Kristi Herold . Founder and CEO, Toronto Sport & Social Club
Kristi Herold . Founder and CEO, Toronto Sport & Social Club
During a recent Sunday evening at a school gym in Toronto, the Ninja Monkeys, a co-ed floor hockey team comprised of five women and seven men who have played together for nearly a decade, nailed their competition to the wall. Then they headed to a nearby bar to celebrate their 13–9 win with a round of drinks.
Team captain Tammy Symes, a 39-year-old recreational athlete, loves to play sports so much she signs up for two softball teams and two floor hockey teams each year, sometimes adding in ultimate frisbee or soccer for an extra dose of fun. “I’ve made so many friends, it’s unbelievable,” said Symes. She also gets to flex her leadership skills, serving as captain for most of the teams she plays on.
Supporting all that healthy fun and personal growth is a unique business model. Kristi Herold founded the Toronto Sport & Social Club in 1996. She had competed on rowing and ski teams at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., but when she graduated and moved to Toronto, she fell into an accessibility gap in recreational sports—especially for women.
“I thought maybe I could play soccer. But at the time, the only soccer I could find for women was highly competitive,” said Herold during a recent interview at the company’s Toronto office. “I couldn’t play at that level.” Yet she also couldn’t imagine her post-university life without sports. “If you go and play after work, you’re going home happier, you get a little sweaty, you’ve had some laughs on the field. You’re going to be less stressed, and your health is going to be better.”
Herold, who ran two small businesses while completing her commerce degree, seized on the gap in recreational sport for adults as an opportunity to launch her own company. “I realized I had to go out and do something on my own,” said Herold, who sports an athletic build, wild curls, and a ready smile. “I’d heard about these clubs in the US and I thought, well, I’ll give it a try.”
That was back in the analogue days, so Herold called up friends and friends of friends to see if they might be interested in playing on a co-ed sports team in a downtown location. She explained her idea as “intramurals for people who aren’t in university anymore.” By targeting recent graduates who faced the same lack of sporting options she encountered, Herold managed to sign up 52 co-ed teams that first season to play soccer, ultimate frisbee, flag football, basketball, and beach volleyball.
She charged $350 per team for the season, signed Spalding and Wilson as equipment sponsors, and launched a sporting enterprise that, 23 years later, has 130,000 annual participants playing about 30 sports. It employs some 50 full-time and 250 part-time staff, has expanded to eight Canadian cities, and can boast of being one of the largest sports and social clubs in North America.
Even in her first year running the future sports empire, Herold knew she was on to a good thing. “I was out at games every night…and showing up at sponsor bars afterward to make sure everyone had a good time.”
The concept is relatively simple. Players pay to play for a season that runs about 12 weeks. They can join either as an individual or a group can sign up as a team. Sport & Social Club handles all the organizing: matching individuals with a team, providing equipment, setting rules, creating a schedule, renting venues, tracking standings, and arranging social gatherings.
There are single-sex, co-ed and open leagues. The goal is to make it welcoming to anyone, regardless of skill or experience, with an emphasis on fun and making friends. On co-ed teams, there must be a minimum number of both men and women in play at all times. As Symes said, “If you join, you get played, and you have a good time.”
Said Herold: “I wanted to show it was possible to start something that everyone can play.”
When her business proved to have legs that first year, she formed a 50/50 partnership with her boyfriend, Rolston Miller. He had recently retired as a semi-pro cyclist and was looking for flexible work. As the company had no money for stamps, his first task was to deliver printed flyers that promoted seasonal registration. He did that, of course, by bike.
The two married later that year. Miller focused on building a digital platform for the company that would eventually become the foundation for internal and external communications. Herold led the business as CEO. “We were really hustling,” said Herold. “We grew by word of mouth, didn’t spend much on marketing.”
One of the club’s earliest hires was Rob Davies, an operations whiz. In 2007, Herold and Miller invited Davies to buy into the company, which is now run by the three partners, with Herold as CEO, Davies as president, and Miller as director of marketing.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Herold and Miller were struggling to manage a growing family with three young children. They found ways to distribute the workload at home according to practicality, rather than gender expectations. Still, Herold often felt overwhelmed. She’d grown up in Sudbury; her father was an entrepreneur and her mother stayed at home. “I grew up wanting to be both of them, which was challenging,” said Herold. “I felt I was failing, both as an entrepreneur and a parent.”
That crisis led Herold to take bold action. In 2005, she decided to step away from the business for 16 weeks of the year. She did that for several years. It wasn’t easy, but it seemed possible, Herold said, because of her innate leadership style, which she described as “bottom up.”
“I like to think of me as the base of a tree. I’m here to support. I say, tell me what I can do so you can go and do your work. It’s not me, standing on top, talking down.”
She and Miller divorced in 2012 but they’ve maintained their business relationship.
Now, after a decade of focusing on family while Herold placed the business in a slow-growth mode, she’s back in her CEO chair full-time. And she has a new goal of getting one million people off the couch, which means leading the company into an era of ambitious expansion.
Over the past two years, Sport & Social Group has expanded into new markets by buying up clubs that were already operating in Ontario and Michigan. Leaning on the parent company’s infrastructure and its custom digital platform, the newly acquired clubs can sign up and retain more members than they had previously. More acquisitions are in the works.
In the #MeToo era, ambitious growth in the sport industry comes with a responsibility to create a safe place for women. Herold aims to create gender balance—in the workplace and at play. Currently, about 40 percent of the club’s staff is female. And about 45 percent of its membership is female. Herold celebrates those stats in the male-dominated sporting industry.
So far, the company has not faced harassment issues, but Herold wanted to be ahead of the issue and hired an old friend from Queen’s University, Bay Ryley, to deliver online training for employees, teaching them how to identify and report harassment.
