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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Sarah Kaplan, Author, The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation
Sarah Kaplan, Author, The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation
Businesses operating within the framework of 21st century capitalism can and must be a force for good, says Sarah Kaplan, director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) and professor of strategic management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
“Big companies are the ones who have either created or perpetuated many of the pressing social and environmental issues we face today,” she says. “If we are to see significant change, we need them on board.”
Yet, despite more than a decade of amped up efforts on corporate social responsibility (CSR), the impact has been negligible. And evidence shows Canadian public and large corporations, in particular, are lagging behind those in other countries in the CSR area.
In her new book,The 360° Corporation, Kaplan says it’s because they have been going about it the wrong way. We spoke to Kaplan, to find out what they missed.
LiisBeth: You’re best known for your work on innovation and how gender impacts the economy. Why a book on corporate social responsibility?
Sarah Kaplan: This is a project I’ve been working on since before I founded the Institute for Gender and the Economy. The timing happens to be pretty good. A few weeks ago, the Business Roundtable (an association of CEOs from leading US companies) announced that they were going to prioritize creating value for all stakeholders versus just focusing on shareholder returns. Women, gender minorities, LGBTQ+ are increasingly viewed as important stakeholder categories that many corporations are paying attention to.
What is the book about?
(Getting) business leaders to think about social and environmental challenges as central to their business as opposed to it being seen as an add on, something they do off to one side of their desk. It’s time to get past the “CSR candy sprinkled on top.”
And how do we do that?
Think differently about what to do when investor and stakeholder interests don’t easily align. Often when faced with this situation, decision makers default to constructing a business case to figure out a win-win solution to break trade-offs. You get this. I get that. We all get something. Not what we wanted. But it’s as good as it gets.
This can work, but what happens when investors and stakeholders find themselves not just miles, but worlds apart?
In those cases, win-win just isn’t possible. At least not right away. Even attempts to innovate with known variables may not lead to the breakthrough required.
In this case, I encourage companies to hold and value this seemingly intractable tension as a one-of-a-kind transformation opportunity. The idea is to get decision makers to start thinking about the challenge as they would a research and development opportunity. They need to ask what kind of productive experiments could be designed, in concert with stakeholders, over time, to develop something that could not have even been previously imagined. I am asking companies to think of social responsibility and social innovation like any other disruptive R&D project—one that requires long-term uncertain investments with unsure but potentially magnificent payoffs.
That sounds great for companies with deep pockets. What about startups? Smaller enterprises?
A great example of a small company that has successfully integrated social change is McCarthy Uniforms. They figured out how to leverage a social issue—gender equality—as a business transformation opportunity, in fact, as their turnaround strategy.
McCarthy sells uniforms and, like other companies in that space, only sold uniforms that fit a man’s body. By paying attention to a growing conversation around gender equity, they noticed that lots of women wear uniforms. Due to lack of options, women were being forced to wear men’s uniforms that did not fit well. Not only was it uncomfortable, this also often created safety issues. So, they added “female fit” lines of products. And they started creating a social responsibility report, which included gender equity information. They applied this knowledge when they were bidding with school districts and other people needing uniforms. They’re winning their bids because they are including that kind of information.
Embracing stakeholders and seeing them as essential to your day-to-day business and engaging with stakeholders can actually help you find sources of differentiation and benefits that you hadn’t even anticipated.
What role do activists play in motivating companies to take social and environmental issues seriously?
Well, there’s a couple of ways that activists are really, really important to this equation. The first is they can increase the pain for corporations. When Greenpeace started blocking the ships that were carrying drilling equipment up to the Arctic, the visibility really increased public relations and logistics costs. When Shell abandoned their Arctic drilling activities, they said, “Well, it didn’t have anything to do with the activism. It had to do with the cost benefit. But, of course the activism was shaping the cost benefit.
I have talked to sustainability people in various companies who say, “Don’t tell my boss this, but I actually appreciate the activists because they help me make my case inside the company.” Activism can play that role.
The second role that activists can play is to work to get on the inside, and take a seat at the table in those decision-making meetings. Take ACT UP, which I talk about in my book. Their protests got them a seat at the table where researchers were deciding on drug testing protocols for AIDS drug testing. The activists come with a different point of view, different experience, different knowledge. In this case, activists were able to help the researchers understand the most effective ways to do the trials and get the trials to be fair, more just, more accessible.
