15 episodes

The WEcast podcast is here to amplify the voices, and tell the stories of women entrepreneurs, and those who support them, across southern Alberta. WEcast is produced by WESTEM , the Women Entrepreneurs in STEM program, here to support all women entrepreneurs in rural regions of southern Alberta. WESTEM is made possible thanks in part to funding from the Government of Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy. Join WESTEM in conversation with women business owners and advisors, as we build community in the entrepreneurial eco-system.

WEcast - Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Southern Alberta WESTEM

    • Business

The WEcast podcast is here to amplify the voices, and tell the stories of women entrepreneurs, and those who support them, across southern Alberta. WEcast is produced by WESTEM , the Women Entrepreneurs in STEM program, here to support all women entrepreneurs in rural regions of southern Alberta. WESTEM is made possible thanks in part to funding from the Government of Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy. Join WESTEM in conversation with women business owners and advisors, as we build community in the entrepreneurial eco-system.

    Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve – A Conversation with Dr. Christy Lane

    Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve – A Conversation with Dr. Christy Lane

    As the WESTEM program comes to an end, we are excited to welcome Dr. Christy Lane as our final guest for WEcast. Dr. Christy Lane is a Startup Founder and award-winning exercise scientist with expertise in big data, wearable devices, and digital health. She has won many international awards for her work in lifestyle medicine and the application of technology in health.  Dr. Lane is the Chair of Health and Physical Education at Mount Royal University and a founding member of the Stanford Wearable Health Lab. She is also the Founder of Vivametrica, a health tech company that uses data from wearable devices to predict mortality and disease risks, as well as to engage individuals in wellness. Dr. Lane has a PhD in Rehabilitation Medicine, and has focused her career around the measurement of physical activity, and promoting exercise as medicine for clinical populations. She is particularly interested in the capabilities of wearable technology for promoting lifestyle behaviour change. She has been recognized as Avenue Calgary's Top 40 Under 40, Top 20 Women in Tech 2018, and was awarded the Mount Royal University Research Excellence Award in 2019.

    Links mentioned in this episode:

    Dr. Christy Lane – LinkedIn

    https://ca.linkedin.com/in/christyclane

    Top 40 Under 40

    https://www.avenuecalgary.com/top-40-under-40/2018/dr-christy-lane/

    Mount Royal University Research in Excellence

    https://www.mtroyal.ca/Research/FundingAwards/RRA-archive.htm

    Vivametrica

    https://www.vivametrica.com

    The 51

    https://the51.com/

    Plug and Play

    https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/

    Silicon Valley of the North

    https://technologyalberta.com/?p=3449

    Creative Destruction Labs

    https://creativedestructionlab.com/

    Platform Calgary

    https://www.platformcalgary.com/

    Thin Air Labs

    https://www.thinairlabs.ca/

    • 49 min
    Igniting the Entrepreneurial Spark – A Conversation with Keri Drennan

    Igniting the Entrepreneurial Spark – A Conversation with Keri Drennan

    Spring has sprung at WEcast! To kick off our Spring 2022 series, we invite Keri Drennan, P.Eng, and founder of Impact Leader to chat with us!

    Keri is also a business advisor (with the WESTEM program as one example), an entrepreneurial coach and is passionate about engaging and inspiring people to think outside of the box.  She is a professional Engineer with 24 years of progressive leadership experience in business and she will tell you that she owes her success to building relationships and shifting cultures and paradigms.

    Keri has expertise in integrating cultures through transformative leadership and change management.  Being authentic, a great communicator and tough when required, she has successfully transitioned her teams through a variety of mergers and acquisitions.

    Keri transitioned from engineering and started Impact Leader in 2018, inspired by her aspiration to live in a world that is inclusive, engaging and inspiring.  Keri believes that everyone deserves to work in a trusting, respectful culture that includes maximizing business goals while having fun

    A current focus for Keri is coaching women entrepreneurs in STEM, and her ability to relate and hold people accountable has aided in her success.

