"I’m a person who wears many hats. Some days you’ll catch me as an entrepreneur. Other days you’ll catch me as a daughter, a sister, or a student. If you boil it down, the common denominator is that I’m a person who is trying to do something bigger than herself, and to help other people."
In celebration of International Day of the Girl, we’re spotlighting social entrepreneur Mylene Tu. A management engineering student at the University of Waterloo, Mylene is also the co-founder and CEO of Lumaki Labs (formerly FEM in STEM), a startup that helps connect students and employers through virtual internships. We chatted with Mylene about her goals for the startup, the gender disparity in STEM (the combined fields of science, technology, engineering, and math), and why she loves to “put a ring on” her accomplishments.
H&B: What was the inspiration behind your startup, Lumaki Labs, and what are your goals with it now?
As a female in engineering, I realized early on that there was a big disparity in the number of boys versus girls. Even when I was putting myself out there, going to events and conferences, I didn’t see much representation in terms of women and young people. That sparked me to start my first venture, FEM in STEM, which was a social enterprise to help empower other young women and provide them with resources to succeed in STEM.
Then last year, I started Lumaki Labs. It’s an edtech startup that focuses on revolutionizing the future of work through virtual internships. As a student, internships are invaluable in terms of gaining real world experience and just figuring out what adulting is like! For myself and my peers, a lot of these opportunities have disappeared or been canceled because of covid. At Lumaki, we saw an opportunity to shine a light on how people provide experiential learning and create opportunities for students to work virtually and attain experiences they might not have access to otherwise. The platform we’re currently building is designed to help employers recruit and onboard interns virtually.
Is there a way that these virtual internships are more accessible to women?
As a young woman in STEM, you do hear those horror stories about tech bros and how your ideas can get drowned out in meetings. But in a virtual setting—especially in times like these—everyone is looking for new connections and a sense of community, which I think translates to increased opportunity for women, but also just all people, to speak out. Traditionally, people look for internships close to home because it’s hard to pay rent or commute a lot when you’re an intern, but when things are virtual, you can access opportunities outside your home town. It also gives employers a chance to reach different demographics of people and diversify their talent pools.
What do you think are some barriers that prevent women from becoming involved in STEM in the first place?
One of the biggest things is exposure. I grew up in Windsor, Ontario, and so I didn’t really have a lot of exposure when it came to STEM fields. I originally entered university in chemical engineering, then broke into the technology and business side of things. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t have the opportunity to try different internships and stuff like that.
Another barrier is the way people talk about STEM in general. There’s a big move towards empowering women in STEM, but I’m hopeful that one day we no longer have to emphasize the fact that there’s a gender disparity. I want it to become really normal for everyone to have equal access and resources. When I ran FEM in STEM, a lot of young women would ask, “How should I deal with any kind of discrimination from male peers?” But the number one thing I always said was that you shouldn't be thinking about how you’ll react or respond to that stuff—you should just be thinking about your own career path and your success.
Using our business model as a force of good, specifically in terms of female empowerment, is really important to us at H&B. What does being a social entrepreneur mean to you personally?
For me it means building things for good. My initial impression of business was that it was all men in suits trying to make money. But as a social entrepreneur, you’re working towards something bigger than yourself, not just for the money, but for the good of other people. And during tough times when business is difficult, it’s really nice to think back to your purpose and the potential impact you’re having on people. Social entrepreneurship also means doing business in a sustainable way. Because one thing I’ve learned from my previous work with FEM in STEM, and from other strong female entrepreneurs, is that you do need that revenue to help move your mission forward. That additional capital helps you do greater things.
What excites you about the world of technology?
Technology has always been confusing to me. It’s inter-rooted in our daily lives but we don’t often sit down to really think about how everything works. The not-knowing gravitates me to want to learn more. Trying to figure out how these systems work, why they have certain impacts on people, and what makes them effective—all of that interests me. Because it could be knowledge I can use to help impact other people positively.
How do fashion and accessories fit into your life? Do you use them mainly for self-expression, or for other reasons?
I use my jewellery for a few different reasons. If I’m going into a pitch or an important meeting, I like to wear jewellery because it makes me feel more confident even though it’s such a small touch. Another reason is accountability. I have a habit of buying rings, especially if I want to keep a promise to myself. I remember last year I bought a little knot ring that stood for a promise I made to myself. Also, for engineers in Canada, when you graduate you get an iron ring. The whole idea of getting that ring when I graduate has been really motivating and I guess that’s played into how I view other parts of my life. If something happens with my entrepreneurship, either something that I’m proud of or want to work towards, I’ll buy a piece of jewellery.
What does empowerment mean to you personally?
To me, it’s breaking free of your comfort zone in a way that only you can do. Often, with the way education is set up and the way people are raised, you just kind of wait for opportunities to come your way. You work hard because you think that getting your degree is going to guarantee you a job. But I think empowerment is being able to break free from the norm and push your own limits to define your own path. I think empowerment has a very unique meaning for each person that chases after it.
The answer to this may seem obvious, but I’m wondering if you can articulate why it’s so important to have more female representation in STEM? What are some of the tangible benefits to having this field be more diverse?
You really do need diverse perspectives in order to drive new ideas and innovations forward. Half the population is made up of women, so not having those perspectives at the table—it’s really an injustice when you’re designing products you want everyone to use. From a psychological and biological perspective, the way women think and act can be so different from men, and so to be able to have both voices present when you’re actually building something will ensure your business has twice the impact.
Writing: Mica Lemiski
Images: Supplied
Meet Kam Bahia: High school teacher, founder of I Am: H.E.R., a workshop program focussed on empowering teenaged girls, and one of the amazing women that inspired The Look. Influenced by the lives and styles of women we admire, The Look was created to celebrate what these incredible women are thinking, doing, and wearing. Featuring stylish chain pieces, these designs are inspired by real women in our community, like Kam, and we hope wearing them serves as a reminder to always embrace your own authentic look.
We asked Kam everything from how she incorporates these designs into her everyday style to why she feels it's important for brands to represent everyday women, and even her favourite skincare tips. Get to know her, and her bright personality, below!
H&B: What do you like most about wearing jewellery chains?Kam: They make me feel beautiful but with the minimalist, carefree look. They don’t take up much space on my skin, they don’t overshadow my entire neck line, but yet somehow still make a loud, radiant statement. The dainty look is what I am drawn to; a gold or rose gold chain choker. I feel like the chain speaks for itself and for the woman wearing it, she says, “I am gentle, I am kind, but look out world, I do indeed shine!!!” And the world NEEDS our unique glow! What outfit (clothes and accessories) makes you feel most like yourself?High-waisted jeans or pants and just a plain white T-shirt with sneakers. I grew up playing soccer, so I am most comfortable in sneakers. And as for accessories, a single dainty chain choker and dainty rings. When it’s time for a girls night out, I will substitute my sneakers for platform sneakers to really take it up a notch! Why do you think it’s important for brands to feature everyday women as models? The appeal of the real, is SO real. In a world that is evolving every single day, with that comes the evolution of the word, “beauty." I think we are in a time that we have to learn to redefine the word “beauty." Models are used to promote a product, and they do so flawlessly. But I believe when you share “regular” customers wearing a product that they love and willingly associate themselves with that brand, those images just breed an organic, and just as flawless, image and feeling of beauty. It’s just a natural extension of marketing, but it’s coupled with women who are believing in and supporting these brands because that brand makes HER feel beautiful. And truthfully, if a woman feels beautiful emotionally, spiritually, mentally, socially, and physically, she is literally unstoppable! What’s your wake-up ritual like?First foremost, I take time doing my daily devotional. Gets me in the right mindset. From there, I am ready to tackle the day. In my months off, I will head straight into a workout. For the months I am working, it's right into the shower and getting ready for work. On my drive to work, I drink a hot water with lemon and listen to my favourite podcasts. What’s your top skincare tip?Don’t cringe…but soap (hand soap or body soap bar) and warm water. Stems from my mother who was born and raised in India and that’s all they used and that’s how I was raised. Why break the generational routine, right?!It’s Sunday and you’ve got no plans. How do you fill your day?I put in quality time with my distant siblings, also known as Netflix, Crave, and Amazon Prime. Can’t have them feel too neglected!What’s something you’re obsessed with that most people aren’t?Herbal Essence shampoo and conditioner. Also, in saying that, I am also obsessed with showering. I take 2-3 showers a day, and I wash my hair everyday…sorry to all the hairstylists out there. You’re the founder of “I Am H.E.R.” Why is providing tools to support young women and build their confidence something you’re particularly passionate about?Every decision we make is rooted in our self-worth. Unfortunately, our youth are facing an epidemic of self-doubt. It is our responsibility as an older generation to nurture and empower the younger generations. I am dedicated to having young females realize their full potential through encouragement and self-belief. If we can cultivate positive change in our younger generations’ lives, they in turn will then model positive change to others around them. What ingredient do you use most in your cooking?Garlic powder!What advice would you give to girls or women struggling to make peace with their bodies? Is there a piece of wisdom that has helped you personally?Out of 7+ billion people in the world, not one other human being has the same body as you. Not one other woman in this world has the same curves as you, the same skin as you, the same smile as you. I have curves, I have a butt, but with that, comes cellulite and stretch marks. But I wouldn’t give up any of that to share the same figure with any other woman who is absent of those things. In fact, in order to have the butt I love so much, I had to get stretch marks and cellulite, so in a way, dare I say I'm actually thankful for those features. We truly are unique creatures. Our world NEEDS our uniqueness. Our uniqueness in our bodies, our shapes, our skin, our languages, and everything in between. Each woman’s uniqueness should be defined as perfection. Because there really is nothing else out there like it. There is no one else out there in this world like me or you, actually THINK about it, cling onto those words. THERE IS NO ONE IN THIS WORLD LIKE YOU!! How incredible is that?!