That said, there is a big tension between being in the conversation and being seen as selling out. It’s a very difficult tension to manage. I think it mirrors the same tension that the corporates have when they’re actually paying attention to the stakeholders (“But you’re hurting the bottom line.”) I think the activists should more often see themselves as potential players at the table in this conversation. And in turn, corporations need to be open to, and invite in challenging, uncomfortable and diverse points of view.
What was your biggest “aha”?
I came across some really interesting research that suggests that people who rely on the business case are precisely the people least likely to act when a business case is made to them, because in order to act on these things, there has to be a certain level of moral outrage.
The business case actually mitigates against moral outrage.
What the business case does is justify the existing status quo. It leads to complacency as opposed to outrage. We need business leaders to think about how we can change the status quo versus perpetuate it. The point is not to make the business case. The point is to find new ways to do this work. If you start with the business case, you’re only going to get incremental solutions. That was the biggest aha for me. The business case is getting in the way of action—not to mention innovation and transformation.
What’s happening with the Institute for Gender and the Economy this year?
When it comes to working to achieve positive social change for gender equality, the biggest barrier is that people don’t know what to do and how to do it. So, to help people figure out the “how,” we are launching a series of case studies that are specific examples of what companies have done, which offer new models and templates. The second thing we’re doing is developing a Gender Analytics training program. We will be running prototypes early in the new year and hope to have the program available in the fall of 2020.
Sarah, thank you for all your amazing work to advance gender equity not only in Canada but globally.
We are familiar with term green washing but how about gender washing? What does it look like? And what can we learn from the environmental movement about the pace and nature of change?
While we can likely agree that slavery is wrong, women around the world are still arguing their case for gender equality. Valerie Hussey asks: What gives?
“I have seen feminism become much deeper, much more intersectional, much more enmeshed in people’s everyday lives and that’s the kind of feminism we need going forward.”
Community Innovation Lab founder, Pramilla Ramdahani
Pramilla Ramdahani, CEO and founder, Community Innovation Lab
“You are risk takers, don’t listen to that stuff. You are risk takers because, quite frankly, you raise families, you have children, you move countries, you move cities, you have had enormous risk in your life!”
That message from Women on the Move’s CEO Heather Gamble—to ignore such axioms as “women can’t succeed in business because they don’t take risks”—had particular resonance for this audience of women business founders, some of whom had endured extreme risk, such as immigrating to Canada, heading single households, and surviving intimate partner violence. And the point was particularly impactful coming from an entrepreneur who reached $1 million in revenue just 18 months after launching her first startup.
As a revenue accelerator devoted to helping other women entrepreneurs reach the million-dollar milestone, Gamble is also a faculty mentor of The Refinery, a unique business growth program designed by women for women out of the Community Innovation Lab (iLab), a hub for entrepreneurs based one hour east of Toronto in Oshawa, Ont., where it serves the Durham Region.
Pramilla Ramdahani started the non-profit iLab as a way to tackle community social issues through an innovative lens in an ethnically diverse region with pockets hard-hit by job losses. Ramdahani, who has an MBA in community economic development and studied social entrepreneurship at Stanford University, left her own successful enterprise and bootstrapped iLab for three years before landing any kind of substantial funding. Talk about taking a risk. Eventually, the Ontario Trillium Foundation funded iLab’s most in-demand seminar, which morphed into The Refinery and will support 1,335 women through 2020.
Ramdahani says she started The Refinery after noticing two needs in the region: entrepreneurial training for women and assistance for marginalized women. After seeking feedback from the community through roundtable events, Ramdahani realized that women wanted a founder’s program created and staffed by women, to serve women. Women said they felt safer in smaller rooms with doors rather than one large open hall. They also said they have different and more open conversations when the instructors are female. Plus, they like to support each other. According to Brenna Ireland, director of operations for iLab, the women wanted a program to strengthen “business and personal ties to better the community, not just compete against each other.”
So, no, a traditional male-led accelerator would not do.
Yet, The Refinery is more than an all-female accelerator
At the earliest stages, LiisBeth founder Petra Kassun-Mutch designed a curriculum for women-only programs that helped infuse feminist entrepreneurial values throughout iLab’s work—business counselling and training, building opportunities and networks, mentoring, and widening access to capital. (Researchers Barbara Orser and Catherine Elliott define feminist entrepreneurship as “a mechanism to create economic self-sufficiency and equity-based outcomes for women, girls, and other gender-oppressed communities.”) All entrepreneurs at iLab are coached with the end goal of achieving autonomy, and by extension, strengthening their community with hiring and spin-off economic activity from new ventures.
