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On the first Tuesday of every month, we’ll announce a new Fearless Female, including a video interview of them sharing their business story. Want to be featured as a Fearless Female?

Contact Memberships at memberships@greaterkwchamber.com for more details. The Fearless Female Program would not be possible without our Title Sponsor, Scotiabank.

To learn a little more about the Scotiabank Women Initiative, and why they’ve chosen to sponsor this program, see the video below.

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The Fearless Female we’re featuring for the month of October is Melissa Finn, Founder & CEO – Yoni Mudra Art Gallery | Love Yourself. Studio.

Melissa Finn is the Founder of a multi-faceted art and wellness community hub featuring one of the only art galleries in the world permanently dedicated to the yoni space (the sacred space of the divine feminine), giftshop, cafe, yoga studio (Love Yourself. Studio), therapy room, and art workshop space: the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery. She co-hosts a conversational show called, ‘The Yoni Show’ that is broadcast live on YouTube every Monday that explores the themes of the Gallery, and teaches leadership and manifestation principles on a second YouTube channel, ‘Regulated and Leading with Purpose’.

A long-time art activist, she is also the Executive Producer of a 20-track album on female genital mutilation (FGM) co-created by a team of 11 other artists from around the world entitled, Budding Orchid Apartheid that was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Prior to opening the Gallery, Melissa was a Senior Research Associate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo where she studied transnational activism, youth studies, citizenship, militarism, and feminist labor and entrepreneurship studies. From 2016-2017, Melissa was an advisor for the United Nations Development Programme’s preventing violent extremism program, and was invited in 2015 and 2016 to advise the South African government on its counter-terrorism frameworks. From 2015-2018, she was the Secretary for The Pluralist, a not-for-profit organization committed to expanding understanding across cultural divides in Canada. Melissa received her doctoral degree in Political Science from York University in Toronto in 2011. The core value underpinning all of this work is Melissa‘s desire to support transformative and positive social change at a local and global level and to connect and collaborate with aligned individuals and companies helping inaugurate a more regulated, balanced, and peaceful society.

To learn more about Melissa’s journey as a Fearless Female, watch the interview below (or read the written format).

youtu.be/gsO5Moh7L54

Please Introduce Yourself

Hi there, my name is Melissa Finn. I am the founder and CEO of the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery. We also have a yoga studio in this business called Love Yourself Studio.

Tell Us More About Your Organization & Your Role In It

So the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is basically an arts and wellness community hub. It emerged from my academic work in 2015-2016. I traveled to Africa four times for fieldwork and also to attend conferences. And there was a watershed event in my life where in February of 2016, I was at Kenyatta University in Nairobi attending a youth conference. At that time, I was a researcher of youth studies. We were looking at the University of Waterloo and the Department of Political Science and at the Bossoli School.

We were looking at Canadian Arab youth and we wanted to better understand their experiences. At that time, so in October of 2015, there was a lot of discussion about barbaric cultural practices and lots of, I would say, a little bit of fear-mongering about immigration and ethnic others. We wanted to understand how Arab youth were managing their experiences with these discourses around them and also the ways in which they were being securitized by the infrastructure in our country that looks at security and policing.

At that time, there was a lot of discussion about the ways in which there were security threats. And so I had traveled to Nairobi because I wanted to better understand how youth, particularly Kenyan youth, were responding to counterterrorism measures and how they were experiencing and managing what could be understood as maybe more kinetic or suppressive kinds of policies on them because of who they are. So I’m at this youth conference on terrorism in February of 2016 and I meet some young women who are activists.

They are of Somali descent. They are Kenyan Somalis and they are, you know, 20-21 and they are wanting to end the practice of female genital mutilation, FGM. FGM is a practice of removing parts of the exterior female genitalia for the purposes of purifying the girl, purifying the village or the community, ensuring that this idea that they’ll be able to control their sexual urges and that will create better things for the social fabric, among other reasons.

And so these young women were activists and they were trying to appeal to their elders to stop the practice. And they were appealing through their own cultural frameworks. This conversation was a watershed moment because at the time I had not really been focusing on gender.

I had been focusing on terrorism and mainly non-state terrorism. And I was looking at, you know, counterterrorism measures and then the youth experience. When I met these women they really moved me and I wanted to better understand their activism as youth activists.

So that’s initially my inroad into that. I wanted to understand what makes them move and tick and why they do the things that they do and what they are doing. Because at the time they were being heavily controlled, they were being heavily controlled by the Kenyan state.