“Cycling has helped me accept my vision loss. I’m at peace with it now.”
Carla Shibley is pedaling hard. Seated at the back of the tandem bike she shares with teammate Meghan Brown, she pumps her legs relentlessly, trying to catch up to the pair of riders she knows must be just around the bend. It’s the 2019 Canadian National Road Race. She and Meghan have a shot of winning—if they make up some ground. Her legs burn; sweat pours.
But something feels off to Carla. Where is the leading team? Given how fast she and Meghan have been riding, shouldn’t they be caught up by now? Carla doesn’t let this thought distract her too much. She continues pedaling and follows Meghan’s instructions. Harder, let’s go, keep pushing. She recites the team mantra internally. The pain is temporary.
Meanwhile, Meghan is keeping a secret: she and Carla aren’t chasing the leader; they are the leader. The reason Carla doesn’t know this is because she has only two per cent central vision. At ten years old, Carla was diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration, and ever since then, a large black spot has been growing in her line of sight, eclipsing her vision. “I don’t know when the lights are gonna go out,” she says. But she does know it will happen eventually.
Which means Meghan is much more than an ordinary teammate or tandem pilot. On the road, she is Carla’s eyes. Not only does Meghan steer the bike, but she also instructs Carla on how to prepare and respond to the terrain. Is there a hill coming up? A steep corner to ease up for? Meghan relays this information verbally—sometimes using code words if they’re in competition—or through a sort of leg-language. “I’ll ease off on the pedals a tiny bit and Carla knows right away to ease off. It’s almost like she can read my mind.”
And while Carla is usually able to judge her and Meghan’s race position by counting the competitors they have or have not passed (she still has partial peripheral vision) she has miscalculated in this particular race. “We made an attack and got away really early in the race,” Meghan recalls. “We kept pushing to increase that gap. But Carla thought we were chasing.”
When they cross the finish line—first—Carla doesn’t know they’ve won. Meghan tries to tell her the good news, but Carla thinks it’s a joke. “I was so dumbfounded. It didn’t sink in.”
Carla’s shock lasts until she’s on top of the podium—top centre. “My hands were shaking. I was like, what? Is this a joke? Am I being pranked?’”
As cameras click and fans cheer, Carla and Meghan raise their arms high, trophies in hands, medals shining.
It is definitely not a prank.
“I’ll ease off on the pedals a tiny bit and Carla knows right away to ease off. It’s almost like she can read my mind.”
Two months later, they’re back on the podium—again, top centre. They’re in Lima, Peru, having just finished their final event at the 2019 Parapan Am Games, an international, multi-sport event that only occurs once every four years, similar to the Olympics or Paralympics. It’s Carla and Meghan’s fourth time on the podium this year in Lima. They’ve won two golds, a silver, and a bronze. They’ll return to Canada with much heavier bags.
No doubt their performance has edged them closer to making Team Canada and heading to Tokyo for the Paralympic Games, now being held in 2021. “But we’re hopefuls, not shoe-ins,” says Meghan. “The selection process is still being finalized and will depend on some races next year.”
But they certainly look like Team Canada material. Watching Meghan and Carla ride—legs churning exactly in-sync, heads bowed at identical angles—it’s easy to assume they’ve been riding together since childhood. But it’s only been two years. After meeting at a cycling club in Calgary, they began training together upon the suggestion of a mutual friend. “I was terrified at first,” Meghan admits. “Tandem bikes are very big and very fast. It’s not like riding a road bike by yourself at all.”
Carla had almost no fear at all. At the time, she was willing to ride the bike with pretty much anyone. “I can teach you to ride in two minutes!” she’d say to prospective partners, downplaying the steep learning curve. “I think it really scared a lot of people.”
“The more you ask for help, the more you’ll see that people are willing to give it.”
Meghan was able to keep her initial fears in check by taking a slow and steady approach to learning. That easing-in turned out to be crucial for establishing a solid, sustainable partnership. “I’ve had a few different pilots,” Carla says. “But the difference with Meghan was her conservative approach. It allowed us to build a foundation.”
Now, their sense of trust is iron-clad. “I can be on the back of the bike with Meghan and not feel any sense of anxiety,” says Carla.
Sports haven't always been a source of calm or joy for Carla. After her childhood diagnosis, athletics were an outlet for anger but also a huge source of that anger. Her vision loss made participation in sport either difficult or impossible. At 18, she had to give up running because she was constantly near-missing running into things—most notably, small children and deer on the road. She constantly wrestled feelings of why me?, especially since her sisters were both provincial-level athletes. A wrestler and a gymnast, they derived a sense of identity from sport that Carla craved but couldn’t access. She resorted to self-deprecating humor, joking that she was “just the blind girl.” “I used jokes to stuff away my feelings about my vision loss,” she says.
Wanting to help, her sister suggested she try goalball, a team sport played exclusively by people who are visually impaired. But playing goalball was a bit like trying on a pair of jeans that was designed to fit but didn’t. “The atmosphere wasn’t for me.”
Then a coach told her about Para cycling—the possibility of zooming down hills and powering up slopes with a sighted guide. “I was like, woah, a tandem exists?”
She felt hopeful. Her family felt...concerned. The fact that Carla wanted to ride a bike—without seeing the road—seemed reckless. “Everyone thought it was crazy!” she laughs. It didn’t stop her. “To this day, my mom says her heart just pounds [when she watches me ride] and I’m like, why? This is so much fun!’”
"The para community I’ve been exposed to in Canada—they’re such incredible, hardworking, humble people. It’s quite powerful. I enjoy working with Carla and being a part of something bigger than just myself.”
It’s been more than just fun. “Cycling has helped me accept my vision loss. I’m at peace with it now.” If she’s having a bad day, Carla will get on the bike with Meghan or her good friend Janelle and think, “ah, that felt good.”
Like Carla, Meghan discovered cycling as a result of physical challenges. A multi-talented athlete and former competitive soccer player, Meghan’s sports career took a turn after a series of knee injuries led to a frank conversation with her orthopedic surgeon. To avoid further injury, the surgeon advised Meghan give up soccer and try cycling. “The week after, I went and bought a road bike. And that was that.”
But it wasn’t quite that. Her true sporting breakthrough didn’t come until she discovered tandem cycling—and specifically, a tandem teamdom with Carla. “I enjoy Para cycling and being a part of that community more than any solo cycling I’ve ever done,” Meghan says. When asked how she feels to be accepted into the Para sport community as an able-bodied person, Meghan pauses to reflect. “It’s hard to put into words, honestly. The para community I’ve been exposed to in Canada—they’re such incredible, hardworking, humble people. It’s quite powerful. I enjoy working with Carla and being a part of something bigger than just myself.”
Their friendship outside of cycling carries its own power. They say they’re like sisters—unafraid to communicate their qualms but more unified because of it. They also just have a good time together. Meghan comes over for Middle Eastern dinners at Carla’s house, and they love to have those no one else would get this but us-type conversations. Chats along the lines of “what kind of mascara works best for when you have to sweat on a bike and then potentially appear on camera?” keep things light and fun between strenuous training sessions. “Finding makeup that we can wear while racing on a bike is a challenge we’ve been working on for a long time,” Meghan laughs.
As for their ten year age gap? They hardly notice it. “Carla has an old soul! She surprises me with her wisdom.”