Refinery Incubator participants in session
The Refinery includes a three-day boot camp, a year of intensive training delivered online and at the iLab centre, optional seminars on such topics as social media marketing, and opportunities to receive year-long mentoring from an established entrepreneur. Women learn how to access capital, build strong teams, scale processes, and generate sales.
The Refinery supports entrepreneurs working in a variety of sectors including business services, media, wellness and coaching, automotive sector, food, gift products, and human resources (note it’s not just tech). Women are guided to discover their own strengths and ideas, rather than the staff deciding which businesses would be best for them. According to Ramdahani, The Refinery is about “integrating empathy, social justice, and user-led techniques.”
The women-centric support and camaraderie is particularly important for abuse survivors, who face additional challenges when starting a business. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in the U.S., survivors may have endured years of economic abuse, including tactics that damage their credit, deplete their resources, and prevent them from completing education and training. They may face ongoing threats of violence even after leaving an abuser, as well as legal issues and long-term mental and physical effects of trauma. Survivors may also have spotty employment records. Child care is often difficult to arrange after years of social isolation. And while all entrepreneurs may struggle with confidence, survivors must overcome low self-esteem brought on by years of abuse. They may also fear publicity or the idea of bringing their business online given that abusers often continue stalking and harassing their victims, in person and online. To top it off, survivors likely live under the poverty line and struggle to pay for food, shelter, utilities, and transportation expenses, leaving little to bootstrap a new business.
But the same policy research group also notes that survivors have strengths and resilience that may serve them well in entrepreneurship. The reality of managing a relationship with an abusive partner may require the same skills exhibited by the most successful CEOs: calculated risk-taking, thoughtful action, tough-mindedness, the ability to read people, problem solving, and determination.
In Oshawa, where iLab is based, domestic violence calls to police increased by 15 percent between 2013 and 2017, but the actual rate is much higher, as 70 percent of spousal violence is not reported to the police, according to the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
One survivor in The Refinery program (she asked to remain anonymous), who started a new business service while caring for elderly relatives, says she still suffers side effects from an earlier abusive relationship and has been grappling with relocation. She received much-needed sales, marketing, and financial training from The Refinery, but it was the all-female setting that was most critical. “It provides a safe spot,” she said. “Because after you’ve been victimized, you’re vulnerable and your confidence is shot. And so, any time a man is in the room, it’s a different dynamic than when you’re surrounded by women.”
She recommends The Refinery to “anybody that is looking to flesh out their business, anybody looking to ramp up their business, and who needs to build up a network of people. It certainly gives you all the supports that you need.”
The Refinery and iLab strive to create a safe space for all by requiring instructors to undergo police checks, as well as privacy and sensitivity training. The board of directors and staff strive to be as diverse as those they serve.
And here’s another appealing aspect for marginalized women: thanks to funding from Trillium, all fees are waived. Even optional seminars can be subsidized for those who need financial assistance. To help fund their startups, iLab partnered with the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to widen the eligibility criteria for funding to help women entrepreneurs. Ramdahani also hopes to start a micro-lending circle at iLab to help women who don’t qualify for funding through banks, the BDC partnership, venture capitalists, or angel funding.
A safe space for women nurtures growth for all
Based on the success of The Refinery, iLab looked at other gaps in community services and launched entrepreneurial programming for additional under-represented groups. ILab started incubators for at-risk youth entrepreneurs called NEET (not in education, employment or training), Spice (seniorpreneurs who are 55 and up), and the Social Enterprises Accelerator that helps social entrepreneurs grow to the next level. Said Ramdahani, “If you cannot find employment, why not create your own business? That’s the pathway we see that participants can use to alleviate poverty.”
CiLab Women Finance Day
ILab also offers co-working spaces and rooms to rent for events and meetings—at a fraction of typical costs. Staff are quick to answer questions and find extra resources to accommodate attendees’ personal circumstances. And in order to create a community for entrepreneurs to grow and apply what they’ve learned, alumni from all streams are invited to join a Facebook group once they complete a program.