Sport & Social Group’s also developed gender policies that are trans-inclusive. Such measures are particularly important in co-ed sport, with teams required to have a minimum number of both genders in play at all times. For example, on the soccer field, two of six players must be women and two must be men. The other two can be any gender.
To register in single-sex or co-ed leagues, players can self-identify as either male or female at registration. Those who don’t identify a gender when they register are welcome to play, though their teams may not count them as either men or women to meet gender requirements. In open leagues, there are no gender requirements.
Within Herold’s expansion plans is a mission to improve access to sport for children. The company has started a foundation called Keep Playing Kids and aims to connect adult mentors—including Sport & Social members—with kids who need sport support. “We know that if you play when you’re younger, you develop a love for it, and you’re more likely to play as an adult,” says Herold. “We want everyone to keep playing.”
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In the span of four months, Cherry Rose Tan was involved in a major car accident, lost her brother unexpectedly on Christmas Day, and found out her mother had stage three cancer. Her grief was unlike anything she had ever felt before, so she decided to turn to her colleagues in the tech industry for support. But she didn’t know where to go or who to talk to. That’s when she realized the sad truth: Nobody in tech talks about this stuff.
So Tan, an executive coach in Toronto who helps entrepreneurs get past their personal and professional roadblocks, started For Founders By Founders in 2018. She defines it as a movement to get tech founders, investors, and executive directors to talk to her about their mental health struggles—and agree to publish their story online.
“There’s some serious mental health breakdowns and emotional suffering that happens in my industry,” says Tan. “People come to a point in their success where they’ve spent so long in a place of drive and doing and achieving more, that they’re really disconnected from their emotions and what it means to be human.”
Tan wanted to end this systemic silence, but prompting entrepreneurs to open up about their struggles wasn’t easy. Says Tan: “One investor said to me, ‘I love what you’re doing, but I need to be real with you. I don’t think you’re going to get a single person to pledge their mental health story.’”
She refused to believe that. “We don’t have to settle for an industry where the best we can do is have founders cope with alcohol and drugs and do their healing in bathrooms.”
Tan knew she was tapping into something huge. Research by psychiatrist Dr. Michael Freeman, who specializes in mental health issues and illnesses among entrepreneurs in the US, found that 72 percent of entrepreneurs struggled with mental health. They were also twice as likely to suffer from depression and experience suicidal thoughts than non-entrepreneurs.
People may go into entrepreneurship for the freedom it can offer, but what’s rarely discussed is how often that journey comes with seemingly insurmountable stress, burnout, and crippling loneliness. Stigma and shame around mental health often keeps people from getting treatment when they need it.
To start her venture, Tan reached out to a few people she knew had gone through something deeply personal and asked them if they were willing to talk about it in a one-on-one interview. It took four months before she secured her first subject (or champion, as she likes to call them); within a year and a half, she had convinced 65 people to share their stories, including CEOs of multi-million-dollar companies. Tech leaders opened up about an array of challenges: abusive families, postpartum depression, eating disorders, painful divorces, losing a parent, the immense pressures of running a company, and being responsible for so many people’s livelihoods.
So far, Tan has published 20 of those stories online at pledgeyourstory.com. She is currently working on a podcast slated for release in November, which will feature one-hour intimate conversations with tech entrepreneurs about their personal mental health experiences.
Says Tan: “One of the most impactful stories was from a founder who I really respect. Super accomplished, serial founder. This person shared with me a story about their breakdown, a time when things were so, so, so bad that they didn’t know if they would survive until the next day. This person told me the reason they’re alive and doing the work they do is because of one person who changed their life and said, ‘I’ll be the person who will hold the space and listen to your story.’ It just reminded me that this work really matters.”
As a for-profit social enterprise, Tan is able to do this work while generating revenue by crafting mental health strategies for founders and investors, speaking at companies and conferences, and providing mental health training at the executive level.
Tan’s forum is particularly useful for female founders who often face even more pressures. They struggle with being taken seriously, securing funding, finding a supportive network, combatting discrimination, coping with imposter syndrome—you name it. For Founders By Founders gives women entrepreneurs an outlet to openly talk about their struggles without shame, judgment, or guilt. Says Tan: “There’s a lot of masculine energy in this industry, and I feel like that’s why so many people are suffering is because they don’t have a connection to this softer side of themselves.”
Throughout her interviews, Tan noticed other patterns emerging. For instance, she discovered that anxiety and imposter syndrome tend to creep up when founders raise their first round of funding. And when founders exit their company, they often feel like they’ve lost their sense of identity and fall into depression and grief.
So now Tan is creating a playbook for tech founders that will lay out a roadmap of what to expect with their emotional and mental health journey from startup to acquisition.
“I’m really excited about this playbook,” says Tan. “I want to show people the way out of emotional suffering.”
If you are in an emergency, in crisis or need someone to talk to, please use these hotlines or call 911 immediately.
“Life-changing book. It talks about a nine-figure tech founder who decided to let go of control (as a paradigm for success), and how his life transformed on every level because of it. What happens if we start trusting ourselves and life, instead of fighting it? I found it powerful for shifting my perspective with adversity.”
“One of my favourite mindset books of all time. Written by the founder of the world’s largest real-estate firm, it explores the question: What is the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? It has been important for my mental health and in keeping me focused on what is most important.”
This article was generously sponsored by Startup Here Toronto
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Leaders of entrepreneurship support organizations talk an encouraging game about diversity, inclusion, and gender equality. Accelerators, incubators, investor groups, and even policymakers seem passionate about “equity over everything,” saying that it’s “good for the economy” and “simply the right thing to do.”
For women (and I use the word “women” with intersectionality and gender-queer/trans inclusivity in mind), it seems that the sea change we have been advocating for has finally arrived.