They both cite remaining positive as integral to their partnership. This optimism has been especially crucial for Carla personally, as she doesn’t know how long her partial-sightedness will last. “I’m going blind and I’m looking forward to it,” she says. “That might sound bad, but it is what it is.” She says becoming less stubborn and learning to ask for help have been essential to her acceptance. “The more you ask for help, the more you’ll see that people are willing to give it.” Her advice for anyone facing unique challenges, especially physical ones, is to find some sort of outlet, to quit making excuses for yourself, and to let negativity fall away from you like water. “We have to be waterfalls,” she says. “Especially now.”
"It’s about the experience. It’s about enjoying whatever comes at me, with Meghan.”
As for competing at the 2021 Paralympic Games, Carla and Meghan say that’s definitely their goal—it would be a huge honour to represent their country at that level—but making Team Canada isn’t some kind of shining end point. “I’ve been asked before, ‘what if you don’t make it?,’” Carla says. “But it’s about the experience. It’s about enjoying whatever comes at me, with Meghan.”
Writer: Mica LemiskiPhotos: Provided
To honour Indigenous history and celebrate National Indigenous History Month, we’re spotlighting up-and-coming Indigenous artist and jewellery maker, Adrienne Larocque, and her brand Kihew and Rose.
Adrienne Larocque is a Nehiyaw Iskwew (Plains Cree Woman) from Maskwacis, Alberta, who lives, works, and creates on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples (Vancouver). Along with working full-time as a program coordinator for the First Nations Technology Council (a BC-based non-profit that aims to make jobs in the tech sector more accessible to Indigenous people) she’s also the creator of Kihew and Rose, a line of handmade accessories created with traditional Indigenous materials such as home-tanned hides, animal bone, shells, and beads. Following the launch of her latest collection, Hillberg and Berk chatted with Adrienne about her journey to becoming a beader, how she’s using beadwork to reconnect with her culture, and why those cultural ties were lost in the first place.
Interview by Mica Lemiski
Hillberg & Berk: How did you land on the name “Kihew and Rose” for your jewellery business?
Adrienne Larocque: So my Cree name—given to me by my late grandfather, my Mosom —is Kihew Iskwew, which means Eagle Woman. When I was thinking about names that aligned with my beadwork, I wanted something that represented a part of me but I didn’t want to use my full name. So I pulled Kihew. As for Rose, growing up, there were a lot of wild roses that grew in the field near where I lived in Alberta. So for me, Kihew and Rose reminds me of who I am as an Indigenous person, and also where I come from.
What is your origin story as a beader? How did you get started?
I know a lot of Indigenous women who learned beading techniques from their grandparents or family members, but beading techniques weren’t passed down to me that way. I’ve only been beading for about four years now. I grew up in my community—Maskwacis located in Treaty 6 territory in Alberta—but I was very disconnected from my culture as a result of the Indian residential school system. All of my grandparents and my parents went to residential schools (my parents went to day school and my grandparents went to the boarding schools) and these schools were designed to remove and isolate children from their homes and their families, traditions, and cultures. Unfortunately, it was a really well-designed system. Because of that, myself and my whole family were not exposed to a lot of these cultural traditions, including traditional art practices like beading.
I did have one beading lesson from my cousin when I was a teenager, but I was very young and very impatient! I gave up, thinking it wasn’t something I’d ever do. But I’ve always loved sewing. I used to make little patches and pouches on my Kokom’s ’s sewing machine, and all through my formative years I was sewing and learning how to pattern-draft and stuff. And so after high school and one year of general studies in college, I moved to Vancouver and took a fashion design diploma program. I had that background in sewing and thought, if I go into fashion, what could happen for me? But when I graduated from the program, I was discouraged by the competitiveness of industry, the lack of paid internships, and the distance away from my family. I was being called home. I went back to my community, and after working in education for two years, I just felt like I wasn’t really growing as a person. I decided to go back to school, this time focussing on Native Studies at the University of Alberta. That program completely shifted everything for me.
Oh wow—in what way?
Native Studies taught me so much about the residential school system, Canadian legislation, and how historical injustices against Indigenous people really created the world that myself and my community lived in. I always knew residential schools existed, but I didn’t know how they were structured in a way that forced Indigenous people to assimilate into the dominant culture. I just didn’t know this. Taking the Native Studies program gave me historical perspective and taught me about the Indian Act and how it still impacts Indigenous people today. It really opened my eyes. I just understood my world better.
It sounds like you had a whole new context put on your life.
For sure. Because if you don’t have the language to describe your experience, or the understanding of why you live a certain way, then how are you supposed to know? That program helped me understand why my upbringing and my family was the way it was, and why I didn’t have that connection to my culture. So I finished that program and graduated with my Bachelor of Arts Degree. It took me ten years to get my undergrad degree—that growing and learning process took time—but I did it. From there, I started building a career for myself. I began working with government and non-profit organizations to try and remove barriers for Indigenous people to access post secondary education opportunities. I also started looking for community classes to take in Edmonton, and I found a series of free workshops for First Nations women living in the city. I signed up, went to a beading class, and discovered this amazing group of people, including one woman with whom I had community ties I wasn’t aware of before. She demonstrated to us how to do a two-needle beading technique, and something just clicked. Since then, I’ve been beading non-stop.
I’m wondering if growing up without that understanding of your cultural history affected your relationship to your Indigeneity as a young person? And did you ever feel ostracized or othered as an Indigenous person?
I’ve definitely experienced instances of discrimination and racism and being stereotyped for the way I look, and it was definitely something that I struggled with growing up. Back then I wasn’t proud to be Indigenous because of the way I had been treated. To cope, I would try my best to blend in with the world and not draw too much attention to myself. But education really helped me become stronger in my Indigenous identity. My Native Studies program helped me shape that strong Indigenous identity for myself and better understand who I was and where I came from. I was able to develop stronger values because of it.
It sounds like that program really helped you go from feeling shameful to really feeling proud of your Indigeneity.
Yeah. One of the things I think about often is the collection I designed at the end of my fashion diploma program. When I look at that collection—it was beautifully made and I’m really proud of all the hard work I put into it—but you know, the inspiration for it didn’t come from me being an Indigenous person. I didn’t base those designs off my own lived experience or connect them to my Cree culture. I look at the collection and think about how you can’t tell that an Indigenous person made it, which is not to say that it needed to look Indigenous, but more that I just don’t see myself reflected in that work. Now that I’ve really grown to love beading and have built it into my life, I see myself reflected in the work that I do, whereas that wasn’t the case with my graduation collection.
I also have to say, your jewellery is hot right now. Going on your website, a couple hours after your collection dropped last Friday, I kept seeing sold out, sold out, sold out. How does that feel?
It’s weird! But it feels really great to see the support of the community—because that’s really what it is. It’s just inspiring, and it encourages me to continue to work. Working on that most recent collection—it took a long time. At the start of the pandemic, I was able to leave Vancouver (where I’m based) and go home to my family in Alberta, which really relaxed me, but still, for about a month I could not bead. I felt all this heightened anxiety, and so I didn’t touch my bead cases. There are so many teachings that go with beading, and one is that it’s not only an artform but a cultural practice, and so you always want to be in a good frame of mind and a good heart space when you bead. It’s an act of love, the way I see it. At the start of quarantine, I wasn’t feeling the right way, and so I couldn’t do it. But eventually, as things got better and I felt more calm, I started thinking, what’s something new that I can do? I began thinking of new designs, chipping away at it, and it grew into this really beautiful collection.
Can you talk a bit about what inspired the colours and shapes in your new collection? There seem to be a lot of references to Alberta’s native plant-life.
They’re based on plants that grow in Canada and are known to grow in Alberta, but what really drew me to that style of work was the feeling of going back a season, from spring to winter, which is what happened when I travelled from Vancouver to Alberta at the start of isolation. I got to experience the snow melting, the little signs of spring coming to life, and the regrowth all around me. Growing up in Alberta, the change of seasons has always been a big part of my life.
Yeah, I guess Vancouver has a very different kind of spring. There’s no big thaw like there is in the prairies.
Exactly, and traditionally in Indigenous communities, there were specific patterns and styles you recognized as belonging to certain Nations. Like you could tell where someone was from by the patterns and colours of their beadwork, and sometimes you could even tell what family they were from! The idea was, your beading reflected your surroundings. So for me it’s been really interesting because, like I mentioned before, I didn’t grow up with access to that passed-down knowledge. I don’t have any family patterns to reference—at least that I’m aware of—so I’m in this process of creating my own beading identity.
Do you know what the future of Kihew and Rose looks like? What’s next for you in a business sense?
