We can’t talk about women’s empowerment without digging into what we mean by power. Women often have a tentative relationship to the word power because we don’t want to uphold the old “power over” paradigms that we’ve experienced. In this workshop, we’ll explore new definitions of power and challenge the old notions.

Working with models and concepts developed by women, we’ll walk through the stages of personal power in organizations, reflecting on how they show up for each one of us.

Finally, we’ll talk about how to share power and make concrete plans to do so. In the new thinking about power, we only truly become powerful when we shift from individualistic thinking and bring others with us into empowerment.

There was a time when an organization could put their values on their website and leave it at that. Not anymore. Today, organizations need to demonstrate how they are putting those values into action. Same with each of us. In addition to the values of our organization, we also operate with a set of personal values. Hopefully there is strong overlap between the two!

In this workshop, we’ll go through an exercise to articulate your own leadership values and beliefs, and then reflect on how aligned you are to those values in your life and work. Discover your deeper “why” and how to connect to your sense of purpose and what matters most to you.

Imposter Syndrome moments are human and impact us all. Those moments of self-doubt and wondering if we belong are universal. However, there is also a systemic component to imposter syndrome. When we don’t see ourselves represented in certain spaces, we are more likely to experience imposter syndrome. This means we don’t all experience imposter syndrome equally or in the same ways.

In this 90-minute interactive workshop, we’ll discuss what imposter syndrome is, what contributes to it, and how to manage and overcome it when it happens. We’ll share examples of how, when and why it shows up, and invite participants to share experiences of imposter syndrome in their own work and lives.

The session will conclude with tips, resources and a personalized plan. Worksheet will be provided.

Many women have learned that we need to change who we are in order to fit into existing organizations, cultures and industries. We’ve become masters at it, and it’s helped us to survive and thrive. However, there’s a cost – both to us personally and to our organizations, when we don’t show up more fully as ourselves.

It takes some unlearning to be more intentional about showing up as yourself. In this workshop, we’ll learn to break some old habits and try out some new ones. We are constantly communicating, whether we’re aware of it or not. Being intentional about the messages we are sending ensures we are having the impact we want to have.

Many of us want to be good allies, and we definitely want others to be good allies to us, but it can be confusing when we’re also facing the truth of our own conscious and unconscious biases. The reality is none of us are perfect when it comes to diversity and inclusion. We’ve all grown up with varying degrees of stereotypes, sexism, racism and other biases because we’re part of a larger society that is reckoning with these very issues.

It's helpful to think of allyship as a verb. It’s not who you are, it’s what you do, the actions you take. And thankfully, those actions and behaviours can be learned and developed so that we can have the kind of positive impacts we want to have, even when we’re not perfect or don’t have it all figured out.

This workshop starts as a conversation about what we want from our allies and what it takes to be a good ally ourselves. We’ll each look at how we can shift our actions and behaviours personally, and how to ask for more allyship and support from colleagues and peers.

In this workshop we'll take stock of how we're doing so far on gender equity in Canada, as well as in your industry, including the learnings, the losses and the gains that have been surfaced by the pandemic. This social context and data are a helpful backdrop to understanding our personal and organizational experiences as women.