But, while formal talk on the outside suggests enlightenment, the hard truth is that the informal talk—and ergo experience—on the inside still remains largely Neolithic. It is not uncommon for women entrepreneurs in mainstream co-ed programs to hear:
“No one here sees gender—just the merit of the opportunity!”
“Men can’t help it—we’re wired to think of women that way.”
“If we accommodated your request, we’d have to accommodate everyone’s.”
“We tried to find qualified women founders.…”
“Are you sure that actually happened?”
“Oh, sorry, did we forget to invite you to that meeting”
“You don’t want venture funding or an exit? We don’t do ‘lifestyle’ businesses here.”
And my personal fave: “It was just a joke.”
The double speak is confusing—and deeply concerning. We are sold an inclusive nirvana at the door, but experience the thousands-year-old patriarchy on the inside.
On the one hand, it is widely acknowledged that women entrepreneurs matter to the tune of $150 billion in untapped economic potential. If we could only find time to address systemic barriers.
On the other hand, women entrepreneurs continue to be told we still don’t really belong. We are too difficult. Bitchy. Soft. Or our venture ideas are not innovative enough.
If we dare complain about unfair practices, give personal examples of discrimination, or try to explain how the program doesn’t work for us, we are told that our opinions are simply that—unsupported by the evidence (“Look at our mission statement again!”). They imply we are being too sensitive and downright destructive (“Hey, we’re a team here!”).
If we think this is new, think again. Simone de Beauvoir wrote 100 years ago when she presented her ideas to male colleagues, notably her collaborator and lover Jean-Paul Sartre. “I struggled with him (Sartre) for three hours. I had to admit I was beaten: I had realized, in the course of our discussion, that many of my opinions were based only on prejudice, bad faith or thoughtlessness, that my reasoning was shaky and my ideas confused.” She concluded by saying she was no longer sure what she thought “or even if I think at all.” She noted that she was “completely thrown.”
Simone de Beauvoir was one of the leading intellects of her generation—and no shrinking flower. There is a word for what she was experiencing. It’s called gaslighting. Women entrepreneurs are experiencing the same phenomenon—and it’s seriously sabotaging economic growth and human potential.
Gaslighting 101
The term “gaslighting” stems from a 1938 stage play (and a 1940 movie of that name) about a husband who tries to convince his wife that she is crazy by repeatedly flickering the gas lights and, when she notices, denies the light is flickering at all. Psychologists use the term to describe tactics that are used repeatedly, in commonplace ways, to undermine a person or entire group’s perception of reality by denying facts, their experience, the true nature of the environment around them, and their feelings, until the target begins to question their own sense of reality and wonders, “Am I the problem?” The manipulative technique is effective in personal, group, and even whole society levels (think Trump).
How Gaslighting Kills Potential
From my work in the Ontario startup and innovation space, I meet hundreds of fully formed, self-aware, talented, growth-minded women entrepreneurs of all ages. Before deciding to pursue entrepreneurship—often to escape sexism in the workplace or low paying jobs—these women were successful students, had fruitful careers (while often caretaking for the family), and they did their homework. They have strong opinions, identified market gaps, defined goals. They know who they are and what they are capable of. They can stretch a dollar as far as the moon.
That’s how they arrive: eager and looking to benefit from the heavily advertised supports for entrepreneurs.
Then, after engaging with acclaimed mainstream innovation centres and founder programs, they begin second-guessing their business idea, even questioning what they want and who they are. The curriculum and culture alienates rather than motivates. Minified, they feel fruitful rage one day and trustingly surrender the next. Some eventually rein in their ambition, scale back their dreams, or get a job. Others are so discontented by overarching masculine cultures and support structures geared to prioritize STEM innovation and promote venture capital deal flow at the expense of all else that they decide they are better off finding their own way and aligned kinsfolk out in the grassroots level economic wilds where sadly access to capital, talent, and power networks can be even more difficult to tap. Fueled by Orphan Black style hopepunk and female empowerment books, most fearlessly persist but remain energetically plagued by self doubt. “I didn’t fit. I’m the problem. Not the system.”
That’s how a target of gaslighting thinks and talks. Was the diminishment intentional? Given the economic imperative, does that even matter?
Gaslighting experts say that what’s important is to first, recognize the problem. And second, to go after the facts.
Gender Talk, Without the Walk
Studies comparing women to men in the innovation and entrepreneurship space are abundant and continue to show that women remain systemically under-capitalized, under-represented, and under-supported in startup ecosystems across North America.
Curiously, researchers rarely look at the flip side of that coin: how the ecosystem (not just individuals) is performing (or failing) when it comes to supporting diversity, inclusion, and gender equity.
When ecosystem level study does emerge, it’s worth noting.
Only 44% of the 117 small business support organizations surveyed even consider gender and diversity in recruiting or selecting clients.
Of those that consider gender and diversity in their programming, only a handful provided evidence of substantive programs.
The definition or criteria for what qualifies as a supportable entrepreneurial idea continues to skew towards STEM and ideas that have the potential to renew or remake male-led sectors. A good example: an analysis of the Ontario Research Fund, which is mandated to promote research excellence in areas of strategic value to Ontario, showed that 88% of the money 2006-2015 went to men largely because what is considered most valuable is research in STEM-based areas.
More than 68% of startup incubators do not provide gender equity, diversity, and inclusion training for staff or their founder clients.
Almost none of those surveyed had meaningful wrap-around supports for women, particularly those facing barriers, such as child care.
Women only account for 29% of Ontario’s startup incubator board positions.
Only 3.4% of incubators make accommodations for specific demographic groups.
Only 117 (20%) of the 686 incubators and support organizations in Ontario took the time and initiative to participate in the study, an indication of the lack of importance they really place on this issue or their reluctance to report.
And, perhaps the most telling of all, most Ontario business support organizations, whether public or private, do not collect gender or other intersectional data to inform program design or evaluation.