That’s definitely the big question right now! Kihew and Rose is different than a traditional jewellery company in the sense that it’s all handmade and it’s very much an art—not to say that other jewellery isn’t art—but a lot of time goes into these pieces. I think I’m most well known for my smaller, more wearable, everyday earrings, but I’m also interested in reclaiming traditional practices like making moccasins or shawls. I’ve been thinking about starting to focus on larger pieces and acquiring traditional hides and other workable materials that are sourced in a good way. I would love to see the business grow from here, but I’m not really sure what that looks like yet, which is exciting! I think it could grow beyond what I even imagine, but as a smaller business owner I’m at the point where I’m still currently doing everything. It’s hard to meet the demands right now, to be honest.
Do you ever take commissions? So much of your online shop is sold out...
Oh yes for sure. That’s actually how I started—by doing commissions and requests. It got to be too much to manage and so I started being more strategic, like doing a collection at a time, releasing it, and seeing how it went. But I do love taking special occasion requests. I’ve created earrings and jewellery for three or four weddings and a couple of graduation ceremonies, and I find it to be a lot of fun. You know, as long as the project is the right fit and I have the time and capacity, then I will consider it.
How do you feel about non-Indigenous people engaging in beadwork or wearing your designs? I think sometimes people ask themselves, am I being appropriative if I’m wearing something that looks traditionally Indigenous when I’m not Indigenous myself?
I think it’s actually really important for non-Indigenous people to support Indigenous artists and business owners. I get that question a lot from people, like, is this cultural appropriation? It’s not. Unless you are a non-Indigenous person making Native-inspired work. If you’re buying from someone who is an authentic Indigenous person, then we’re happy to see you wearing our work. At markets, I had to learn quickly that I’m not just a vendor, but also an educator in the sense that I need to let people know it’s okay to buy my beadwork. It’s like, that’s why I’m here! That’s what I want you to do!
We’re reckoning with some big social justice issues right now—I’m speaking particularly of Black Lives Matter and racialized police violence. Given how police brutality disproportionately affects Indigenous people in Canada (just as it does Black people and other people of colour), I’m wondering how you feel about the way people in Canada are reacting to all the current news? There’s a lot of talk right now, but do you feel supported as an Indigenous person?
It’s tough because I wouldn’t necessarily say that I feel supported as a First Nations woman. Every day, something new happens and, as an Indigenous person, it’s a lot to take in because I really feel for the Black Lives Matter movement—there are a lot of similarities in terms of what both our communities experience with police violence. But from what I’ve witnessed and what I’ve seen on social media, it seems that Canadians have been more supportive of this movement because it’s at an arm’s length. Canadians are still reluctant to take ownership and take action against injustices that are happening against Indigenous people in Canada. They can acknowledge that racialized violence is happening somewhere else but not that it’s happening here. You mentioned that more people are starting to talk about all this, but it doesn’t feel like a whole lot has changed. I don’t see much shifting yet. There needs to be more awareness of what’s happening here in our own country.
What do you hope non-Indigenous people—people who consider themselves allies—are doing right now to take action against these injustices? Are there particular things that would be meaningful to you personally?
I think it’s really about taking the initiative to educate yourself. There are so many resources already available for people to access, one of them being the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They publish calls to action and they’ve also interviewed survivors of residential schools. One of the things I always used to hear our elders say is, we’ve already shared our stories. The stories are there, so you need to read them now. It’s about taking the time to really learn about Indigenous people who have been here since time immemorial.
Thank you for sharing that. It’s always tricky because, as a white person, I know it’s not great to keep asking Indigenous people, you know, “what can I do to help?” because that’s like saying “help me help you!”. I think for non-Indigenous people like myself, it’s really important to find ways to help that feel good in a personal sense. So for me, that looks like reading up on history, buying Indigenous art, bringing food to my Indigenous friends to show I support them—things like that.
Yeah, I think those are all really great things you mention. It's also important to have tough conversations with your own friends and family members, and to speak up when racist or inappropriate comments are made about Indigenous people. As an Indigenous person, we're not only subjected to stereotypes in the media but in our daily interactions, and to have to explain that again and again to people is just exhausting. At some point, there needs to be a shift. It can’t just be about us retelling these stories when we’ve told them time and time again. There does need to be initiative and uptake from other people from different backgrounds.
I agree, and thank you so much for taking the time to share your own story today. Are there any Indigenous artists who have inspired you or acted like mentors throughout your journey?
One person that has been very influential in my beading journey is Heather Dickson, of Dickson Designs. She is an artist from the Yukon and is Tlingit from the Carcross Tagish First Nation and Nuxalk Nation from Bella Coola, BC. She creates beautiful and intricate beadwork and is well renowned for her beaded Granny Hanky Headbands. Her beadwork is serious goals! Since I started my business she has provided so much encouragement and given me so much advice when it comes to her knowledge of running a business.
That’s amazing! Is there anything else you’d like to add or that you want people to know about?
Because I didn’t start beading until I was a bit older, I just want to let people know that beadwork is something you can start at any time. Just because you may not have learned something when you were younger or didn’t have access to these cultural understandings—it doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Reciprocity is a big part of what I do. Because I have been gifted with this knowledge, I want to be able to share it with other First Nations people as well. It’s really important for me to be able to pass on the knowledge I have to the next generation.
I love that you say this because I feel like so many artists treat their art like this very exclusive, private thing—as in, “this is my idea and I own it”. It’s a super individualistic and status-driven way of thinking about art, and I like that your work doesn’t play into that. Your beading feels deeply engaged in community.
Beading really is a communal activity! It was something that Indigenous women did together so there is a lot of storytelling and sharing that occurs when you’re in these beading circles. To be able to create that experience for other people—it’s such a privilege to do that. Finding a way to learn how to bead was very difficult—I had to take a class instead of learn from family—and I don’t want it to be that hard for other people. Especially if you’re a First Nations person, beading shouldn’t be that inaccessible. I always think back to my Kokom, my late grandma. She was still alive when I first started beading and so she would watch me. She would stand over my shoulder and ask me, you know, “how do you choose the colours?”. She always used to tell me stories about how she wanted to learn to bead as a kid but wasn’t able to. It really breaks my heart that she had to go through what she did.
Those moments watching you must have made her really proud.
I think it’s important to acknowledge my Kokom’s role in all of this. Even though she didn’t know how to bead, I like to think that we could have beaded together.
Well just looking at the designs, you can tell there’s so much love and care put into them.
I really do try. I try to put good energy into it and to make it with good intentions.
When Jordan Guildford was fourteen, she began to see her mother differently. Her child’s eye was giving way to a more judicious, adult perspective, and with that came the understanding that her mom was not just a mom, but a woman. “My dad wasn’t really around at all, and I started understanding what his absence meant, as a woman, to my mom.”
Without the support of a partner, Jordan’s mom had gone into life-source mode. “We had nothing” says Jordan, who grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her mom and two siblings.“We often didn’t have food, heat, or hot water.”
A lack of necessities meant her mother’s priority was her children’s wellbeing and survival. Her own wants seemed irrelevant.
Not wanting her mother’s sense of self to dwindle any longer, Jordan suggested to her younger siblings that, instead of using the $20 their grandmother gifted each of them to Christmas-shop for themselves that year, they pool their money and buy their mom some jewellery. Her siblings were in. “We bought mom this little bracelet that looked like leaves woven together. It had what we thought were diamonds but…definitely plastic!” she laughs.
Upon opening the gift on Christmas morning, Jordan’s mother burst into tears and left the room. “I thought we’d hurt her. My brother—who was eight years younger—thought we’d got the wrong one!” But after a few minutes, Jordan’s mother reentered the living room, hair and make-up done, wearing her best clothes.“She sat us down and told us that this piece of jewellery had reconnected her to being a woman and an individual.”
The link between jewellery and personal empowerment had been made clear to Jordan. Seeing her mother transform in a matter of minutes, all because of a bracelet and the sentiment behind it, showed how true “look good, feel good” could really be.
“It’s as if you feel black and white and then you put on a little piece of jewellery and suddenly you see yourself in colour.”
Jordan carried this sentiment with her over the years, but it wasn’t until December 2015 that she saw the opportunity to really put what she’d learned into practice. At a dinner party in her new hometown of Calgary (where she now lives with her husband and two kids, aged six and seven) Jordan and her friends were chatting about charitable initiatives around the holidays.
“I noticed there was a focus on initiatives benefiting children, which I think is 100% how it should be, but I’ve seen what it’s like for women, too. If the children don’t have much, the mom has even less.”