Then, so suddenly FGM is on my radar now. And I went back in August of 2016 to attend, to do fieldwork and also I was going to go to a conference in Pretoria in South Africa. And so I was en route in Nairobi and I attended a political rally of a woman who was in her fifties and she had been an FGM survivor, was an FGM survivor, and she was running for political office.

So I attended one of her political rallies which is extremely interesting and I learned a lot. When I left Kenya I continued my connection with her and then she ultimately ended up not getting elected to political office and having to flee Kenya because her husband at the time and her village wanted her to cut her daughter, her teenage daughter, and she didn’t want to do that. So she went to Newfoundland and started grad school and I reached out to her and I said to her, I would like to ask you if you’re interested in working on a project together.

I do this recording art, I do poetry backed by music and I was wondering if you would be interested in working on this project to look at FGM poetry backed by music. She agreed and then we built the lyrics together. We ended up securing an Ontario Arts Council grant and a Canada Council for the Arts grant for that project and once I got the Canada Council for the Arts grant I roped in 10 other artists from around the world, rappers, poets, music producers, vocalists from Malaysia, Gambia, Nigeria, the UK, the US, and we all worked together on this album and we ended up releasing in May of 2025 a 20 track album addressing the issue of FGM but also addressing the issue of genital pulling, so this is the pulling of the labias, of the external genitalia, to make the girls marriageable, often done by teenagers on other teenagers.

And then also defiantly celebrating women’s sexuality because one of the main things about FGM is this desire to curb, to control women’s sexuality and so what we were doing is looking at the precious nature of the external genitalia and wanting to honour it and celebrate it and normalize it in all of its diversity, recognizing that it’s worthy for its own sake. Five years ago I started making abstract vulva art as an extension of this advocacy and then two years ago I decided I have the means and I’m going to open an art gallery dedicated to this space to continue the advocacy and public education around the yoni. So the yoni is the Sanskrit word for the fallopian tubes, the uterus, the vaginal canal, and the vulva.

So from now on I’m going to refer to that space as the yoni. The Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is a space where we honour the divine feminine, we honour the yonis in the world and all their diversity, we respect them for their own sake, we are gently, in getting into the embodiment of feminine energy, trying to gently push back against the ubiquitous male gaze pornography industry which renders that space an object of fetishization, commodification, and objectification, and to help men and women to recognize the yoni for its importance in our world as a site of creation, of intimacy, of reproduction, a portal for transcendence. And so we are involved in the process of advocating for this space.

The Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is an art gallery with a now current vulva and vagina art exhibit for 2026. We are representing artists from Poland, Portugal, Germany, the UK, and Canada. And we also have a cafe, we have a little gift shop, we have a beautiful seating area with very comfortable couches.

We have a yoga studio, or yoga studios, we call it Love Yourself Studio, the reason being is because one of the primary motivations and mandates of the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is to help people of all stripes, of all backgrounds, of all orientations, of all body types to love themselves. Because we firmly believe that the loving yourself is the inroad to peace, is the inroad to collaboration, is the inroad to bridging gaps between people, it’s the inroad to, if you love yourself, you’re more inclined to love others. We also have a small room for therapy, like coaching, counseling, and then we have a space in the basement for art workshops, for pottery wheels, and it’s a place where people can do their art if they want to, or if they want to hold an art workshop, they can.

So in summary, the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is a place for community, it’s a place where we’re trying to cultivate this, and remind everyone what the feminine is, the slowing down, the receiving, the collaboration, the community, the sisterhood. We have a number of our own in-house programming, yoga classes, meditation classes, but we also have community groups, which book the Love Yourself Studio for sound baths, Pilates, we have kitten Pilates right now, and breathwork sessions, sisters, women’s retreats, sisters retreats, even men’s groups. So this is, in a nutshell, that’s what the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is.

What Inspired You To Take This Path?

There’s a little bit of stigma associated to what I’m motivated by. Initially, when I had initially opened the gallery, I was motivated by what I would call sacred rage. Not an ungrounded rage, not a rage of frenzy, but simply this feeling that, why is it that 50% of the population walks around on this planet, and that the vast, vast majority of 50% of the population walks on this planet feeling a sense of shame and inadequacy about their own bodies? This is a documented fact.

You can go to academic literature, you can go to non-academic literature, you can go to popular magazines, research shows time and time again that women and vulva owners carry tremendous sense of shame about their external genitalia, about it being inadequate, it looking wrong, it not being the right shape. And always this is a comparison to the monolithic forms that are presented in the pornography industry, and also the monolithic forms which are very much focused on white privilege. So oftentimes, people who are not white, or who are of different body types, just carry a tremendous amount of feeling like they’re inadequate.