A prime example of an organization that does not take gender issues in innovation seriously is the Ontario Centre of Excellence (OCE) network, the 30-year-old crown jewel in Ontario’s innovation ecosystem with 19 innovation centres across the province and, until its budget was recently cut, had a $277 million dollar annual operating budget. That publicly funded organization neglected to systematically collect gender and diversity data and failed to publicly report how many women-owned firms benefited from its $514 million in startup investments, let alone $1.7 billion in follow-on investments. A 60-page independent Deloitte study in September 2018, which aimed to prove the organization’s performance as a valuable economic engine, included no single statistic, mention or metric that relates to how well the organization served women or diverse entrepreneurs.
Insiders at OCE say that while its organization has worked successfully to improve workplace diversity within its own operations over the past several years, there has been no emphasis on a gender lens–based program assessment. Those who have tried to champion it say it was a lonely ride, and that interest only perked up once the federal Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) funding ($2B) announcements came out.
OCE’s manager of media relations, Andrew Robertson, says gender-specific data was collected for two of its 30+ programs and streams over the years. Under the SmartStart Seed Fund, 45% of fund recipients had at least one woman on the executive team. And over two-thirds of the Ontario Social Impact Vouchers (OSIV) were women-led. However, these statistics were not considered important enough to be included in their annual report.
At present, the SmartStart program is still technically active but closed for applications. The OSIV fund is no longer active.
When OCE’s budget was unfortunately slashed, no wonder Ontario’s approximately 450,000+ women entrepreneurs, on hearing the news, understandably heaved a big “meh.”
When looking at the broader context, it is useful to note that major incubator and accelerator ratings systems like UBI Global, a Stockholm-based research and advisory firm (with only two female board members out of 10) that rates and ranks over 700 university incubators, has 2020 KPIs that do not include diversity or gender metrics.
Is That Light Flickering? Yes, It Is—but Why?
Dr. Barbara Orser, Telfer professor and project leader of “Strengthening Ecosystem Supports for Women Entrepreneurs” (dubbed the i2 report), says that a few organizations are doing terrific, leading edge work. However, on the whole, creating inclusive support services for women entrepreneurs within mainstream innovation and entrepreneurship organizations has a long way to go. Institutional barriers to women’s enterprise growth are still not taken seriously—and it’s an important explanation for the lack of progress. Many leaders also assume that all are welcomed or that all feel welcomed, but this is not enough.
Orser adds that research shows that startup leaders tend to self-appoint themselves experts, over relying on instinct, personal experience, and DIY approaches. They significantly undervalue the expertise required to develop programs to address systemic gender issues required to make real change. You can spot that DIY guy out on the field and on stages, citing his qualifications, commitment, and experience as, “I have two daughters and a wife.”
Ironically, the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy fund may have, as an unintended consequence, actually amplified the gaslighting problem. Suddenly, with that grant money available, entrepreneur support organizations of all kinds self-declared themselves as experts on gender and on designing programs supporting women and diverse groups, even though they had no prior track record, evidence of expertise, or success in helping women’s businesses succeed.
Giving money to such organizations will simply perpetuate the massive gender gaps in entrepreneurship.
We need to find real ways to grow women-led businesses in ways that truly work for women, according to Heather Gamble, founder and CEO of Women on the Move, a women entrepreneur growth accelerator. “We [Canada] have a f*cked up definition of innovation,” says Gamble. “There’s such a heavy reliance on technology, such a narrow view across the board.”
For the kind of change we need, Gamble points to the New Zealand prime minister’s recent pledge to elevate the importance of well-being in that country. “Considering how entrepreneurial people are in New Zealand and given that many women entrepreneurs are in the well-being and caregiving space, that will likely translate into more support for women entrepreneurs in those sectors,” says Gamble. “So how do we expand the definition of innovation and elevate innovation spend in areas such as well-being in this country?”
Dr. Wendy Cukier, project co-leader for the i2 report, believes manifesting real and meaningful change requires a multi-level ecological, coordinated approach and a lot more accountability. “We need deep, systems-level change and a multi-layer strategy because the barriers women [and people with intersecting barriers] face are, themselves, multi-level. We have stereotypes, values, and beliefs that shape expectations, eligibility criteria that skews which ideas get funded, and who gets counted as an entrepreneur and who doesn’t. All these challenges have to be addressed because they, in turn, inform what intermediary organizations do.”
How Do We Turn Up All the Lights?
The report recommends that we need to build equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) assessment criteria into all future funding requests, establish funding to help small organizations access EDI training, and mandate innovation centres to support all types of innovation (process, organizational, marketing, and across all sectors) and not just product innovation in tech sectors. The researchers would also like to see more collaboration between mainstream and women-focused support organizations and increased expert support for women-led scale-ups.
Cukier agrees with Orser that, ultimately, the Ontario government needs to put more pressure on small business support organizations to take diversity and inclusion issues seriously. Translation: no strategy, no gathering of data, no holding leadership accountable, no public funding.
How Do We Stop the Gaslighting?
While most agree the i2 report contained no real surprises regarding the true state of support for women and diverse entrepreneurs in Ontario, industry leaders and other participants at its reveal were enthusiastic about its potential to inspire a new round of activism, perhaps leading to real change.
Orser urged woman entrepreneurs in an incubator or accelerator program to share the report with program managers and incubator leaders—and ask them to formally respond. “You can organize an in-house discussion group to create space for reflection of your organization’s performance. Use the links to resources provided and help educate the management team. From there, look at the gender nature of the initiatives and think how every service or program can advance D&I and gender equity in the program—and beyond.”
Cukier added that we are “in a special moment, a window of time that has opened” in terms of support for the advancement of women entrepreneurs in this country. But it can always flicker again. So, we cannot afford to squander the moment.
The Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC) is an association of women’s enterprise centres working to advance women-led ventures for over 20 years—and they have the research statistics to prove it.
Sandra Altner, chair of the WEOC board for the past eight years, says that with $2.6 million in new funding from WES, the organization can now offer greater support, knowledge sharing, development of partnerships/collaborations, as well as help co-develop more effective mechanisms to support diverse entrepreneurs in Ontario and across Canada.
Based on the i2 research findings, this news could not come at a better time. If well-fuelled support organizations like MaRS, OCE, and Communitech can’t move the dial, perhaps a WES fund–strengthened coalition of Ontario’s previously ghettoized women’s support networks will do the job—and do it right this time.
It comes down to this: If we want to realize the economic growth that women entrepreneurs are capable of generating, we need to stop gaslighting women entrepreneurs and cultivate an enterprise support system that delivers on the inside what it talks about on the outside.
How to Help Stop Gaslighting in Entrepreneurship Ecosystems?
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In 2016, LiisBeth founder and publisher, PK Mutch, attended Startupfest in Montreal and wrote a critical piece about the rabid bro-preneurship on display and stunning lack of diversity in programming and speakers. (See Problem Bro-preneurship)
Festival organizers contacted Mutch a few months to discuss concerns her article raised – as well as the subsequent public reaction.
Two years later, I had the opportunity to attend Startupfest and discovered that the conference had improved by leaps and bounds on the diversity front.
As part of its inclusion initiative, Startupfest offered 1,000 discounted tickets for entrepreneurs from under-represented communities. This made it possible for me — and others like myself — to attend the much-hyped conference in Montreal, alongside 6,500 other attendees. According to Philippe Telio, founder and producer of Startupfest, about 600 Inclusion Initiative tickets were purchased. Which begs the question, why were the other 400 not snapped up?
There’s More to Gender Parity Than Numbers
As a way to support women in technology and entrepreneurship, Startupfest hosted its first ever women in technology bootcamp. While I did not attend the bootcamp myself, I spoke to a few attendees who did and they all had positive things to say.
This was also the first year that organizers achieved gender parity on the main Startupfest stage, though not on smaller stages including Scaleupfest, Cannabisfest and AI-fest.
But in an interview, Philippe said the festival would continue to strive for gender parity and had set strict targets to achieve gender parity in all aspects of the event.
I noticed plenty of women attending the conference and after parties, and I found the festival a great place to network with industry peers. But there is more to gender parity than numbers, leaving plenty of work yet to do as far as inclusion is concerned.
Inclusion Requires Communication
Take Exhibit A, the Scaleupfest stage. On my first day at the conference, I was eager to hear pitches so that’s where I headed. As the name suggests, entrepreneurs made pitches for why investors should put money into scaling up their startups. While many pitches were impressive, there was a noticeable lack of women presenting. According to Philippe, anyone applying to pitch in this event could do so. So why did so few women apply?
Perhaps women entrepreneurs attending did not have businesses that had reached scale-up stage. Perhaps they were intimidated facing a crowd of would-be investors.
It would appear that “no” is the proper answer to both assumptions. When the official program wrapped and the floor was opened to anyone in the audience who wanted a crack at pitching, a number of women came forward. Of those I spoke to, they said they were not aware of the opportunity to take part in the official part of the event.
Inclusion takes more than programming. It requires communication that targets under-represented groups and invites participation.
Onward and Forward for Startupfest 2019
As a young mother, I would have appreciated more thought given to the demands that placed on me as an attendee. For starters, I would have loved access to a nursing room – as I imagine many other women would too.
I am also a visible minority and appreciated seeing men of colour up on the stage. Still, I would love to see more women of colour represented, both in terms of hosting and sharing their expertise. In my experience, men of colour are used as a blanket group for all people of colour and that excludes a lot of people.
On the whole, I took away some great insights from experiences shared by folks at Startupfest, especially the more tactical talks. I am the Head of Marketing at GrowthGenius so I found the marketing chats most appealing, in particular the talk by Hana Abaza, where she highlighted how to scale marketing. I will definitely be back again next year for the talks and a chance to spend time with industry peers and friends alike.
At first, I had to do a double take. Did I read that right?
In an article titled “Liberals Accused of Using Feminism as Political Weapon,” Rachael Harder, a Conservative critic for the Status of Women and former successful dog kennel entrepreneur in Lethbridge, Alberta, complained that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government were—get this—hogging feminism.
If you read the rest of the piece published in the Ottawa Citizen on May 7, you essentially learn that she is concerned the Liberals are doing too many good feminist things, leaving little room for those who define feminism differently. For example, “feminists” who are anti-abortion, don’t believe the pay gap exists, and believe equality is possible without also addressing equity.
Can a word mean anything you want it to mean?
These days, it would appear that the Progressive Conservatives (Canada’s official opposition party) are noticing that aligning one’s identity with feminism gets votes, and they desperately want access to some of that firepower. Some, invoking the Humpty-Dumpty principle of definitions, are suggesting that how one defines feminism is a matter of personal choice. Translation: even anti-feminists are feminists too. #AllFeminismsMatter
If you were old enough to watch the ERA debate unfold in the media in the 1970s, this attempt by anti-feminists to hijack feminism is probably making you feel like you just ate a bad brownie and saw Rod Serling sit next to you holding a cigarette.
Next stop, the Twilight Zone. Even Phyliss Schlafly, North America’s iconic and proud-to-be conservative anti-feminist who mobilized conservative women and successfully blocked the passing of the ERA amendment, is probably rolling over in her grave.
What is additionally odd about watching Canadian political candidates—and even corporate leaders of all stripes and genders—scurrying about to also be known as feminists is that, until recently, the very term was considered the other “F” word. To call yourself a feminist threatened your career and could clear the room like a bad smell. Several polls from that dark pre-2015 era showed that only a minority of Canadian women (ranging from 10 to 32% depending on the survey) and even fewer men identified as feminists.