Elsii Faria, of The Hive Centre Bee and Bee, entered iLab’s social entrepreneur program to get much-needed support in a variety of areas. The business she runs with her husband offers overnight accommodation via a retreat centre that hosts nature, creativity, wellness, and spiritual events, as well as marketing and web design, and a platform called 1Community1 focused on community engagement. While building the business, Faria faced a life-threatening illness, took on a new mortgage for the bed and breakfast and office space, as well as cared for her one-year-old child. Faria says connecting with other social entrepreneurs at iLab gave her “really valuable support from other businesses with similar objectives.” It also introduced her to key partners such as Bear Standing Tall, their first Indigenous retreat leader. She had an arts education but needed to build up business skills. ILab helped her improve her sales skills and understand their business model. The business recently landed a grant that allows them to partner with Durham College to continue developing their 1Community1 platform.
Yet, for all of iLab’s success helping others, it has yet to receive solid funding support from any level of government—municipal, provincial or federal. Ramdahani is frustrated that governments favour investing in tech-based entrepreneurs and large urban-based non-profits. She is pleased that the Ontario Inclusive Innovation Action Strategy, released in June 2019, expands the government’s innovation definition to include “processes that are not tech-based.” But she points out that the strategy will only support women entrepreneurs at the high-growth stage only. “There is no funding for women who are marginalized, and who have just started a business, or have been in business for under three years,” Ramdahani said. Early-stage women founders often find doors for traditional loans closed. Without investment and cash flow to conduct business, Ramdahani wonders, How can they grow?
What funding is available for women entrepreneurs?
The federal government’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) has added millions to support women, including new funding for enterprises in the high-growth stage, organizations that help grow women’s businesses, and research hubs. Currently, there is a federally funded women’s business development centre in every province and territory except the Northwest Territories. Provincially, the non-profit Paro Centre for Women’s Enterprise supports women-owned businesses and community economic development in northern, eastern, and central Ontario, excluding the Greater Toronto Area, through federal and Ontario Trillium Foundation funding.
In the U.S., the Small Business Administration (SBA) partners with non-profit organizations to fund and oversee 113 Women’s Business Centres. The centres offer entrepreneurs and small business owners free counselling and free-to-low-cost training. Men can receive services through these centres as well.
American women entrepreneurs are encouraged to register with the SBA for a Women-Owned Small Business or Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Business Certificate. This qualifies them to bid on contracts with the federal government to supply products and services. During 2017, $20.8 billion in contracts were won by women-owned small businesses. The U.S. federal government strives to award five percent of their supplier contracts to women-owned small businesses.
Like iLab’s innovative programming, these are ideas we can build on. ILab involves participants in curriculum and space design, “rather than building something and inviting them,” said Ramdahani.
Something for funders to chew on.
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This article was generously sponsored by Startup Here Toronto.
A Nightwood Society panel discussion on the future of food with Michelle Battista, along with Kim Malek of Salt & Straw, Alison Wu of Wu Haus, Nong Poonsukwattana of Nong’s Khao Man Gai, and chef/food activist Arlyn Frank of Platano Rising, put on by Cherry Bombe, a magazine devoted to women in food.
As the saying goes, a woman’s place is in the kitchen—that is until money, fame, or a coveted Michelin star is at stake, at which point it can become a male-dominated space pretty quickly. Foodie utopia Portland was no different until an industry outsider named Michelle Battista decided to challenge the culinary boys’ club. In 2014, the designer and marketing entrepreneur with a passion for food brought together a group of women with diverse talents to create what she describes as “a safe place for women in culinary arts.”
Enter the Nightwood Society. The eclectic group—ranging in skill set from butchers and bakers to florists, writers, and visual artists—conceived of a food-based creative incubator to nurture women entrepreneurs striving to find stable footing in Portland’s vibrant and competitive culinary scene. They toiled in a variety of traditionally underfunded areas—live music, cooking classes, immersive dining experiences, catered events, art installations—but believed by joining forces, they could create something special and sustaining.
Battista teamed up with friend and associate Kati Reardon, a product management specialist for global brands such as Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and Banana Republic, to raise the capital to lease a 3,000-square-foot event space in the city’s inner NE business district, where they could bring together food, art, design, and social consciousness in a delightful blend of community activism. “So we decided we could do this, and do this in our own way,” says Battista, “and it could be all women.”
Indeed, Nightwood Society created a women-focused supply chain, from farmers through to sommeliers and chefs. For capital, they turned to non-traditional investors such as women’s accelerators and financing groups. Supportive, like-minded men were welcome to contribute.