And that’s happening in the Western world, it’s happening all around the world. But FGM, female genital mutilation, or even genital cutting, is a sense that it is, that as born, the thing that is born, the thing that emerges from the womb, is inherently inadequate. It must be altered.

And so, my motivation to open the gallery was to say, actually, no, we are born perfect, we are born beautiful. In fact, the natural world is replete with all kinds of Yoni iconography, with shapes and crevices that look like the Yoni. It seems like Source, or the Creator, if those who are watching believe in that, or Mother Nature herself, loves that form.

So my whole response was initially to say, we need to draw the conversation back. We need to have a little bit of a reset on this. And I think sometimes when people come to the gallery, they think, or maybe they have trepidation about it, and they think, I’m not sure if I want to go to that place, because it might be recreating the very thing I’m already shameful about.

And then so they don’t come, or they come, and they’re feeling a sense of anxiety or uncertainty when they see the images, even though everything we have on the walls, almost everything is disembodied. Almost everything doesn’t have any body attached to the actual Yoni space. And that was intentional, because there’s a razor-sharp line that we have to walk between valuing that space and having public conversations about it, and being sophisticated about it, and curating this art in a very refined way, a high art-level way.

And then there’s a fine line where we tip over into the erotic side of things, or the pornographic side of things, or in voyeurism that might undermine our mandate. So we walk this line very carefully. I’ve spent enough time in the gallery to not feel that sense of, you know, it just doesn’t bother me to the same level, but I understand when people come in that they, or they might fear coming at all because of what it’s drawing out of them.

But I really want to emphasize that if we cannot talk about this, and it’s having an enormous impact, I’ll give you one example. So a lot of young women today, a lot of young women today are opting, opting to have labiaplasties. They’re opting to have their external genitalia altered because they do not think that it’s sufficient as it is.

Well, that site is a site of a tremendous amount of nerves. The clitoris is the same anatomical structure as the penis, and it has twice the nerve endings. So when something happens to the clitoris or something happens to the labia, labias, menorah majora, that affects tremendously the nerve endings.

That decreases our sensation. It’s permanent. It will never be able to be as it was when the person born with Evolva was initially born.

It will never be the same. And so I want us to talk about this. I want women to feel like they can be at home in their bodies.

And I want us to build collaborations and connections and intellectual critical mass around this discussion so that we can, you know, if women are loving themselves more, they’re more likely to interact with their children better, with their spouses better, with their work colleagues better. They’re going to find themselves being happier, more content, more at peace. Their systems are going to be more regulated.

And when our systems are regulated as a society, we’re able to create a collectively, individually and collectively, much more good in the world.

Tell us more about your professional background

My professional background started in academia. I have a bachelor’s, master’s and a PhD in political science.

I got my doctorate at York University in Toronto in 2011, where I focused on Al Qaeda. So I was looking at Islamic political thought and comparing it to Western political thought. After graduating in 2011, I started working as a sessional instructor at Wilfrid Laurier University in the departments of political science and global studies.

And I was teaching global conflict, peace building. And then I eventually started teaching third and fourth year level courses on terrorism. That was my main focus.

In 2015, I went to Johannesburg to attend a conference on terrorism, and I subsequently got united with a professor at the University of Waterloo who got a grant, as I mentioned, to study Canadian Arab youth. This was a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation funded grant to look at the experiences of Arab youth, their experiences at the border, the way that they’re volunteering, being civically engaged, their political participation, their feelings of discrimination, their professional outlook, their experiences on campus. And we did a nationwide study with Canadian Arab youth in 12 different cities, focus groups and also a large scale study survey.

And this led me to, as I said, go to Africa to learn more about how youth are experiencing securitization there, to better understand how youth are experiencing securitization here in Canada. And I initially started into the field of gender studies from that initial encounter, and I wanted to develop it more, but I was focused on working on my postdoc, which was on Arab youth. And then later in 2020, I started a five-year project with the same professor working on a Immigration Canada study on the barriers to employment and barriers to entrepreneurial success for racialized immigrant women.

So I was looking at women in labor. So now I’m effectively in the gender field, looking at labor studies and just looking at the challenges that racialized women face, trying to get the ideal job that they want, trying to get over the transition process when they immigrate, trying to get settled into a new space, trying to get their children set up. And then if they want to start their own company, all of the challenges associated with that.