Fueled by the memory of her mother and the bracelet, Jordan decided to spearhead a jewellery drive to collect accessories she could give to women in shelters on Christmas. She called this campaign “Gems for Gems,” the intended message being that gems in the community would donate gems to the gems (the women) in shelters. “I had only three weeks to collect, and I had a goal of giving 25 packages,” she recalls. “We collected enough to do 436 packages in three weeks.”
Central to the success of the campaign, Jordan says, was not door-to-door soliciting, social media spamming, or other pushy marketing tactics. There was only one drop-off location for the jewellery—the OrangeTheory fitness centre in Calgary—and the staff and members rallied, big-time.“It’s amazing what happens when people come together with a common goal.”
Fast-forward four years and Gems for Gems is a nationally-registered charity whose mission has expanded beyond the realm of crowd-sourcing jewellery and into that of domestic abuse education and prevention. “I wanted to be able to keep the momentum of Gems going year-round,” Jordan says, adding that she didn’t set out on creating a large charity; it just sort of happened.
“It wasn’t me trying to make space [for myself of this charity]. I was filling a required space.”
Gems still operates their annual jewellery drive (which has reached over 14,000 across Canada) but their outreach now includes a scholarship program and a series of workshops designed to empower survivors.
One of the workshops teaches self-defence, and when it first began, Jordan noticed some recurring questions from survivors. Questions like ‘what do I do when I’m being cornered?’ or ‘what do I do when I’m bleeding and I can’t see through blood?’ came up shockingly often, and Jordan understood what this meant: women were planning on returning to their abusers. “I thought, oh my god, I’ve got to be able to do something to make these women feel like leaving and remaining out is an actual option.”
She set to researching and discovered that lack of self confidence and lack of financial independence were (and are) two of the leading factors for why women return to abusive situations. Wanting to address these factors, Jordan added more classes to the empowerment series, which now includes workshops in financial literacy, self defence, resilience training, and psychological coping skills. The series is called THRIVE. “Women come into our workshops not being able to make eye contact with you, and then suddenly their heads are up, they’re leaning forward, taking notes, and asking questions. It’s incredible.”
Jordan’s personal history as a survivor (she was abused by her priest as a child) has given her the perspective she knows is necessary to facilitate survivor recovery.
“I have been grounded in the reality of poverty and abuse, and I want to create change for other people. It’s amazing to live a life focused on that.”
Yet the process of operating Gems for Gems is not a healing experience for Jordan herself—nor does she think it should be. “I personally feel that if you’re needing to do something to heal yourself, you probably shouldn’t be working with other people that need help.”
That’s not to say that Gems hasn’t had, and isn’t having, a huge personal impact on Jordan; it’s more that her trauma is separate and distant from her charitable work. “The stuff that happened to me was a long time ago. It’s part of what made Gems possible because it’s given me perspective, but I don’t have the pain with it anymore.”
Gems’ team members are expected to have a similar, forward-looking approach. “We don’t talk about backstories at all. That makes us very different in our sector. We are 100% here moving forward.”
Also setting Gems apart from other organizations in their field is the language they employ when discussing abuse. Specifically, they don't use domestic violence as a catch-all for varied types of domestic abuse.
“The reason we say domestic abuse instead of domestic violence is because we see violence as a point on the spectrum under the umbrella of abuse.” In other words, abuse comes in many forms: financial, emotional, sexual—all equally legitimate and all worthy reasons for seeking help.
“Calling it domestic violence is problematic to me because, that way, many women who aren’t getting beaten don’t understand that they’re still being abused.”
And women who don’t know they are being abused are more likely to stay in unsafe situations, sometimes to the point where things turn fatal. “Our scholarships are named after women who have been murdered by their intimate partners. And in both cases, the situation didn’t turn physical until the first and last time.”
Gems is on a mission to educate and empower survivors, which involves showing survivors that resilience comes in many forms, and that there is no “right way” to act resiliently. Maybe resilience means leaving your partner and seeking help at a shelter. Maybe it means getting your nails done in the wake of grief. Maybe it means simply breathing, in and out, over and over. To Jordan, resilience refers to how you come back from difficulties you’ve been given.
“I believe we all have the right to wallow and stay angry. But we also have the choice to not. And I feel the responsibility, as a people with breath in us, to take the life we have and make it as beautiful as we can.”
Jordan’s daughter, Lily, seems to have tapped into her mother’s philosophy already, possessing a knack for de-escalating tension and making other children feel safe around her. “My kids, Lily and Gabriel, grew up in the centre of this charity and it’s changed how they are. They behave differently, they think differently—the things that come out of their mouths are different.” Jordan recalls an incident in which Lily was only four years old. Walking up to an older, bigger boy whom she’d witnessed bullying a smaller boy, Lily said, “do you see that? Do you see how sad he is right now?” She looked from the small boy to the big boy as if to say, did you really mean to hurt him?
Taking his cue, the big boy walked away. “It just blew my mind,” says Jordan. “She didn’t get mad or call him a bully. She just went in and instinctively changed his perspective.”
Changing perspective is central to what Gems for Gems does, and will continue to do, as they help survivors transcend their circumstances. They are showing women that pain can translate to power, and that every single breath can be an act of resilience.
Writer: Mica LemiskiPhotos: Provided
When Jacque Tisher’s first daughter, Acacia, was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus—birth defects involving the spinal cord and brain—she knew her experience of motherhood was going to be drastically different than what she’d always imagined. As Acacia underwent thirteen surgeries in her first year of life, Jacque lived at the hospital. “Watching her struggle with life and come close to death in infancy was terrifying—it was such a different experience,” says Jacque. “Even so, I had the opportunity and ability to bond with her very strongly.”
Jacque—pronounced like “Jackie,” and named after Jackie Kennedy—knew she had a choice: to be bitter, or to make the world better. She chose the latter. “I’m very solution-based at living. If you see a problem, you come up with a solution.”
As a new registered nurse planning to start her career in emergency, Jacque decided to change direction and specialize by becoming a pediatric and neonatal intensive care nurse.
“I wanted to be able to help other people’s kids like they’d helped mine.” she says.
Working in a unit where babies with complex medical needs were born, Jacque became increasingly bothered by the fact that many children lived their whole lives in the hospital. (Back then, it was very challenging and in some cases impossible to take children home if they required life support or round-the-clock care.) Jacque often argued with doctors about what quality of life truly meant, advocating for kids to have a life outside the sterile, ten-by-ten rooms they’d been assigned.
“These kids would have 65 nurses they thought were their mom. They grew up institutionalized because of their health needs, looking at a TV and never touching the grass, seeing the stars, or feeling the warmth of the sun.”
The solution—or at least a partial one—was for Jacque to become a foster parent to children who would otherwise be confined to the hospital, and who lacked families of their own. Inspiring this decision was Jasmine, a little girl who’d been living in the hospital for two years. “I saw her every day when I came to work. I fell in love with her and thought, I want to take her home.”
But about a month after Jasmine joined the family (then made up of Jacque, her husband, and daughters Acacia and Victoria) she passed away. Adding to Jacque’s grief was the subsequent loss of two infant children of her own, both of whom had been born prematurely and hadn’t survived the complications. Despite these losses, Jacque’s desire to be a mother never wavered, in part because she has always conceptualized motherhood as an opportunity to care for a special gift from God—a child.
“A child is never really ours. They’re their own person. We get the gift of loving them unconditionally, guiding them, being part of their life, and developing that precious life.”
Jacque went on to have a son (Isaac) and fostered several more children with special needs, one of whom was Hope. But bringing Hope into the family meant advocating for in-home medical support so that Jacque could sleep through the night and still go to work twice a week. “All families should have that support. If you have a child on life-support or that has complex medical needs, health care should step in and help.” But 24 hours after Jacque got the support she asked for, Hope passed away. “I thought, this isn’t okay. So, I decided to become the voice for other families who needed care like I did and started Hope’s Home.”
Beginning as a small home daycare for children with complex medical needs, Hope’s Home was originally run out of Jacque’s own home. Jacque wanted to change the reality of what it meant to have a child with special needs while trying to pursue a career.
“All my decisions come from raising my little girl, Acacia, and understanding what it’s like to be a mom while trying to maintain employment.”
With Hope’s Home up and running, it soon became apparent that Jacque had tapped into a huge community need: over the course of 14 years, Hope’s Home grew from a privately-run daycare to a multi-million dollar non-profit with 230 employees spread across caregiving facilities in Regina, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Warman, Saskatchewan.