But Portland, as Battista describes it, is a finicky market where the average restaurant has a life expectancy of about two years. Those that survive face constant scrutiny over the minutiae of their menus. Was this free-range chicken fed on pesticide-free grains and seasoned with fair trade salt? Is your house kombucha small-batch or just craft? Nightwood Society overcame the odds and found its way to a stable source of revenue by becoming a go-to space for community groups that share their interests and values in social justice, diversity, and equality. They have hosted events, leased space and catered for women’s outreach groups, non-profit organizations, and even Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown.
A Nightwood evening event.
All that didn’t come about by happenstance. When Battista moved to Portland after going to school in New York, she was shocked by the city’s whiteness—and its long history of racism and exclusion. She knew Nightwood would never reach communities of colour organically but would have to reach out specifically to historically oppressed and overlooked groups. Says Battista: “Nightwood is the hub of a community I built and curated intentionally with a lot of time and attention. We ask, who do we want to reach out to and how do we vet their values? Without shared values it isn’t going to work.”
The outside-the-box business model has also built strength by sharing resources. The range of activities at the Nightwood Society can be eclectic: cooking and charcuterie-making classes, weddings, political events, public speaking classes, and outside catering gigs. Beyond a skeletal staff, most function as contractors and freelancers, posting shifts that others sign up for and taking shifts based on schedules and skill sets. The arrangement suits the ebb and flow of the business and the lives of the people drawn to such a dynamic, artistic enterprise. Says Battista: “Everyone works when they want. No one’s ever grumpy [as] they have other jobs.”
The collective is structured as a limited liability corporation with two legal owners, each with a clearly defined equity agreement. Members can buy into the for-profit business. Leah Scafe, Director of Experience, and Sarah Schneider, “Kitchen Queen,” have acquired a partial ownership, which comes with more decision-making power and autonomy.
But the vast majority of the dozen or so primary members involved have a part-time association with the collective, using the space to grow their business, augment other income, and network with supportive, like-minded entrepreneurs. The model enables Nightwood to be flexible, inclusive, and resilient. It supports growth via diversification rather than simply volume. And it allows them to scale their business sustainably through ebbs and flows of a fluctuating economy. To Battista, Nightwood’s fusion of food, art, and activism is natural. “I’m a designer by trade and I have a design agency; I’ve always been obsessed with connecting sensory things.” She says she doesn’t just love food and the craft of making it, but the whole experience of food, including the atmosphere of the surroundings and the company at one’s table. Battista urges people looking to emulate the Nightwood model to build a strong team. “There is a moment when you just have to jump in and be on the ride and use your best assumptions and experience to make it happen.” But it helps, she advises, to have a mentor and to ask for guidance when you encounter something you don’t understand. Then comes the task of building a team that shares your vision and values. “Without the right people to believe in and help you execute your vision, then your vision is only an idea.”
After that, the rules for taking something on, she says, are pretty simple. “Lead with the values always and don’t compromise. This is your compass,” says Battista. Evaluate proposals based on whether they move the venture forward, and whether or not they serve everyone’s best interests, as well as your vision and mission. Make sure what you do stays on brand. Remember that you can’t say yes to everything.
But how does that clear-eyed vision translate into the effective operation of a for-profit enterprise that offers charcuterie classes and public speaking classes, as well as hosts political events and weddings, all under the guise of a cutting-edge restaurant? Pretty effectively, says Battista, albeit with a lot of individual trust, coaching, and business mentoring. The entire staff meets just every two weeks to handle the logistics of the organization. Outside of that, Battista makes a point of not micromanaging the members. The goal is to find motivated innovators with a unique vision and nurture them with resources and opportunity.
Shoddy treatment at a restaurant inspired Eden Hagos not to stay home but to go big with her business ideas. She sees huge potential in the Black Foodie brand and envisions it evolving into a web series or television show in the future.
Mary Ng and her campaign volunteers i the riding of Markham-Richmond Hill
Mary Ng and team knocking on doors in the Markham-Thornhill riding of Ontario.
With a Canadian federal election in the winds, women passionate about reshaping the playing field for marginalized innovators and entrepreneurs at a policy level are considering making a difference by running for office for the first time. Research shows that currently “Women represent less than a third of seats (26%) in Parliament and in provincial and territorial legislatures, and only 18% of mayors and 28% of city councillors.” In the U.S., the number of women in congress today represents 23.4% of the total of U.S. Representatives. Women’s representation in parliament in countries like South Africa, Sweden, Finland, Mexico and Cuba all exceed 40%.