One of the key things that emerged from that was learning that one of the biggest barriers is financing. So racialized immigrant women have a very difficult time getting financing. And then also they struggle to sometimes find the mentors and the role models and the networks that they need to feel like they can be empowered to do the things they want to do.

So there’s a lot of evidence that when racialized immigrant women or any type of racialized woman has a mentor that’s like them, fits kind of the same identity profile or has a network of people who are of kind of a similar identity profile on some level, that they feel like they are not alone and they feel like if they can do it, then I can do it. So I did that work at the university. I was also working on the album.

I was executive producing that album. And and then from in the lead up to the end of that project, that Immigration Canada Study project, I decided that I wanted to start my own business. So I did that just before they my contract ended and I was juggling both at the time.

Leasehold renovations at the gallery, doing the the album, trying to release the album. And, you know, when you work with a whole bunch of artists, it’s like herding cats. So that there was a lot of challenges associated with that and then opening the gallery.

What have been some of the highlights of your career?

A few of the main highlights of my career, I would say, number one is my role in teaching. I taught 20 courses over a 10 year period at various post-secondary institutions.

I loved it. I loved interacting with my students. I loved preparing for class.

I loved creating exciting dynamics in my classroom. I would do different things in the class, simulations, games, different role playing. Sometimes I would have props and ask the students to explain abstract concepts through props.

And that was a tremendously life changing experience because when we teach, we learn. So it was almost like I had finished my PhD in 2011 and then got almost another one just by doing all of the teaching that I did at all these universities in various departments. Philosophy, global studies, sociology, political science.

And that was, for me, a really important part of my professional career. So much so that it’s a bug in my blood. Like I love to teach.

I love to talk. I love to philosophize. I love to inspire people.

I love to work with people towards better understanding the world and also to learn from them. So I love to create conditions to do that. That is one.

The second big accomplishment of my career was my time as a researcher at the University of Waterloo. I published more than 14 journal articles and chapters with my supervisor on a host of topics. Attended conferences, traveled a lot, learned a lot.

When you research at a very deep level, you gain a kind of knowledge that is really profound, but also talking to people. So interviewing people. In May of 2024, is that right? 2024, I conducted over 70 interviews with immigrant women and community service organizations.

And what I was looking at was, what are Canadian community service organizations doing to help newcomers? And what are the challenges that they face? Talking to people and learning their lived reality is eye-opening. It’s existentially challenging. I heard stories, for example, I heard a story of an Afghani couple trained as doctors in Afghanistan.

And they came to Canada wanting to start their lives, and they simply could not make an inroad to get into the medical field. There was one block after another preventing them. The woman had been an OBGYN in Afghanistan.

When she arrived here, she was told to go back and redo her biology and chemistry and math in grade 10, which she did. And when she subsequently did the grade 10, 11, 12 of those subjects, again, hit another wall where she was not allowed entrance into the initial program that would allow her to be footstepping towards a doctor here in Canada. Block, block, block, block.

And so there’s a lot of mental health battles associated with that. So very, very profound to learn from them about that. And the final major experience that I have that I truly value is the past year at the Gallery.

I have grown so much from this community. So as an academic, we operate a lot of times from the neck up. We think in brain terms.

We think in cognitive terms. A lot of us, and I’m going to speak collectively, a lot of us really don’t know much about experiencing in the body. In fact, two years ago, I didn’t even know what the word somatic meant.

Somatic means to live in presencing in the body. I have learned so much from the yoga instructors, the guides, the coaches that come into the space, the tarot readers, the witches, the pagans, the psychotherapists who are leading so many different programs. And that learning and being able to commune with them and being able to socialize with them and hold events where we’re honoring them has been absolutely transformative and been such an amazing experience.

And then the other thing that I would mention is I am a widow. So I was married to my husband, my late husband, for 18 years. His passing was a classroom for me.

This is a person who was my spouse. So in my life, day in and day out and day out and suddenly not there anymore. And now I’m left to raise three children.

So in terms of building strength and resiliency, it’s come a lot from that experience. Death is a teacher. It inspires us to understand more about the worth, the worthiness and the importance of living life to the fullest and also not taking things seriously and letting go.

So I have really cultivated a strong sense of just being in a state of flow. And it’s come from having lost my husband of all those years. So the methods and strategies I use to grow my business draw drew upon that experience in the sense that I have a very I’ve developed a very thick skin.