Today, Hope’s Home operates a number of early learning & childcare centres to support both children with complex medical needs and typically developing children. Along with medically-safe, Monday-Friday daycares staffed by nurses, early childhood educators, and developmental workers, Hope’s Home also operates several supportive living homes for children in foster care.
These live-in homes weren’t originally part of Jacque’s plan. “At first I wanted Hope’s Home to be a daycare and to offer some respite. I wanted kids to go home with their families at night.” But this goal proved to be slightly idealist—because not all kids have families, or even foster families, to return home to consistently. Take Hope, for example, whose mother’s circumstances and lack of ability rendered her unable to care for a daughter born with complex medical needs. “There are times when parents truly can’t provide care,” says Jacque.
There are also situations in which caregiving can become too big a task for a single set of parents to handle—no matter how dedicated, loving, or capable they may be. The Trudels, for example, are a family of five in which the youngest child, Thomas, has a genetic condition undocumented anywhere else in the world. Parents Shianne and Ivan were thrown quickly into a world of complex medical devices and admittedly scary drugs. Questions like “When should we give him morphine?” and “When should we give him Ativan?” became part of their everyday lives.
Recognizing they did not have the capacity to care for Thomas while working and parenting their other two young daughters, Shianne and Ivan sent Thomas to live at Hope’s Home in Prince Albert. “[Shianne and Ivan] are still Mom and Dad and part of his world, but they recognize that we’re here to be an extension of their family,” says Jacque.
Helping families like the Trudels is exactly why Jacque is so enthusiastic about her working life. “They’re a beautiful example of why we do what we do, and why our staff shows up to work everyday.” She is also buoyed by the memory of Acacia, who passed away in 2011 at the age of eighteen.
“I always say to people: you have to know your why. So, why do you get up in the morning, why you do what you do, and why are you passionate about your job or what you do in life?”
Acacia is Jacque’s why. “I think of her as an angel,” she says, adding that, as an organ donor, Acacia saved five lives after she passed. “She’s my hero. I would not be who I am if I wasn’t her mom.”
Even with such a powerful why fueling her mission, Jacque’s work with Hope’s Home can be difficult—emotionally, physically, and even from a business standpoint, as Jacque is trained as a nurse and not a business expert. “I didn’t know it was going to be a 14 million dollar business with 230 staff! But yeah, that happened,” she says, as if still in shock over those numbers. “I have taken many leadership courses to mentor, lead and coach my staff. Recognizing gaps in knowledge, I even took a course called Accounting for Dummies! Because I had to have a better understanding of my financial records.”
Jacque is not the only ladder-climber in her family. She describes her mother, Jeanie, as an absolute worker.“Growing up, my family ran a restaurant, a bowling alley, a pizza place, and a youth centre where all the kids hung out,” she says, adding that, since her dad was a preacher, her mom took a lead in running the business—without any formal education. Jeanie later got her GED on a whim (she was forty and aced it) and, after her divorce, worked her way up from cook to Flight Chief at the Minot Air Force Base. “She’s just an amazing woman with a business mind, and I believe I have that same mind. She is my mentor and best friend.”
Jacque’s inherited business savvy continues to drive Hope’s Home toward new opportunities, but her working life has not eclipsed her individual wants and needs. For example, she’s working on a book, The Journey of Hope. “The story needs to be told,” she says, adding that the book is largely about Acacia. “The things she taught me growing up…she really was an incredible daughter.”
Jacque is also getting remarried this year. She has been divorced for fourteen years (amicably so) but it’s only recently that she’s been open to partnership again. “I thought, never again, my whole life is work and children, I don’t have time for that. And then I met this guy. I thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing.”
Jacque is taking a no-big-deal approach to wedding planning. “I’ll get a dress and it’ll be fine!” she laughs, adding that the wedding will be held on her family’s acreage in North Dakota. “We’ll all cook the food and we’ll have family and friends to share the day with. I’m sure all the neighbours will show up, too.”
Her kids will also be there—three from her side, and three from fiancé Jason’s. It’s evidence that Jacque’s best talents are building families and being a mother.
Writer: Mica LemiskiPhotography: Taryn Gibson
Not too long ago, Kirsten MacDonell was having a lunch meeting at Earl’s. She noticed her server—a woman in her early twenties—eavesdropping on her conversation, clearly interested in the words being exchanged over shared appies and salads. When Kirsten signed off on the bill, the server saw an opportunity to jump in. “Are you from YEG BOSS BABES?,” she asked, the same way you might ask a celebrity to confirm their identity.
“I am!” replied Kirsten.
“I love what you’re doing,” the server said. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
For Kirsten, moments like this illuminate the true value of what she and YEG BOSS BABES co-founder, Kayla Kaliszuk, are doing. “It’s like, ooh, they’re into it,” says Kirsten. “Our work makes a mark in society, and we want to continue.”
When you think of a typical “networking event,” what comes to mind? Probably a lot of suits. Probably a large, nondescript conference space or ballroom full of business types, chatting stiffly about growth or returns or establishing a brand identity. Probably lots of grey. Lots of black. Lots of men.
This, at least, is the atmosphere Kirsten faced most often while working in sales for a large company.
“The networking stuff we went to was 95% men. There weren’t a lot of women attending,” she says. “And the feedback I was getting from coworkers was like, ‘I was so uncomfortable going to those events because I didn’t feel like I could relate to anybody.’”
Kirsten decided to create a space where networking wouldn’t be such an intimidating, dude-driven experience. As a “solopreneur” herself (Kirsten has her own photography business in addition to a sales job) she knew how hard it was to gather resources and grow a business without a support network. She texted a few friends, including Kayla, a fellow small business owner, and asked if they were interested in starting a wine club (a terrific way to generate interest). “We can go to each other’s houses, meet women who are doing similar things, and swap resources,” Kirsten said over the group text.
“Kirsten sent us a logo and we were like, ‘this is awesome, let’s do it!,’” says Kayla.
Fast forward a couple years and YEG BOSS BABES—the outcome of the wine club—is now a thriving business with over 139 members and 1700 email subscribers. Their mission? To connect women entrepreneurs with the resources and community they need to grow and thrive in business.
“I feel like more and more women are wanting the freedom to start their own business, but they don’t have friends or resources to lean on,” says Kayla.
That’s where YEG BOSS BABES (YBB) comes in. Led by Kirsten, Kayla, and additional co-founder Amy Bender, YBB hosts everything from vision board workshops to holiday mixers to seminars with award-winning women entrepreneurs—“yegsperts,” as they’re called. They also have a membership program. Perks include a space on the YBB directory page (a beautifully-designed online database of women-run businesses in Edmonton), event discounts, and professional headshots. “We find that professional photos really help elevate a business,” says Kayla.
Kayla and Kirsten run YBB with a distinct (and rare) lack of corporate stuffiness: it wouldn’t be uncommon to find a photobooth, cupcake tower, or gorgeous floral display at their events. They’re not afraid to be explicitly feminine in their branding and event curation because not only does it feel authentic to them, but it creates an atmosphere that women find appealing and welcoming. “The typical entrepreneur look has really changed and we’re happy to be trailblazers in that,” Kirsten says. “We can be professional but we can still be ourselves.”
“I didn’t used to like pink but now I’m obsessed with it!” laughs Kayla.
For Kayla and Kirsten, staying true to themselves also means staying at home to raise their families. That’s partly why running YEG BOSS BABES is such an ideal enterprise for them both: they can be mothers and entrepreneurs simultaneously. “Even before we had kids, it was our goal to be at home and raise our kids,” says Kayla. “I’m so supportive of people who go to their nine-to-fives and have that career but it’s not for me personally.”
Kirsten feels the same. “It’s all about taking control of your schedule for your family,” she says, adding that integrating your work life with your family life shouldn’t be seen as a gold standard for all women. “Don’t let society define what having it all is,” she says. “That’s how you get in trouble and burn out.”
“Yeah. Everyone has their own needs,” adds Kayla.
If Kirsten and Kayla seem in-sync professionally, you should see them as mothers. At the time of our interview, Kayla was weeks away from giving birth to her second child, while Kirsten had a two-week-old baby girl at home. “Before we started a business, that was the plan: to be pregnant together,” Kayla says.
But the reality of near-simultaneous pregnancies was a little daunting at first.
“It’s not that Kayla wasn’t excited to be pregnant at the same time as me,” says Kirsten. “But from a professional standpoint, she was like, ‘oh no, what are we going to do? We’re due two months apart! How will the business be affected?’”
To their surprise, their dual pregnancies affected the business positively, in part because the demands of (impending) motherhood meant passing along jobs to other women and hiring new people to help run YEG BOSS BABES. “I think if the pregnancies didn’t happen, we would have kept trying to do it all ourselves,” says Kayla.