To help close the gender gap in politics in Canada, the Ministry for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) announced a $547.3K in funding in 2018 for programming run by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to help encourage more women to participate in politics at the minicipal level. Federal politicians often get their start as local councilors. According to Resolution 15 of the 1990 United Nations Economic and Social Council, women’s equal representation will only be achieved when there is a minimum proportion of 30 percent women in leadership positions.
So, you want to run. But how do you get started? And what is it like?
To find out more, we spoke with Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, Mary Ng.
LiisBeth: Minister Ng, you’ve been in politics for 20 years. How did you get your start?
Mary Ng: Oh that’s a fun question. My passion for public service has been there since I was a kid. What made me ultimately do it? You’ve heard me say this before, which is that I learned over the course of my life and career that political representation really matters if what a community wants is to be heard and have the opportunity to weigh in and shape things. I could see that we needed more women, and better yet, more racialized, minority women visibly represented in Parliament. In fact, that’s what drove my decision to finally run for office. Along with the fact that I had a lot of strong women and allied men encouraging me to go for it. One of those men was the Prime Minister. He encouraged me to take the leadership and to run because he also believed that diverse representation does matter, and when people see other people like them, they believe that they are genuinely a part of the inclusive society and the diverse society.
Many feminist entrepreneurs want to get into politics someday. What first two or three steps would you recommend? What experience do you need to gather?
First off, I would say that you don’t need to have experience in politics to run. But you do need an authentic desire to serve the public. And this starts with wanting to serve the people in a riding where you live.
Once you have made that leap, the next step is to decide which party most aligned with my views. Or which party most represents what I can embrace and take on and be a champion for. In my case, I felt what I cared about was most aligned with the Liberal Party of Canada. So, I chose the Liberal Party.
The next step is to sign up. It’s free to do so for any party. Then, you set out to have conversations with people in the community. Work to learn about which issues are most important to them. You also share the issues that are important to you.
You put yourself out in front and say, “I would like to represent you and here’s what I stand for.” You start the conversation by convening friends and neighbours. You start with going to neighbourhoods and door-knocking. You begin to encourage people to sign up to vote for you so that you can be the nominated candidate for that party in that riding.
Mary Ng on the campaign trail in her riding of Markham-Thornhill.
How do you get the money to start? How much money do you need to start?
You fundraise according to political fundraising rules. So, you start by calling your friends. You call your family. You ask the supporter that you just met at the door who said, “Oh my goodness, I really believe in you” to make a donation or volunteer to help you knock on doors.
In the Liberal Party, we have this thing called the Victory Fund, which is a little pot of money created by a lot of people donating a little bit of money. You can only donate $1,500 per person. That helps us build a campaign fund, or if not a campaign fund, a riding fund so that we have funds to be able to run our elections.
In this country, corporations can’t give to you, unions can’t give to you. So you really have to get out there, grassroots, and fundraise. And if they believe in you, you’ll raise the money. If they don’t believe in you, you won’t.
As Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion, what are you most proud of having achieved in your time there so far?
The strategy to double the number of female entrepreneurs and, for me personally, that I get to work with businesses across this country to accomplish exactly that. For me, that’s enormous.
Only 16% of all of our small and medium-sized businesses in Canada are women owned or women led.
But we know we can do better. For example, here is something that I learned yesterday that was absolutely fantastic. In the Yukon yesterday, 40% of their businesses are women owned and women led, which is wonderful. The women-led part of the SME economy there is also incredibly diverse. There are Indigenous businesses that are succeeding. I met people like Antoinette Oliphant, the owner of Antoinette’s in Whitehorse. A great black, gay female entrepreneur who is kicking ass and doing great work.
There is more work to be done, but I am very hopeful about the strategies that we’ve got in place, the investments that we have made, and the other social policies that we have also advanced, including the Canada Child Benefit, parental leave, and affordable child care. These social policies, along with our recent investments in women entrepreneurs, I think, are going to go a long way. We’re going see change.
Antoinette Oliphant, owner of Antoinette’s restaurant in Whitehorse, Yukon (Photo: Uphere Magazine)
Being in Ontario, we know first-hand how fast programs that advance women, diversity, inclusion, and gender equity can be derailed or cancelled with a change in government. With a federal election coming up, which programs do you most want to see continue regardless of who is in power?
Our program for women entrepreneurs. And I would say that there’s no better government than the one that is leading right now for women, women entrepreneurs, and all Canadians looking to build a truly inclusive society.