I’ve developed a very, very strong work ethic. I work very, very hard. One of the things that I accomplished was in 2020, I was working at the university full time.

It was COVID. There was a lockdown. My kids were homeless.

And I had just and just prior to COVID, I had started running a company called Conduito, which was a leadership training company, and also signed a contract with an American firm to host their courses on my platform. So imagine this is February of 2020. I’ve signed this contract with this American firm.

Now it’s March of 2020. COVID hits. Everyone’s home.

I just I’m starting a job at the university to do work on immigrant women. So 70 hours a week, I worked with my kids home with me. And I developed I’ve always had a very strong work ethic.

I used to be when I was younger, from the age of about eight until about 18. I was a competitive swimmer. And when I was swimming, I went I swam all the way up to the national level.

And I swam on the varsity team at the University of Calgary. That that experience being a swimmer being a competitive swimmer really taught me a lot about goal setting, about persevering, about, you know, especially when you’re young, when you’re driving and swimming, and you go, you hit that, you know, lactic acid, and it’s the last 10 meters, you got to push through it. So the pain, training, I was training, when I was a teenager, I was training 25 hours a week, land training and training in the in the pool.

So from a very young age, I learned goal setting, perseverance, but also visualization to manifest what you want. Like we were learning when we were 12 and 13, how to visualize the race. What do you smell? What do you feel? Getting the sense of building the image of the thing that you want to manifest, meaning winning that race, and imagining all the different parts of that race unfolding in a particular way to an ending where you’re winning.

So learning that at a young age had knock on effects and domino effects in the rest of my life, because I had to wake up at, you know, six o’clock in the morning, four days out of the week. And I was training nine times a week. So I learned hard work and determination and sometimes basically discomfort, because when you wake up at 530, six o’clock in the morning, in a winter’s day in Alberta,  it’s minus 35.

And you got to walk to the pool, you learn how to have to be a little bit tough. So these early experiences of, you know, physical training and goal setting and winning, and then later in going through all the different degrees, again, drawing on those same traits. And then now into the postdoc and all of the challenges associated with that, losing my husband.

So as I run my business, I’m running it from a very deep reservoir of courage, which is self generated, of confidence, which is self generated. My parents have always instilled in me my value. And so because they instilled that in me, I don’t need to look to other people to tell me that I’m valuable.

I know that for my own self. And also the sense of camaraderie. So I really cultivated an atmosphere in building the business that the people that I work with, I want to lift them up.

I think it’s my role as the person who is the business owner, who is the one running the business to be the person that because of my privilege and because of my capacities and because of the knowledge that I have, it is my job to raise the people that I’m working up to reach their potential. So I try to put them in their wheelhouses, the things that are their strengths. I try to encourage them to work in those areas.

And I try to encourage them to, you know, see their potential and envision a greater possibilities for their lives and greater career heights. So what do I do? It is like, for example, when we were doing the leasehold renovations, I was a general contractor for that. So I was the one guiding all the tradespeople with, you know, whatever it is that we needed to do.

And I just loved it. I loved working the tradespeople. I loved working the plumbers, electricians, the drywallers.

It was a chance to learn about the divine masculine. We need the divine masculine in our world. I always joke with people, you know, those people that sometimes feminists can be too harsh.

And I think they are dislocated from balance. And when they want to, you know, really buck the patriarchy, sometimes that means bucking the entire masculine side of humankind. And I often say to them, you want to do this, but are you going to be the one to hold up the drywall sheet with one arm and dream?

Are you going to be the one to lift the bricks and install the bricks and drag 80 pounds of electrical cord up and down stairs? You’re probably not going to be that person. We need the Divine Masculine. We need to honor the Divine Masculine, what the Divine Masculine brings to us.

So I think it’s both a spiritual groundedness, an excitement to love all people, and an excitement to work in collaboration and build collectively towards some common goal.

How do you define success?

So if we are dysregulated, if our nervous systems are out of whack, if we have a lot of anxiety, if we have a lot of, we’re questioning ourselves, we go in the world and we’re just feeling that bubbling sense of uncertainty, I think we are not in a state of success. To be successful means to be well. So that is healthy in all facets. Nervous system, limbic system, psychological system, social systems, familial systems, intimate systems, all of our relations, professional systems, all of these are healthy. They’re being managed.