But here we are just three years later and people are actually lining up to be pinned a feminist as though it’s an Order of Canada being bestowed. One survey even shows that today, there are more men identifying as feminist than women in Canada.
Think about that for a moment.
It’s great that the word feminism has been suddenly embraced by so many, so fast. But reductively, I say shame on thinly veiled opportunists looking to reduce, redact, and reframe a living movement whose proponents were, not too long ago, roundly vilified and socially punished, just to win today’s vote or sell products.
Some women died fighting for women’s rights. Thousands more died because they didn’t have rights at all.
Feminism. Not Just a Word.
Feminism is a 200-year-old movement justice and rights-based movement and here’s the kicker-an enormous body of work that, when translated at a societal level, imagines a safer, more inclusive world that can only be made possible by fundamentally eradicating gender inequality. There are many pixel level undertakings that make up its colourful landscape, but there is undeniably one shared photo of the goal.
Then as now, feminists of all genders across the globe continue to work hard to challenge, replace, and evolve systems and cultural beliefs that reinforce all forms of gender-based oppression. They are guided by a shared set of values that prioritize gender equality and equity, generosity, inter-independence, economic inclusion, intersectionality, and most importantly, agency.
The latter is key and implies a woman’s control over her own body, health, and right to determine her future.
If the candidate in your area, or anyone for that matter, doesn’t respect or speak about any of this, they ain’t a feminist. Don’t be conned.
THIS WEEK ON LIISBETH
Kartrina McKay
When You Need Help As An Entrepreneur, Who You Gonna Call?
Feminist entrepreneurs with advancing enterprises are looking for two things: 1) help! and 2) the opportunity to support women-led enterprises that can provide that help.
That is where serial feminist entrepreneur Katrina McKay comes in. Her new enterprise, Uplevel Solutions, is an outsourcing enterprise for entrepreneurs. Think TaskRabbit, but with fair wage practices and a trained female staff that makes outsourcing hassle free. You can learn more about Katrina and how to level up here.
Lex Schroder
What Makes An Event a Feminist Event?
Event planning for the fall is in full swing for many activist entrepreneurial feminists. So the timing is right to ask the question: what makes an event a feminist event, that is, other than the subject matter or the nature of the community that gathers?
In this months’ refresh, co-producer of the Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum and our newest contributor, Lex Schroeder (pictured above), noted five feminist event design practices that worked. Schroeder shares her insights and experiences here.
The 2018 Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum will be held on Sunday, December 2 and Monday, December 3, 2018 at Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas Street East, Toronto, ON. Save the date!
FIELDNOTES
Off the Radar: A Special Report by LiisBeth for YOU!
Back in March, we set out on a quest to create a list of active women and other gender minority entrepreneurship support clubs, meetups, investor groups, and networking bands that do not currently exist on other mainstream lists. Why? Because here at LiisBeth, we receive inquiries every day from women and feminist entrepreneurs of all genders about where they can find support for ventures and startups that don’t fit the dominant mould of startups that are typically male-led, low-cap, extreme growth, or flip-it-to-make-it-oriented, which get most of the attention in today’s mainstream entrepreneurship ecosystem.
The good news is that this is changing thanks to dozens of initiatives by activist women entrepreneurs and investors looking to support and grow high, multi–bottom line alternative innovations and ventures. In a few short days, we were able to list over 100 amazing groups working across Canada to help entrepreneurs.
If you would like to download the Excel spreadsheet or add/edit the list, please visit our Excel spreadsheet on Google Docs here. Tell us and the LiisBeth community that you exist!
And if you appreciate the work that we are doing to surface the feminist and women’s entrepreneurship community, please consider donating $3, $7 or $10 a month via Patreon or our subscribers’ page. It will help us do even more!
The Ontario Election: Who to Vote For?
Last week, Toronto’s NOW Magazine called the election a “crapshoot.” And while all three candidates have legitimately icky unelectable baggage piled high on their backs, there are three questions that LiisBeth suggests you consider before heading to the polls:
Which candidate genuinely cares about advancing gender equity, inclusion, and innovation in this province?
Which candidate would you at least even mildly enjoy being stuck in an elevator with for four hours?
Which candidate even mentions advancing equity for Ontario women, and specifically women entrepreneurs in his or her campaign/platform?
To find out what initiatives, if any, each party has documented in its platform for the advancement of women entrepreneurs, we made the effort to reach out and ask.
The first to respond was Kathleen Wynne’s campaign team. And in less than an hour, they sent us an entire document—hot off the press! You can find it here.
Highlights for women entrepreneurs include the creation of an Ontario Women’s Entrepreneurship Association to increase women’s access and opportunity to scale up and expand ventures, and $500+ to support additional women entrepreneur programs and the advancement of entrepreneurship opportunities for girls in high schools. The document also highlights new investments in child care, elder care, and ending gender-based violence. Andrea Horwath’s NDP government is also committed to investing in child care and Ontario women.
To find out what the Progressive Conservatives, aka Ford Nation (led by Doug Ford), is planning for women, we decided to ask him directly via Twitter (see below) as he has yet to release a platform. We have not heard anything from Ford Nation yet (24 hours later), but let’s give them more time. At the moment of writing this newsletter, Ford has yet to reveal or articulate his platform, but we have some idea of how he views women’s rights by reviewing articles and his voting history.
As of today, we could find no up-to-date, post-March articles or news on Doug Ford’s initiatives related to women entrepreneurs—or women at all.