“In order to grow a business, you do need to let go a bit.”
There have of course been personal benefits to growing—both in a physical and business sense—in tandem. “It’s one of the coolest things ever to walk through life at the same time with someone,” says Kirsten. “Especially as close friends, and especially professionally. We just get each other.”
Their lives may be closely entwined, but Kayla and Kirsten maintain separate, unique working lives outside the Boss Babes umbrella. Kirsten, for example, has a photography business. Her favourite niche is boudoir, which she loves for the unexpected, personal benefits it gives clients. “I love meeting all shapes and sizes of women and getting to know their journey with their body and self-confidence,” Kirsten says, adding that letting clients see the editing process is particularly inspiring. “Showing them unedited photos and showing them how beautiful they are is the point of boudoir for me. It’s empowering, really.”
Kayla has a creative side, too, which she puts to use in several family business ventures, including a soap-making business she co-created with her mom (Cherry Creek Soap Co) and her husband’s lifestyle brand, Flossy Bumz. But Kayla’s main focus right now is Boss Babes. “I have an entrepreneurial spirit. I like to start businesses, grow them, and then pass them off. I have a drive to be creative and busy.”
Boss Babes is growing fast—in members and visibility. Kirsten’s celebrity moment at Earl’s is one of several instances of public recognition, a sure sign she and Kayla have tapped into an underserved demographic—women in business. “We’re trying to set ourselves apart from what other companies do. So we’ll ask people, what types of workshops do you want to see? And we try to bring that to them,” Kayla says.
Paying attention to their community has also illuminated how strongly people, particularly women, are craving support networks that benefit them in an all-encompassing sense. “We recognize that entrepreneurs don’t just need professional assistance,” says Kirsten. “They need personal assistance, too, and so we provide mental wellness services and those types of events as well.” In other words, they’re refusing to view the Business Self as separate from the Emotional Self or the Mom Self or the Friend Self. All of these selves are integrated; all of the parts need to be healthy for the whole to function properly.
At the end of the day—or, more likely, in the wee hours of the morning—Kayla and Kirsten’s kids serve as their biggest motivational sources. “Now that I have a daughter, I just want to grow a community that looks exactly like what YEG BOSS BABES is growing,” Kirsten says, adding that it’s especially important to highlight this mission in online spaces like Instagram, where negativity often flourishes. “Putting something like Boss Babes out there into the universe—women supporting women in a genuine community—it’s really important. It’s the main drive.”
Meanwhile, Kayla is proving to be quite the role model for her son who, being integrated into her working life (he often accompanies her to meetings and sees her work from home), believes he is an entrepreneur himself. At age four.
“He thinks he sells houses!” Kayla laughs. “He’ll be like, oh yeah, I got a lot of work to do. A lot of people want a house today.”
“He gets to watch his mom be a bad-ass! Then he goes to work,” Kirsten says.
Kayla’s son’s real estate career offers solid proof that anyone can be a Boss Babe, if only they put their mind to it.
Writer: Mica LemiskiPhotos: Janelle Dudzic Photography & Nicole Constante Photography
Kayla Ledohowski-Becker has been fighting expectations for a long time. As the daughter of a prominent hotel family in Winnipeg, Kayla has long been recognized locally for her last name—not always positively. “I was always being poked at for having a silver spoon in my mouth, which is not actually how I grew up,” Kayla says.
It’s a problem faced often by children of wealthy or successful parents: you become known as an extension of your family as opposed to an individual. And specifically for Kayla, the accusation that she was cushioned in privilege wasn’t accurate.
Starting when she was 15, Kayla worked as a server and hostess in her family’s hotel restaurant. Despite her tireless work ethic, she found it difficult to cast off assumptions that she had it easy. “At the time, those accusations would really bother me,” she says. Her frustration gave way to determination. “I knew I had to work a little harder. It made me want to prove myself.”
Her frustration gave way to determination. “I knew I had to work a little harder. It made me want to prove myself.”
And so at 18, while enrolled as a full-time student in university, Kayla left the family business to work in other restaurants, eventually landing a job as the manager of an Earls when she was only 20. “I love hospitality. I like talking and interacting with people. I think hospitality helps give you life experience through the people you meet.”
Earls proved to be a huge turning point for Kayla and her career, but not in the way she expected. A group of regulars—who also happened to work for the Birchwood Automotive Group, the largest network of car dealerships in Winnipeg—suggested she come sell cars with them. “They casually tried to recruit me every time they were in,” Kayla recalls. Much like scouts at a hockey game, these businessmen had noted Kayla’s exceptional work ethic and potential. She had a bright future. They wanted her on their team.
“At that point I didn’t even know how to put air in my tires!” Kayla laughs. As a restaurant manager with a ceilinged income, Kayla worked a ton of unpaid hours to run the restaurant to her high standard. (Once, she even stayed until 4:00 AM to set up for a corporate event, simply because she wanted to make the experience special for her staff.) The new, potential job piqued her interest. “I wanted to work in a business that rewarded me for my discretionary effort.”
Kayla landed the job with Birchwood Automotive. Actually, she landed a few jobs, at several of Birchwood’s dealerships around the city, but she chose to accept a job as a sales specialist at Jaguar Land Rover Volvo Winnipeg—an exceptional place of work for the fact that it had a female sales manager. “That’s probably one of the reasons I ended up starting in the store,” Kayla says. “There were next to no women in forward-facing customer roles at the time.” This was only nine years ago.
Kayla had tapped into a phenomenon well known to women in so-called male-dominated industries: it often takes women to hire women. “People are always so drawn to what is comfortable and familiar,” Kayla says. “When all the managers are men, they’re generally comfortable dealing in a certain way. When you’re bringing in females it changes the dynamic.”
This isn’t to say that employers should not be held accountable for outdated recruitment practices—hiring women and other underrepresented groups should not be seen as a risk, but rather an opportunity to explore new ideas and evolve the business. That said, awareness of comfort-zone hiring preferences gives female employers a powerful incentive to improve the gender distribution of their workplaces.
Kayla can speak to this personally. After transitioning to the role of sales manager at the Birchwood Ford dealership in 2013—a decision prompted by her desire to gain experience outside the luxury realm—Kayla took an active role in reshaping what was, at the time, a bit of an old boy’s club. “That was my first role where I had a team and was hiring people, and so I was able to bring women on board.” The store went from having zero female salespeople multiple, all hired in part by Kayla. “One of those women is one of the top salesperson at Ford to this day. She has been for a long time.”
Kayla made other changes, too, including the introduction of new protocol to ensure all customers—regardless of whether they were buying a luxury vehicle—received a luxury-type buying experience. “They’re people and they’re buying cars. The treatment shouldn’t be different.” Her dedication to inclusivity in customer service led to a prestigious designation for the dealership. In 2016, Birchwood Ford was given the President’s Diamond Club Award in recognition of their excellent customer service. “It’s one of the biggest accomplishments I’ve been a part of to date in my automotive career.” Kayla is also a proud member of Women of Automotive Leadership, a committee founded by MaryAnne Kempe (Birchwood Automotive’s Chief of Human Resources) that creates support services for women of Birchwood Automotive and hosts networking events to encourage recruitment.
“Don’t put too much emphasis on the fact that something is ‘male dominated.’ If you’re the person in the right role, you can change that.”
Still, there are daily challenges Kayla faces as a woman in automotive. For one, she’s often mistaken as a receptionist by customers and store vendors. These interactions don’t bother Kayla; she views them as opportunities to educate. “I think these moments are really critical for change,” she says. Instead of taking offense in these moments, Kayla starts a conversation. “I want to wow people. Being the best version of myself allows me to show people that this is a changing world, and women are just as capable, if not moreso, than their male counterparts.”
If it seems like Kayla is well-versed in the language of human interaction and communication—that’s because she is. She has a Master’s Degree in psychology, which she completed in 2012 while working full-time in automotive. Getting her Master’s wasn’t motivated by a desire for a new career or higher earning potential (she loved her job and planned to stay in automotive) but rather a desire to learn and explore. “If I won the lottery I would be a career student. I’d get a medical license just for fun!,” she laughs, explaining that her “nerdy” tendencies developed in high school and never really dissipated. In university, for example, she studied religion purely for the sake of attending lectures with professors who were passionate about their field instead of money. “I’m not religious at all, but since studying religion doesn’t lead to many career options, the professors with Master’s Degrees and Doctorates all truly love the topic. Sitting in those classes was so engaging and inspiring for me!”