There’s a work-life balance. There’s taking time off. There is taking pauses, resting well, getting proper nutrients, eating food that fills your system. Your digestive system is in good shape. You are eating the foods that are helping your body, your cells to be energized and to be full in their energy. You’re not taking toxins. You’re limiting the amount of exposure you have to toxins and also limiting your exposure to people who, because of their particular journeys and because of their particular triggers and particular states of mind, exhibit a kind of toxic energy, limiting your interactions with them.

We can love people and not necessarily want to be around them because they need to do their own work in order to ground themselves and regulate themselves. So success for me is to be regulated in all of the systems that I spoke about, but then also to be in a state of joy, to be giving service to humanity and to be on purpose, whatever that is for a person.

And that is for me what is to live on purpose. It is that thing that when you wake up energizes you. It is that thing that makes you want to pop out of bed and just take the world, take the bull by the horns and be excited about life. That is being on purpose. Anything other than that is having to do a job for the job’s sake, do a job to make the salary, to pay the bills.

And yes, we have seasons of life where we have to do that. There are seasons of life where we cannot escape having to work in order to pay the bills and to look after our families and pay our mortgages, et cetera, or our rent, or whatever, et cetera, et cetera. But we should be driving towards getting into a state or getting into a career or a professional line of work where we can deviate from that familiar and that particular river of life where we’re working just nine to five or whatever in order to pay the bills. We’re now working in an area that gives us a strong sense of excitement and personal fulfillment and passion and we feel like we’re making a difference in whatever way in the world.

So when when Firas passed away, I had to make a decision if I, this was in 2021, I had to make a decision, am I going to uproot my children and me and maybe go live close to my family in BC or am I going to stay here? And it was not, although I love BC and although my heart is split between southern Ontario and BC, it wasn’t that challenging of a decision because my kids were already situated here. I love this area. I am truly romantically enamored with the landscape of southern Ontario.

Where I come from, there are wheat fields. As far as the eye can see, it’s flatland. Yes, you have the Rockies, but by and large, it’s flatland. Yes, you have the big sky. That’s beautiful. And it makes you feel like you can expand your lungs. It makes you feel like you can, you know, breathe deeply and do anything you want in life because the sky is so, sky’s the limit there.

Nonetheless, when I came to southern Ontario, rolling hills, green, big, plumpy raindrops, just so beautiful. And the people here are beautiful and progressive and there’s so many opportunities to build community. I feel at home here. It is my home. We live between the five Great Lakes, so we get a ton of precipitation. And because of that, we enjoy a tremendous amount of opportunities to be in nature, to go to lakes that are like seas, like they literally are like seas. And just the opportunities to, you know, work with community, work with the school system. Beautiful people, beautiful energy, beautiful possibilities.

What are some of the benefits of establishing your business in Waterloo Region?

Yeah, I love the Waterloo region. It’s in my heart. I often, I’m probably like many other people who live in this area where I don’t feel like I need to go to Toronto. I have everything that I need here. All the amenities that I need, all of the resources that I need are here. I do not have to go to Toronto unless it’s to get something very, very specific. Or if I’m inclined to do that, because I want to do an outing in a big city.

So yeah, I am a lover of this region. It’s just filled with so much possibility that the university system are one thing. So they cultivated a real sense of sophistication and intellectual depth here, but also technical and startup depth. We have a beautiful startup community here. Velocity comes out of the University of Waterloo and their other tech hubs. So if you are somebody who inclines to move and start a venture for yourself, this is a place in Canada to be.

And there are a lot of benefits to being here. So there’s a lot of beautiful quality of life elements to living here. So you have not only the intellectual side, the community side, the warm, inviting side, and then the stimulating side. And we have a beautiful nightlife with live bands, open mics, performances. There’s all kinds of performers that come to The Odd, Centre in the Square, sports teams. Yeah, it’s the cat’s meow.

What piece of advice would you give to other aspiring women entrepreneurs?

The one piece of advice I would give to a woman who is aspiring in life is understand how your brain works. We operate between 70 and 95% of our time in our subconscious mind. So the habits that we have inculcated, the way that we have been raised, what has been normalized in our life, our way of being, our way of seeing the world is embedded in our subconscious mind. And that is the computer that drives everything. So our self-image is built from the subconscious mind, and our self-image becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. How we see ourselves is how we are.

So for that woman who wants to start a new small business, maybe she’s working out of her home, she’s got her small children, she wants to start a small business, what she needs to do, or the woman who is, you know, wanting to start a larger scale, you know, tech company, or wants to start a coaching business, or, you know, anything across the spectrum. Time has to be invested in doing the non-familiar.