What about the NDP? We know Horwath is also committed to investing in child care in Ontario but were unable to find information regarding the party’s initiatives related to women’s entrepreneurship on its platform website. We did, however, find an initiative to revitalize the horse racing sector. Cool. But #odd
In our opinion, the Green Party and its leader Mike Schreiner would likely win question #1 and the “stuck in an elevator” question most of the time for a lot of people. Being stuck in an elevator with him might also be the only way we get to hear him talk given his unfortunate exclusion from the televised debate.
The Greens are often thought of as just a pro-environment party, but the Ontario Greens these days are smartly positioning themselves as a pro–social enterprise, triple–bottom line party. Uniquely, they support the introduction of a hybrid for-profit and non-profit legal form (like the U.S.-based Benefit corporation option). Like the Liberals and the NDP, they also support expanded child care and elder care support plus strategies to advance pay equity. At present, they do not have a specific program laid out for the advancement of women entrepreneurs.
Well, that’s our roundup regarding each party’s plans for women entrepreneurs. And if you feel there is any bias in our report, we admit that there is. #AnyoneButDoug
Now it’s up to you to go and vote.
Make Lemonade
In April, LiisBeth checked out Make Lemonade, the newest inclusive-yet-women-centred co-working space in Toronto, which opened in September 2017. The space was founded by Rachel Kelly, a 26-year-old Toronto gig economy entrepreneur who saw the growth in gendered co-working spaces as a promising new venture opportunity.
The space is fun, airy, and light. Its offerings are similar to co-working spaces in town. And the good news? It doesn’t exude that misguided “girl boss” sorority brand concept (unlike WeWork’s The Wing, a women’s co-working social club that opens in Toronto later this year).
As with all these spaces, it’s really not the decor or yoga classes that count, it’s about who’s in those spaces, the vibe, and the reflection of values held by the people who founded, occupy, and animate the space.
To see if Make Lemonade is your scene, check it out for yourself by signing up for a tour here.
Feminism and AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Meet Dr. Parinaz Sobhani (above), director of machine learning at the University of Ottawa and LiisBeth’s latest feminist-woman-in-tech crush!
Iranian-born Dr. Sobhani was the keynote speaker at the launch of Inspiring Fifty, a new award established in Canada to celebrate inspirational female role models in tech and innovation. Her talk, “Importance of Diversity in AI,” was both chilling and a call to action.
While the technology can overcome gender bias and risk of misused data, it will take the will and vigilance of humans to ensure that it does. We need a feminist-leaning watchdog organization in Canada.
Interested in being part of an initiative to start one? Email us and mention AI Watchdog in the subject line.
To hear part of Dr. Sobhani’s speech, click on the approximately seven-minute audio file here.
LiisBeth Is Hiring!
Eeek! Our little feminist media startup is growing so we need a little more help.
We are currently looking for a three- to six-month contract freelance newsletter editor. Ideally, the newsletter editor will be someone with exceptional writing, critical thinking, and research skills, have a women’s studies, journalism, or gender studies background, plus demonstrated familiarity with WordPress, MailChimp, and Canva or Adobe Photoshop. The workload is anticipated to be about 10 to 20 hours per month (less in the summer). The pay is $40/hour.
Since we have begun, we have published more than 125 articles, 37 newsletters, and provided fair wage income opportunities for more than 35 feminist-leaning freelance writers, editors, illustrators, and photographers.
Lots of groups are working on moving the dial for women. But we go beyond that. As a feminist organization, we work for economic, social, and political systems change. As a community of feminist entrepreneurs, we work to drive change through the power of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Preference will be given to applicants who actually read this publication. Duh.
If you are interested in joining our community in this capacity, please e-mail your resume and link to best writing examples to [email protected] by May 15, 2018.
WHAT WE’RE READING
This book covers important issues facing Indigenous people: violence against women, recovery of Indigenous self-determination, racism, misogyny, and decolonization. This new edition also covers Indigenous resurgence; feminism amongst the Sami and Aboriginal Australians; neo-liberal restructuring in Oaxaca; Canada’s settler racism and sexism; and missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.
Okay, so the City of Toronto and Google’s Sidewalk Labs organization are working on designing an amazing new Jetson-like district on the Toronto Waterfront in an effort to explore what the city of tomorrow might actually be like. At present, the vision includes driverless cars. Once you read Elly Blue’s Bikenomics, you will soon be wondering why any vision of an urban future has to include cars at all.
AND FINALLY…IN CASE YOU MISSED IT!
This month’s uncommon find? Check out Feminist Economics Yoga, a fusion of yoga, capitalist, and feminist economics taught by Cassie Thornton, a yoga instructor, feminist thought leader, and activist artist from Thunder Bay, Ontario. According to Thornton’s website, she teaches kundalini yoga while also instructing students on issues related to money, debt, race, gender, and class. You can read her article over at Guts Magazine.
Kelly Diels, a Vancouver-based feminist marketing guru (our word, not hers) writes in her last newsletter: “For a long time, I’ve been encouraging the people I write for and the authors and entrepreneurs I work with to share what they truly know—even when it’s polarizing.” Despite its challenges, Diels believes you can succeed. Most of us know first-hand that mixing business with feminist systems change work is dicey stuff. Succeeding requires unique insight—and Diels has this in spades. If you are not following Diels’ newsletter, you are missing out.
The new anti-harassment Bill (C-65) is in its final stages. As a feminist entrepreneur, it is important to be up on the facts and the discussions. It’s not perfect, but its good. You can read the latest point of view on the bill (published by CUPE) here.
CAN’T MISS EVENTS
Black Women in Tech
Saturday, May 19, 2018
2:00 PM–4:00 PM
Bitmaker
220 King Street West, Unit 200, Toronto
Cost: By Donation
I Love You Mary Jane: Women, Weed and Wellness
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
7:00 PM–9:30 PM
Shecosystem Coworking + Wellness
703 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Cost: $20. Register here.