    Links mentioned in this episode:

    Impact Leader: https://impactleader.ca/

    Lumina Spark: https://www.luminalearning.com/partners/latvia-riga/en/Spark

    Regional Innovation Network of Southern Alberta (RINSA): https://rinsa.ca/

    • 46 min
    The Power of Ecopsychology – A Feature of Jenn Kuntz and Carrie Watson

    The Power of Ecopsychology – A Feature of Jenn Kuntz and Carrie Watson

    For our final episode of our Winter Series, we are excited to welcome Carrie Watson and Jennifer Kuntz, who are successful entrepreneurs individually, and have recently joined forces to embark on a new endeavour together.



    Jennifer Kuntz is the owner of Karuna Counselling Inc. She holds a Masters of Social Work degree with a specialization in clinical practice, and has worked with Alberta Health Services or (AHS) for the past 18 years. Jenn is currently the Trauma and Resilience Project Facilitator for AHS, Addiction and Mental Health Program (Calgary Zone), which provides mental health & addiction supports to children, youth, adults, seniors & their families. Before joining the AHS mental health program, Jenn worked for 10 years at the AHS Child Development Centre in the Cumulative Risk Diagnostic Clinic (formerly Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Clinic) and the Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinic. She started her social work career in restorative justice, child intervention, and family support for children with disabilities. Jenn started Karuna Counselling with a group of like-minded psychotherapists in 2012 to provide a safe, supportive and encouraging environment for children, youth and adults to develop their self-awareness, self-esteem, self-confidence, emotional awareness and regulation skills and ultimately to be better able to cope with personal difficulties that interfere with their life and relationships.

    Jenn is passionate about providing accessible and meaningful mental health and wellness support to all who are seeking it, to find empowerment and to thrive in their lives. Jenn practices from a resilience and strength-based perspective that is both motivating and empowering - supporting people to make changes in their lives and improve their sense of well-being.



    Carrie Watson is the owner of Whispering Equine, and holds both Bachelor of Education, and Bachelor of Kinesiology degrees. She is also certified with the Professional Association of Equine Facilitated Wellness as both a mentor and practitioner in the Equine Facilitated Learning Professional and Equine Professional designations. Carrie is also a certified Reiki Master.

    As a former high school teacher and coach, Carrie worked with a variety of students over her 10-year career. It was during this time that she witnessed the mental health struggles in the lives of her students and staff members, which is what ultimately led her to pursue a new career in Equine Facilitated Wellness. When creating Whispering Equine, Carrie was determined to provide youth and adults with an equine guided experience, to help bring awareness to aspects of themselves that may need nurturing and ultimately help lead them to discover their true and authentic potential in life.

    Carrie uses the healing aspects of nature, energy work, horse behavior and herd dynamics of horses, as an effective model for building upon and developing inner courage, fostering healthy attachments, clear communication skills, as well as resiliency to life’s challenges. Her passion is to empower people of any age, to live from their heart by developing a positive horse-human-nature based relationship and connection.



    Both women are power houses individually, with a palpable passion for mental health and supporting others. But together, Jennifer and Carrie have come together to embark on a new joint venture and have co-founded and are primary facilitators at the Foothills Wellness Collective.



    *PCN – Primary Care Network



    Links mentioned in this episode:



    Whispering Equine: http://www.whisperingequine.com/



    Karuna Counselling/Foothills Wellness Collective: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-kuntz-a5629b80/



    University of Calgary: https://www.ucalgary.ca/

    • 56 min
    Changing the World One Worm at a Time – A Feature of Roxanne Doerksen

    Changing the World One Worm at a Time – A Feature of Roxanne Doerksen

    For our 3rd episode of our 3rd season we are very excited today to welcome Roxanne Doerksen CEO, T.R.A.D Worm Industries LTD.

    Roxanne grew up a farm girl and has a strong connection with the land therefore protecting the land by keeping compostable refuse out of landfill was a 'no-brainer' for her.  She and her family had an amazingly horrible opportunity presented to them as a family when her daughter was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. At the time they decided that they could try to figure out a way of doing things better or could drown underneath the weight of her sickness. And that is where TRAD was born. Roxanne’s initial business concept was to produce worm castings, or manure, as a soil amendment to support the medical cannabis industry, but her plan took a turn when local growers and residential households started contacting her about how to set up their own worm farms and has since morphed into a leap of faith that embraces the knowledge that we are meant to be good stewards of our earth.