So the subconscious mind is our computer program. It receives data, which we give to it, and it just processes and says, okay, that’s what I’m going to do with that data. So if we have data that we inculcate in our subconscious mind, we have our conscious mind, which is kind of the gatekeeper. It doesn’t allow new information, unless we’re in a sort of a lowered sense. So we need our conscious mind to be a little bit subdued in order for the subconscious mind to receive new programming, because the subconscious mind is the main driver of everything.

So when we’re sleepy, and when we’re in the state akin to sleep, when we’re just falling asleep, we can reprogram the subconscious mind to accept a new image. But we must be regulated to do so. So working on nervous system regulation, you need to do the stuff that is going to make you have less anxiety. So that is going to breathwork, going to yoga, going to meditation, doing, you know, EFTs, tapping, right. And doing the things that are going to calm yourself.

And there are there’s there’s a host of information on the internet about how to regulate your nervous system. That is the basis. The basis for manifestation starts with regulating the nervous system. Once we regulate our nervous system, we start to now think of how finding ways to put new images into our subconscious mind. We reprogram our self conscious mind, our subconscious mind to accept a new understanding of ourself.

Okay, so that could be subliminals, that could be the talking to yourself, writing down neurologically, this is a verified fact that when you’re writing down before you fall asleep, that that that information that you’re writing down drives into the subconscious mind and can reprogram things. But the subconscious mind also loves the familiar. So when you’re in a conscious state, we have to recognize that when you start to deviate, when you start to do something that’s different from what you normally do, meaning you start to think of yourself differently, alarm bells are going to go off in the subconscious mind going, warning, warning, warning, you’re doing something different than what you normally do. We’re not sure about this, this is unfamiliar to us, we need to bring you back on course, back to back to the baseline, recognizing that your subconscious mind could sabotage you, if you’re not conscious of the fact that it likes the familiar, your triggers, your the way that you’ve been raised your nervous system, these all these things will could lead you to stay, stay in the current status quo trajectory, unless you do the work, you have to do the work.

So part of it is the regular regulation practices, and those are ongoing, it’s not like a one off, not like you go to Reiki one time, and that’s enough, or you go to one yoga class, and that’s enough. Regulation is an ongoing process.

The other thing is vision. You can’t manifest what you want in life unless you understand what you want in life in an intrinsic detail, in deep, deep detail, right? And so part of that is dipping into your imagination. What can you spend time in silence, can you spend time in nature, slow the bus down, the kids are busy with something, maybe they’re, you know, playing together, or they’re at a daycare, they’re not around. Now’s your time to not do the dishes, or you know, do the laundry. Now is the time to just stop. Slow down.

What do you want in life? You are allowed to ask that question, and you are allowed to take a piece of paper out and imagine anything. We are privileged in Canada that should we want to do something, the resources are there, the means and quality of life are basically there for us to achieve our goals. That could be the case if you’re a single mother living on one income, and that could be the case if you’re someone who has more wealth. We have the capacity to slow down. We’re not living in a war zone. We’re not living in, you know, extreme forms of poverty. We’re not living in a place where, in a dictatorship, we live in a place that’s a democracy. We can make choices. By and large, as women, we have more freedoms than other women in other parts of the world.

So for those of you that are watching in other parts of the world, again, the same point remains. Do what you can with what you have, and part of it is developing an intimate relationship with silence, because that’s when the downloads come. Source is constantly communicating with us, and when we can slow down and not busy ourselves in a state of procrastination for doing that work, slow down enough to go, okay, what download am I supposed to receive? What does Source want me to, what new venture, what new business, what new idea is going to come into my mind?

We all know that when we’re restful, we’re in the shower, we’re doing something, like, just where our brain is kind of slowed down, we get these weird downloads. Like, it comes out of, like, left field. These creative insights, we suddenly, like, this massive epiphany happens, and we know it didn’t come from us. But you have to be slowing, and that’s about being in the yin feminine energy.

We have the yin and the yang, right? We have the yang, which has a little bit of yin, so the yang is the masculine energy, has a little bit of yin, feminine energy in it, and then we have the yin, has a little bit of yang in it. So we all have a little bit of masculine and feminine energy along a spectrum. Some people have more or less, depending on your gender. There’s no, it’s just, it’s just a mix for that person. It’s an idiosyncratic characteristic of that person.

So if you’re in your yin energy, in your feminine energy, you’re slowing down, you’re being receptive to those downloads. You are rebuilding your self-image. You’re recognizing that your self-image is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you want to run your life and run a business as a CEO, you must think of yourself as a CEO. You must live in the state of the wish fulfilled. You must get into the mental space. Be in the feeling of what that goal is.