How important is it that we have a feminist government?
Very important, because if I make the argument that we need to make investments today in order to grow Canada’s GDP in the future, and that gender parity in our economy is key to all of this, you then have to have a government that is willing to allocate the money to fund the required investments in research, institutional change, and community programs to support this shift. Having a progressive, feminist government creates the environment for that to happen. So it’s very important.
Thank you so very much, Minister Ng.
Thanks, LiisBeth.
Want to Run for Office? Here are some additional resources to help you get started.
Operation Black Vote Canada: Operation Black Vote Canada (OBVC) was established in 2004 as a nonprofit and multi-partisan organization that supports the election of Black people to public office. We do this by educating, motivating and advocating for Black Canadians to participate in Canada’s government, agencies, boards, commissions, civil service and in Canada’s political process at all levels.
Elections Canada: Official Canadian website for federal elections. It cover’s it all–including what you can and cannot expense.
Institue for Change Leaders: Founded by Olivia Chow, this institute will help you craft your message, platform and help you get organized. For over thirty years, Olivia Chow has been an effective and well-known public figure, serving in Toronto’s municipal politics and on the national stage as a Canadian Member of Parliament. She was voted Best City Councillor seven times by readers of NOW magazine and Best MP in 2010. Readers of the Toronto Sun voted her Top Torontonian in 2012 and Canadian Immigrant magazine named her as one of Canada’s Top 25 Immigrants.
Young Women’s leadership Network:A national not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering young women’s civic and political leadership at all levels. Theytake an anti-oppressive, trans-inclusive feminist approach toward identifying the issues and bridging the gaps in support networks and services for young women leaders. Their work takes a multifaceted approach to promoting inclusive & equitable leadership. The organization focuses on building young women’s civic leadership capacity while we work with civic institutions to remove systemic barriers contributing to gender inequity. Their sessions are excellent. Many of them free.
Powerbitches dinner on making change for women and girls in the corporate world, March 2019.
Rachel Hills is a feminist writer, producer, and movement maker whose work has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Vogue, BuzzFeed, The Cut, and many more. She has spoken at more than 20 colleges and universities across the United States, delivered two popular TEDx talks, and has keynoted at Harvard Sex Week and the Sydney Opera House. Hills’s book, The Sex Myth, was written to help make sense of the feelings of shame and difference she felt around her own sexual history. Research for the book involved interviewing hundreds of people across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia along the way. She founded Break The Sex Myth in 2017 to help transform the book into a tool for storytelling, consciousness raising, and cultural change.
Rachel Hills, author and founder of Powerbitches Gather
In addition to managing her writing career, Hills recently founded a new feminist community network venture called Powerbitches. The enterprise values in real life networking experiences and offers small group salons over three-course meals. Its “Our Gather” events, Brains Trusts, and members-only listserv provide a a “hi-res” confidential space to test new ideas and work through the common challenges we face as leaders, creators, and innovators. Hills writes: “We believe that work matters: not just as a source of economic security or personal fulfilment, but as a space through which we impact and remake the world. Powerbitches members start companies, make art, or go into work on a Tuesday morning because they are driven to positively impact the world in some way. Keen on authenticity, Powerbitches focuses on encouraging conversations about tough realities rather than presenting a ‘sunny, social media–ready version of our successes and failures.'”
Intrigued? Read on.
LiisBeth: What is Powerbitches?
Rachel Hills: Powerbitches is a membership-based international community of women doing entrepreneurial, purpose-driven work, based out of New York City. We differ from other “women in biz” groups through our focus on building genuine relationships through substantive conversation. We don’t do classic panels, for instance, where two or three or four people sit on a stage, and a hundred people listen in the audience and go home without talking to anyone. Our events are deliberately kept much smaller and designed to be highly interactive so that you can easily get to know the other people in the room. And because we are funded by our members, we’re able to build our content and events around their needs, rather than using them as a promotional platform for sponsors.
Tell us about the membership. Who shows up?
Our members are women who are running small businesses, freelancing, or working in salaried jobs but are developing a passion project on the side. They are striving to make an impact in the world, whether it’s by setting up a new non-profit providing operations support to abortion clinics, or creating an app that helps new parents discover baby-friendly cafes in the area. And they’re hungry for a community of like-minded people to celebrate their wins with and talk through their challenges. As one of our members, journalist Jessica Wakeman, puts it: “Community exists in lots of places: Facebook groups, iPhone group chats, even Twitter (sort of). But Powerbitches fosters authentic feelings of connection and made me feel part of a group that truly mattered to each other.”