Perhaps “nerdiness,” as a term, needs a re-branding, because in the context of Kayla’s life, nerdiness reads more like passion to learn and problem-solve. Problem solving is what keeps Kayla feeling most like herself on a day-to-day basis. As the General Sales Manager for Volvo Land Rover Jaguar (she returned to this dealership in 2017) her mission is not so different from when she worked in restaurants as a server: she wants to build relationships and work with a team towards a common goal. “What helps keep me feeling like Kayla, as opposed to someone who simply sells cars, is coaching my team. In those moments we’re not selling cars. We’re engaging on a human level and having real conversations.”
Kayla is also helping start conversations outside the automotive industry—or, on top of it, actually. Last summer, a coworker and former beekeeper suggested they cover the roof of the Volvo dealership with beehives. Kayla was all in. “Bees are extraordinary pollinators and they’re so important to the general ecosystem. We wanted to start educating people about bees, and so we took a chance and put the bee hives on the roof.” The project, done in partnership with Beeproject Apiaries, was a huge success: there were over 70,000 bees on top of the Volvo dealership at one point. The hives also proved to be a talking point, generating people’s interest in sustainability and healthy living. The bee project led to further community action, too, such as honey extraction workshops and bee-specific teaching initiatives at inner city schools. “It’s all about making connections in the community,” says Kayla. “We sell cars, but it’s not who we are.” In other words, Kayla and her team are a far-cry from hackneyed stereotypes of car salespeople on TV: those greedy, grimy, anything-for-money men.
Kayla loves selling cars, but there’s one term, often applied to her field, that bothers her: male-dominated. Men still outnumber women by a large proportion in the world of car sales, but that discrepancy is not something Kayla wants to foreground in talking about her job. “I have a hard time saying ‘male-dominated’ out loud because to me, if you want to do something, go do it.” As in, calling something ‘male-dominated’ sets up unnecessary barriers. “Don’t put too much emphasis on the fact that something is ‘male dominated.’ If you’re the person in the right role, you can change that.”
Take it from someone who knows.
Writer: Mica LemiskiPhotos: Provided
Wearing a long black shift dress accented with a statement necklace, Rachel Mielke mingles at the Grand Opening of the newest Hillberg & Berk retail location in Calgary. A customer—one who has braved the 100-person line of people wanting to check out the new store—pulls her aside, clearly with something to say.
Rachel is no stranger to admiration-filled exchanges with customers. As the founder and CEO of Hillberg & Berk, her level of visibility is such that brand-followers often recognize her in public. “Social media has really become the main source of people’s content consumption,” she says. Appearing regularly on Hillberg & Berk’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, Rachel is part of the CEO-turned-celebrity phenomenon unique to the digital age.
This particular customer has more to say than most. “I’ve followed the brand for 10 years,” she says, sporting a mix of new and vintage Hillberg & Berk pieces. “I love your brand and your story so much that I went with my husband for a special trip to Regina—just so I could go to the first Hillberg & Berk store.”
This is a first for Rachel. Her Regina-based jewellery company has seen her through some pretty fantastic milestones (a showcase at the Oscars, designing a brooch for Her Majesty the Queen, a partnership with Tessa Virtue—you get it, she’s made it) but to have someone visit the flagship store as if it were a museum is another level of wow. “It blew me away that there are people passionate enough about the brand that they would plan a trip around it.”
The thought of Regina as a fashion or jewellery destination would have been unthinkable to an 18-year-old Rachel Mielke. Lack of a “scene” in Saskatchewan was in part why she opted for a business degree instead of something more artistic. “I loved fashion but I was aware of the reality that there was very little fashion in Saskatchewan when I graduated in 1998, and so my main focus was to make a business for myself.”
Even if she didn’t think she would build a career in fashion, she maintained a desire to create, and to express herself through design, from a young age. She recalls spending hours in her parents’ basement, meticulously placing coloured pegs into her Lite-Brite board. “My mom would come downstairs and say, ‘why are you sitting in the dark?’ Turn the light on!’ And I’d say ‘noooo, it’s cooler with the lights off!’”
She was equally enamored with Rainbow Brite. “My whole room was Rainbow Brite. That character definitely influenced my brand and my fashion today,” she says, referencing the bold colours and gems now signature to Hillberg & Berk. The character was more than just an aesthetic inspiration for Rachel. Rachel’s goal to help women “sparkle”—through not only the jewellery she makes but also a variety of charitable initiatives—is a modern twist on Rainbow Brite’s mission to bring colour to the world.
“I remember buying $300 worth of supplies and thinking it was a fortune!” she recalls. From those materials she made herself a statement necklace. “I put it on and thought, wow, this is really special. I want to do more of this.”
Growing up in a financially-tight household, Rachel had to employ creativity, as opposed to a credit card, to realize her fashion goals early on. After digging out her mom’s 1970s sewing machine and teaching herself how to sew, she developed a knack for making second-hand look chic. “I started deconstructing my clothes and re-sewing them together. I was making fashion that I couldn’t afford to buy otherwise.” She also began making simple jewellery, but it wasn’t until after business school that she made her first luxury item. With money she’d saved from working multiple jobs, Rachel travelled to a specialty gem shop in Edmonton and bought a selection of Bali sterling silver, Swarovski crystals, and freshwater pearls. “I remember buying $300 worth of supplies and thinking it was a fortune!” she recalls. From those materials she made herself a statement necklace. “I put it on and thought, wow, this is really special. I want to do more of this.”
The requests for her designs began to pile up and, fueled by encouragement from friends, Rachel decided to put her business degree to use in a notoriously tough realm: the jewellery industry.
The first hurdle to overcome was a lack of market knowledge, which she overcame through travel. “I went to every single place I’d read was an incredible source of craftsmanship until I built my knowledge of the industry globally,” she says. But the male-dominated industry did not initially recognize Rachel as a force. “People didn’t want to work with me. I was a start-up, so that was an issue too, but they certainly didn’t look at me, a 25-year old woman, and take me seriously enough to say, ‘hey I’m gonna take a chance on you.’”
“I want everyone to feel what I felt when I put on that first piece of special jewellery.”
Rachel learned to market her ideas with confidence and strength. “The key was finding people who believed in me. It was also learning how to sell myself, my story, and convince people that I was going to make it.”
Over 15 years later and she has, most definitely, made it. Hillberg & Berk is a nationally-recognized brand with global ambitions. Their 31,000 square-foot office in Regina’s warehouse district features gorgeous chandeliers, plush furniture, and the bustling energy of a newsroom about to break an important story. Yet Rachel’s in-office presence is a far cry from boss-woman caricatures seen and mythologized in Hollywood. She’s no Miranda Priestly, in other words, and if you run into her in public, she’s more likely to gift you a piece of jewellery than demand a favour. “I want everyone to feel what I felt when I put on that first piece of special jewellery. But sometimes I only have what’s on my body, and so I give it away!”
Giving away jewellery is but one way Rachel is disrupting the pithy maxim that luxury is exclusive. “On a global stage, H&B is one of very few brands that is truly changing the narrative on how brands impact the community, but also how brands change what women think of themselves.”
Rachel is redefining what it means to be a brand leader through her personal style as well. Sometimes she shows up to the Hillberg & Berk headquarters in ripped jeans, sneakers, and a cool t-shirt. Other times, she elevates her style by pairing a simple dress with pops of Sparkle. “I have learned to dress my body type and just stick to what works. I found a great dress this season and I bought it in five colours.” Her clothes and accessories reflect her mission to feel confident, not necessarily cutting-edge, and she hopes this model will inspire women to view fashion as a source of self-expression as opposed to a set of stifling ideals. “I don’t think society should be so prescriptive in terms of telling us how to dress, especially in the work environment. I love that we’re coming into a time where, as women, we’re feeling more comfortable defining our own personal style.”
Rachel may be forward-thinking, but she still gleans wisdom from the past—specifically, from the kaleidoscope she had as a child. A large red tube with a textured baroque pattern, Rachel’s kaleidoscope was a source of wonder for her younger self but has since acquired a philosophical weight. In her keynotes, panels, and workshops (most of which focus on female empowerment and its links to social change) Rachel often references the kaleidoscope as a metaphor for our lives, hoping to inspire a deeper sense of gratitude within her audience. “So often we focus on the small, insignificant parts of our lives. We all have challenges, but the majority of life is amazing—if we just choose to focus on it.”
Writer: Mica LemiskiPhotos: Provided
At Hillberg & Berk, our dream is to empower women to see their own unique strengths, beauty and potential — what we call ‘sparkle’ — and inspire them to help other women see theirs, too.