Startup & Slay: Panel & Meetup With Diverse Female Entrepreneurs
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
6:00 PM–9:30 PM
Spaces
180 John Street, Toronto
Cost: $45-50. Register here.
Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs: Learn About Cash Flow Management
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
10:00 AM–11:30 AM
Verity Club
111D Queen Street East, Toronto
Cost: $15. Register here.
The Big Push Expert Series: Best Hiring Practices to Increase Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
Thursday, May 31, 2018
6:30 PM–9:30 PM
Uberflip
370 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Cost: $15–$250. Register here.
Walking Your Why: Discovering Your Values Perspectives
Thursday, June 14, 2018
6:00 PM–8:00 PM
School for Social Entrepreneurs
720 Bathurst Street, Toronto
Cost: $0-50. Register here.
That brings us to the end of our May newsletter. The next newsletter is scheduled for late June 2018. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook for updates, news, and provocative views.
You can also watch for new feature articles on feminist outsourcing plus more this month at www.liisbeth.com.
If you are looking for an easy way to support feminist entrepreneurs, look no further than considering a subscription to LiisBeth! We humbly remind you that subscriptions are $3/month, $7/month or $10/month.
If you would like us to promote your event, we are happy to do so if it suits our readers’ interests! It’s free for current subscriber donors; for non-donors there is a one-time donation of $25 per listing.
We accept PayPal and credit cards. And we also now have a Patreon page!
Funds go directly towards paying writers, editors, proofreaders, photo permission fees, and illustrators. LiisBeth needs your love—and financial support.
Writer Natalie Clifford Barney once called entrepreneurship “the last refuge of the troublemaking individual.” Surprising words, considering charm and tact are considered essential tools for anyone starting a business. And kicking down doors isn’t exactly charming behaviour.
But for many women, particularly those working within oppressive environments, the very act of starting a business can be frighteningly disruptive to the social order. When entrepreneurship also entails rising out of prejudice or poverty, activism becomes a necessary part of the toolkit. As history shows, it can be an incredibly valuable tool.
Many female business pioneers consistently spoke truth to power while simultaneously building what we would now call their brands. Take, for example, cosmetics magnate Elizabeth Arden. Born Florence Graham in 1884 in Woodbridge, Ont., Arden popularized makeup for women at a time when it was worn primarily by actors and prostitutes. Since that time, of course, women’s relationships to cosmetics can best be described as uneasy; in fact, some might criticize Arden for fostering a culture that not only allows, but mandates cosmetic “improvement.”
But in the early 20th century, wearing makeup was a sign of a woman’s determination to please herself. On a spring day in 1912, Arden did her own unique part to advance the suffrage movement by getting marchers in a New York City parade to sport her signature lipstick. It was bright red of course, the colour of daring and defiance.
Arden’s contemporary, Mary Pickford, is best known as a Hollywood film actor who became “America’s sweetheart.” But she was also a highly successful business executive who also happened to hail from Canada. Pickford (born Gladys Smith) began producing her own features shortly after her acting career began and later co-founded the United Artists studio to secure financial and artistic freedom for filmmakers.
Pickford constantly used her power and profits to help others in the screen trade. Her projects included building a specialized hospital for ailing industry workers, as well as establishing the Motion Picture Relief Fund to provide assistance to impoverished actors. She was also a major fundraiser for the American army’s efforts during the First World War.
Georgina Binnie-Clark wasn’t nearly as famous as Arden or Pickford, but deserves equal celebration. Binnie-Clark was an aristocratic Englishwoman who found herself in a precarious economic position in the early 1900s. At the time, there were almost a million more young women than men in England after many of the latter had been lost to immigration and war. Marital uncertainty became a problem for upper-class women, whose identity was solely defined by their husband and children (working-class women routinely held jobs outside the home).
Binnie-Clark immigrated to Saskatchewan where she did the most shocking thing for an upper-class woman: she became a successful farmer. Throughout her life on the prairies, she fought numerous obstacles. Because she was a single woman, the government deemed her ineligible to own a homestead, despite a petition signed by 11,000 men to get the law reversed. Undaunted, Binnie-Clark devised a plan to bring single British women to Canada and train them in the art of farming. Unfortunately, the program was cancelled due to the outbreak of the First World War. She also wrote two books in which she advocated not only for female farmers, but for all western farmers afflicted by unfair financing practices.
Binnie-Clark, Pickford and Arden were entrepreneurs by choice and activists by necessity. With improved conditions for women in business, is activism a thing of the past?
Not by any means, but there are different reasons for this. Some entrepreneurial activists are so massively successful (think Oprah Winfrey or Jane Fonda) that they can afford to be as troublesome as they wish. Others may start off with less, but find their desire to upset the social apple cart is shared by many other willing partners. An example is Kathryn Finney, creator of digitalundivided (DID), which supports the success of tech start-ups led by African-American and Latina women.
Across the world, others are still fighting for basic gains; like their forebears, they can’t afford notto be activists. Sarah Abu Alia, a concert promoter in Jordan, embraces the role heartily. Of the work climate in her home country she says: “As a woman, you have to fight for everything here, which is a great preparation for being an entrepreneur.” The women of yesterday would no doubt agree.
Publisher’s Note: Micah White, author of The End of Protest, writes, “The lack of protest is perilous for society.” And he might be right. In a time where even innovative protest efforts like Occupy failed to create change, and in a year where presidential hopefuls like Donald Trump can take sexism and racism to a whole new level and still garner a massive following, it may, just may, be a sign to women* everywhere that we too need to examine our toolkit and ask ourselves if our current atomistic, individual “role modeling” and “don’t rock the boat” efforts to advance equality and inclusion are also no longer effective. Perhaps we need new, bolder tools to drive social change. And as entrepreneurs, perhaps we need to start seeing ourselves as social activists and drivers of social change, not just drivers of our economy.