You’re a busy mom with a toddler. Translation: No time. Why did you feel it was important to start this initiative?
I will be self-employed for nine years this July, but a couple of years ago I began transitioning from freelance writer to small business owner, creating, selling, and funding my own projects. It was exhilarating, but also really challenging, and I wanted a community I could talk to about the questions I was grappling with. As a frequent attendee of panels, conferences, supper clubs, and networking events myself, I’d also been nursing a feeling for a couple of years that a lot of them could be done better, whether it was introducing a professional matchmaking session over lunch at a conference, or engaging people at a networking event in a facilitated conversation instead of leaving them to mingle over drinks. So at the end of 2017, I decided to bite the bullet and create what I needed.
You live in New York. Aren’t there a lot of feminist clubs there? Why another one?
Yes … and no. There are definitely a lot of services and events that are targeted at women, whether you’re talking co-working spaces, supper clubs, conferences, or panels. And there are also a bunch of largely virtual feminist communities. I’m a member of Continuum, WIN, and WAM, to name a few.
But there are also some important things that set Powerbitches apart. The first is both the specificity and the breadth of the membership we serve. We’re not a generic women in business group where, to be honest, I’ve found I’m unlikely to meet people who share my interests and values. The purpose-based membership requirement genuinely sets our members apart. But our membership is also broader than, say, WAM, the ultimate listserv of feminist journalists (which, as a former journalist, I love), but also all journalists. Powerbitches members are a mix of entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, and creative types (musicians, filmmakers, journalists, etc.), driven by a sense of common and complementary purpose.
The second thing that sets us apart is our focus on live events and on conversations over passive consumption of information. We run two live events every month: one, a supper club with a woman doing game-changing feminist work, and the other, a facilitated group discussion on an issue facing our members, such as money, authentic marketing, or incorporating your values in your business.
As I wrote about in a recent post on the Powerbitches blog, there are a lot of people selling the idea of community right now, but far fewer are actually delivering on it. There are good reasons for this. Genuine community is labour intensive! It’s time consuming! It’s difficult to scale! It’s not obviously or easily profitable. But it matters, and it’s at the heart of what we offer.
Can you be a member even if you live outside of New York? Or the United States?
Yes! At the beginning of 2019, we opened a virtual membership for people living outside New York City. Virtual members get access to our members-only listserv and can virtually access and participate in some of our live members-only discussions. In the longer term, I’d like to see the virtual Powerbitches community become a kind of international and cross-disciplinary network of feminist badasses, sparking new collaborations and deepening knowledge of each other’s work. We’re also looking at introducing live events programming in other cities in 2020, but are still figuring out the model, like how to pay for it, and how to sustain the people working on and running the events.
So great to see you hosting a feminist entrepreneur event. Tell us more. And how can we find out what was learned?
One of our members, Lex Schroeder (who readers may be familiar with through her work on the Entrepreneurial Feminist Forum and her writing for LiisBeth) came to me last year with the idea of partnering on a small EFF dinner in New York. We couldn’t pull it together in time, but the idea stayed with me. I love the work that LiisBeth and others are doing around feminist business practices, and think it’s such a rich area for discussion. There’s a lot of talk in the US right now about women entrepreneurs and women in leadership, but not as much public conversation about what makes a business feminist and how to integrate your feminist values into your everyday lived business practice. And while there are lots of entrepreneurs out there doing great feminist work, my sense is that “feminist entrepreneur” isn’t really a self-identified field here in New York just yet.
So on Monday, May 13, we’ll be bringing together a group of 30 to 40 feminist-identifying entrepreneurs, creators, and non-profit leaders of all genders in New York City for a unique roundtable talking about what feminist entrepreneurship is, highlight some of the great projects entrepreneurs in the city are working on (mapping and inviting people to this event has been a lot of fun!), and learn more from the people in attendance about their ideas, challenges, and how they’re integrating their values into their business.
Because of the size of the event and the fact that it will be so interactive (at times there will be many conversations rather than just one), we’re not allowing people to participate virtually through Zoom video conferencing. We feel that it wouldn’t do justice to either of our live or virtual participants. But we will be sharing the results of the conversation after the fact. And I’m interested in rolling out similar roundtables in other cities.
