting with Michelle Ribeiro, author of Level Up. Michelle’s specialty is mental toughness – a term that’s described in the book as “the capacity to deal effectively with stressors, pressures, and challenges to perform to the best of your abilities—regardless of the circumstances in which you may find yourself.”  In our discussion, we dig into what readers are meant to take from the book, why the time felt right to create this resource, why many of us struggle with our own mental toughness, and more.

Naomi Porter is a teenage entrepreneur, public speaker, a gold award girl scout and an activist for gender equality, mental health and entrepreneurship. She is also a co-founder of Today is Her Story, an online platform all about empowering teen girls through blog posts, podcasts, and more. In our chat, we cover her experience being part of a community organization like Girl Scouts, what we should know about Gen Z, and how she balances all of her commitments with the joys of being a teenager.

This week, I speak with Mallory Greene, co-founder and CEO of Eirene Cremations. We dive into a rarely openly discussed topic: end of life planning. Why is this something we shy away from discussing like money and sex? Why do we spend so much time and effort talking about anti-aging and prolonging life, but avoid discussing the inevitable and how we want to be memorialized? What kind of systemic issues and barriers exist when it comes to end of life planning? We cover all of this and more in a fascinating conversation.

This week, I speak with Aminah Haghighi, founder of Raining Gold, a farm in Prince Edward County Ontario that is disrupting the agriculture industry. In our discussion, we chat about how she stumbled upon this career path, how she figured out making the leap from gardening hobbyist to full on farm owner, why we need to challenge the image of Old MacDonald the farmer, how agriculture intersects with sustainability, food security, racism and misogyny, why we need to look at and challenge our bigger food systems to affect meaningful change, and how she’s making Raining Gold a place to share generational and community wealth.

This week, I chat with Sheba Zaidi & Genevive Savundranayagam, co-founders of Mahara Mindfulness. We cover the foundation of their relationship and eventual business, the experience of going through this launch in a pandemic and leaving secure, steady jobs, and learn more about The Human Being Journal. From there, we talk about the commodification of mindfulness, access, and how to embrace it when it can seem so far out of reach.

This week I'm speaking with Paulina Cameron, CEO of The Forum, a Vancouver-based charity that energizes, educates, mentors and connects self-identified women entrepreneurs to be wildly successful, promoting strengthened economies and thriving communities. We chat about a big topic for business owners: raising capital. We cover where to start, the unique challenges that women face in this space, and in particular Black, Indigenous and other women of colour, how we as consumers can be a part of the solution to direct funds to deserving entrepreneurs, and more.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Faye Pang, Canada Country Manager for Xero and super savvy tech leader. Faye made her way from CPG to Uber prior to Xero, and has learned a ton along the way about working in tech as a woman, cultivating inclusivity, challenging "no" when you feel it's the right thing to do, and what it means to leverage your lived experience to reach your goals.

This week I’m chatting with Treana Peake, the found of Obakki & The Obakki Foundation. We speak on everything from what led her to philanthropy, the business and foundation, why it’s important we open ourselves up to craft cultures from around the world, slow design and sustainability, and how to become more conscious consumers.

My guest this week is Taylor Long, founder of Nomads Swimwear, a destination-inspired swimwear brand that caters to women from size small to 4X (soon to be XS to 5X) and has strong advocacy roots for greater inclusivity in the fashion industry. In today’s chat, we dive into her experience at design school and with modeling, what motivated her to leap and take Nomads from a class project to a full-fledged business, how she’s navigated size-inclusive advocacy and activism, and what’s next for Nomads.

My guest today is Fatima Zaidi, co-founder and CEO of Quill, a company that specializes in – get this – podcasts. Our conversation today, however, really focuses on her journey so far and how she’s learned from the experiences of living that hashtag hustle life throughout her career. We dive into dismantling that belief that success has to equal sacrifice, and why you really can pursue the career of your choice or build a business without losing sight of your health, your relationships, life experiences and more.