    Pressure, and overcoming challenges, are nothing new to Roxanne. She returned to college as a mature student and launched a start up with no business background, but found the knowledge, skills and confidence she needed to succeed at both business and school.

    Other than all of this, Roxanne thinks that worms are pretty awesome!

    “Worms are more powerful than the African Elephant and are more important to the economy than the cow” - Charles Darwin

    Links mentioned in this episode:

    T.R.A.D. Worm Industries - https://www.tradwormindustries.com/about

    APEX Alberta - https://www.apexalberta.ca/

    T.R.A.D. in the News:

    https://www.mhc.ab.ca/real/2020Spring_RDoerksen

    https://medicinehatnews.com/news/local-news/2021/07/24/worming-her-way-to-the-top-doerksen-developed-her-business-from-the-ground-up/

    https://bowislandcommentator.com/news/2021/03/17/t-r-a-d-worm-industries-focuses-on-soil-condition-improvements/

    https://www.pressreader.com/canada/prairie-post-east-edition/20180622/281625306029494

    • 47 min
    The A-BEE-C’s of Business - A Feature of Eliese Watson

    The A-BEE-C’s of Business - A Feature of Eliese Watson

    In the second episode of our Winter series, we chat with founder and master beekeeper of ABC Bees, Eliese Watson.  Since its founding in 2010 ABC Bees has become the leading beekeeping education company in Canada. Over her career, Eliese has taught beekeeping across North America, been featured in Forbes Magazine, and has represented small scale beekeepers to the Canadian Senate. Eliese has developed strong beginner, intermediate, and advanced beekeeping programming that have been shared with thousands of students. Eliese also teaches small-scale apiary production in a 5-week course online to other farmers, hobbyists, and enthusiasts from around the world through the Level One Beekeeping Course.

    Eliese is an educator at heart, but beekeeping is her passion. She maintains tight management practices with her colonies and includes diverse stocks in her apiary.  This is an effort to breed quality queens for the prairie climate and resilient survival stocks for treatment-free management and her experience in ethical and caring management of queens is expansive.

    Through ABC Bees, she runs conservation programming for children, community associations, and private organizations. Eliese has also published four books engaging the public about bees; the trilogy Little Bees On Bees: “Solitary Bees”, “Bumble Bees”, “Gardening for Bees”, and a book for teachers use while educating children about the importance of bees, titled “Bee Inspired: Teaching Resource.”

    Website: https://abcbees.ca/

    Forbes Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eshachhabra/2017/03/31/this-female-founder-is-bringing-bees-back-to-calgary-and-rethinking-honey-production/?sh=1e00c60ce1b3

    Published Books: https://abcbees.ca/our-books/

    Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP): https://nrc.canada.ca/en/support-technology-innovation/about-nrc-industrial-research-assistance-program

    Fun Fact:

    According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its large body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

    • 58 min
    As Sweet as Honey and as Wise as the Wind – A Feature of Stella Sehn

    As Sweet as Honey and as Wise as the Wind – A Feature of Stella Sehn

    Welcome to Season 3 of WEcast! We kick off 2022 with Stella Sehn as we discuss social entrepreneurship, facing obstacles head-on and her dedication to the Truth and Reconciliation of Canada’s Calls to Action. Stella is a super-mom of three, and she started the 100 % family owned and operated Bee Farm, “Sweet Pure Honey Bee Farm” from scratch with her husband and partner, Sheldon in 2016.   Together they make Canadian hand crafted, handmade, organic, No. 1 Raw White Honey, Beeswax Candles and lip balms using the abundance of healthy crops and wildflowers which surround their prairie farm.  It is important to Stella to have her children see that it's possible to run a business with values – such as respect for employees and the environment – that provides customers with special products and sustains their family.

    Stella and Sweet Pure Honey were the Winners of the 2016 Chamber of Commerce Business Ethics Award presented by the Better Business Bureau.  Stella is also an international exporter, distributes honey nationally, is an innovator and social entrepreneur. You can also learn more about Stella and Sweet Pure Honey on Food Power Tv, where they were recently featured.

    Sweet Pure Honey website: https://www.sweetpurehoney.ca/

    Food Power TV: https://www.instagram.com/foodpowertv/

    • 50 min

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