In this episode I speak with registered dietician Abby Langer about her book Good Food, Bad Diet. We dig in to ditching diet culture, why that's a big process and journey to embark on, and some ways we can begin to take positive steps forwards for ourselves and for each other. If you are living with or in recovery from an eating disorder, this episode is not recommended listening. For more information and resources on ED treatment, check out: Canada National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) https://nedic.ca/ NEDIC Helpline 1-866-NEDIC-20 Eating Disorders Association of Canada https://edac-atac.com/ USA National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA)https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/ (Online chat available) NEDA Helpline 1-800-931-2237

For our first episode of 2021, I'm speaking with Xenia Chen, founder of Threads, a company that sells tights that came from her own experience and frustration with tights and nylons while working in a corporate environment as an investment banker. Xenia and I cover her journey to building her business, why she tackled tights in the first place, how creating intimate products for women ties into the conversation around body neutrality, her advice for others who are considering making similar leaps, and what she hopes to do with the company going forward.

My therapist Abby Rozen joins me to have a discussion around therapy itself, why there still seems to be so much stigma wrapped around it, how we can work towards making it sincerely accessible (in particular for some of the most marginalized folks in our community), and how we can all work to be more compassionate and caring for ourselves and for others.

In this episode, I'm chatting with Kirsten Walkom, an established global communications leader who specializes in crisis, reputation and issues management. We chat about taking chances and trusting your gut, cultivating confidence and conquering imposter syndrome, and crisis management for ourselves in a time where it feels like everything is in crisis.

Brittany Rhodes is the creator and founder of Black Girl Mathgic, a movement to increase math confidence, fluency, agency, identity and enthusiasm in young people, and in particular black children. Her flagship product is the Black Girl MATHgic Box, the first and only monthly subscription box designed to increase math confidence and decrease math anxiety in girls on a 3rd-8th grade math level. We spoke the birth of the company, her own love for math and years of tutoring young people, why we need girls in STEM, and what it was like when Beyonce Knowles Carter herself put her company on beyonce.com. https://blackgirlmathgic.com/

This week I speak with menstrual health expert & holistic nutritionist Amanda Laird on all things periods. We chat about a pretty wide spectrum of things, including how to become better in tune with our own cycle and recognizing it as a vital sign, how period politics should really be viewed simply as a lens to greater political and societal issues, and how taking steps to better understand our own menstrual health can ultimately be a gateway to body autonomy, giving it what it needs and using that level of radical self care as a form of resistance. More on Heavy Flow: Breaking the Curse of Menstruation http://amandalaird.ca/heavy-flow-breaking-the-curse-of-menstruation/

This week I speak with social workers Susan Bascillo and Yemi Otukoya, founders and administrators of the Black Mental Health Matters fun in Toronto (now officially a non-profit organization). The fund first made waves back in June of this year, as it launched on GoFundMe in response to the renewed focus on the Black Lives Matter movement to fulfill a need for Black-led healing in the city of Toronto. It quickly gained significant traction and as its now reached over $228,000 in funds raised, its ability to serve the Black community has grown exponentially while simultaneously highlighting just how significant the need for this kind of care and service to exist both in Toronto and beyond. We dive in today on Susan and Yemi’s individual journeys that led them to doing social work, what the fund is doing at present and what’s in store for the months to come, and how those listening can continue to fund and support these efforts both here in Toronto and in their own cities. IG: https://www.instagram.com/blkmhmatters/ Donate: gf.me/u/x5yjp2

On this week's episode, I speak with Sarah Kwan, co-founder of Lean In Canada. We discuss the organization's relevance today, the work they’re doing, why women continue to be engaged with it, and how it continues to shift as the world around us does. We openly discuss some of its shortcomings, and what the future holds for the organization so it can champion inclusivity and supporting women with all kinds of hopes and dreams.

Brenna O'Malley is a Registered Dietician based in New York who specifically works with women to break free from unhealthy diet patterns and heal their relationship with food and their bodies. In today’s episode, Brenna and I specifically talk about how we can challenge diet culture in our own day-to-day live and why women tend to have such complex relationships with food. We also talk about how COVID19 has put such a magnifying glass on this conversation and, for many of us, our own insecurities here, and ways we can work on unlearning the unhealthy messages and patterns that really don't serve us in the long run.

This week I'm chatting with Heather Morrison, co-founder and CEO of sex toy company Handi. Heather and her brother Andrew Gurza are completely disrupting the sex toy industry and filling a gap for an otherwise ignored community - those with hand limitations that make it extremely challenging to enjoy a basic human right, sexual pleasure. We chat about the company’s work, where they’re at in development, and how we can all do a little better to be more mindful and amplify the message of inclusivity and accessibility here. Additional Links https://www.thatshandi.co/ http://www.andrewgurza.com/