If you, maybe it’s not a CEO. Maybe you want to run a daycare, or you want to be a stylist, or you want to be, get involved in import-export. What is the person doing import-export? What are they, how are they living their day? What are their habits? What are their daily routines? You know, how do they see themselves? How do they talk to themselves? You got to talk to yourself that way. Self-talk is a huge part of this process. There are too many things to say on this topic, but that would be my quick answer to your question.

What have been some of your biggest challenges so far?

One of the biggest challenges with my entrepreneurial journey has been starting a business on women’s issues. I cannot believe the crickets when it comes to talking about issues that have an impact on women. We’ve opened this space and we’re talking about women’s health and anatomy and sexuality and reproduction and motherhood and sisterhood. I’ve had conversations with people who have, for example, uterine issues, issues with their uterus, various reproductive issues. Sometimes even their own doctors don’t really have the knowledge that they need to assist them like they should, or the pharmaceutical part of our world doesn’t have, or either they’re not being given the right pharmaceuticals to address medicines to address their issue, or the doctors don’t know what issue, what medicine to give them, but even among women themselves.

So there’s the crickets on the side of women’s issues, how they’re being addressed by society, and sometimes the unsexy part of women’s issues. Like it’s not something, if it’s not dealing with sex and it’s not dealing with reproduction, our society tends to treat women’s issues as a very unsexy thing, a very less appealing thing, a kind of tangential side issue. And so one of the biggest challenges even among society, but then also among women themselves, getting them out to events to talk about uterine issues, getting them out to events to talk about, you know, the host of issues that we face as women or as Yoni owners.

What are some of your future initiatives? 

And so part of what I’m trying to do is to, especially with the Yoni show, I’m trying to raise awareness about these issues in a way that is a conversation between people. So we have our four co-hosts, myself and then three co-hosts, and then also people that come to visit, guests that come on, that work in the areas of women’s issues. And part of it is to platform those discussions, but also to give opportunities for companies that recognize that this is an area of incredible social gap, incredible public discourse gap, incredible like opportunities for inroads to promote products and services that might help women and Yoni owners.

We’ve provided this platform as an opportunity to, you know, invite people who want to invest in this topic to have the avenue to do so. And we need that support because it is a very hard road to hoe trying to build a business on women’s issues, and most especially on Yoni issues.

The Yoni Mudra Art Gallery is in its phase two. So its phase one last year was to build connections. I was an academic coming into the business world. That was its own transition. And then also just leaving sort of Hermitville, working at the Basili School in an office, you know, just working in that space to now wanting to get to know people and build myself and community.

So we hosted tons of events, we had film screenings, and we had soirees, and we had artisan markets and a whole host of things to get excited and get to know people. And that was wonderful. That was phase one.

Phase two now is taking our message to a global platform. So we have consolidated our relationship with the local community. And we want to build our relationship and our messaging to a larger audience, and also draw interest to the KW region.

So how are we doing this? Two things. One is we’ve started a YouTube TV show. It’s broadcast live on Monday mornings at 10am for an hour. It is called the Yoni Show. It is co-hosted by myself and three other colleagues from this area. And we basically have structured it as it’s addressing Yoni anatomy, Yoni health, Yoni politics, Yoni aesthetics, the divine feminine, anything related to women, anything related to the concerns of women and Yoni owners.

Yesterday, we had our episode on graceful goodbyes, how to say goodbye with grace, and knowing that it’s okay. It’s okay to say goodbye to people, places and things. It’s okay to say goodbye to a timeline. It’s okay to say goodbye to something that you had in your life, and in flow, you’re letting it go. Because for now, that’s where it needs to go. And maybe it’ll come back, and maybe it won’t.

So we’re talking about that, but also relating it back to the divine feminine. So we’re wanting to present these feminine kind of understandings of the world, rebuild the relationship with the masculine. We’re not pitted against the masculine. We’re not pitted against patriarchy. We want to work to create a world that’s more balanced.

So the Yoni Show is that. And we are definitely inviting collaborators, people who might want to partner with us, people who might want to invest in the show, people who might want to, you know, market or promote their product or service on the show. We are inviting collaborations at the local level, all the way up to the global level. And so that’s one area where we’re, that’s a phase two.

So the second part of phase two is we are starting a leadership network. What we’re wanting to do is create centrifugal forces for social change. We are a social entrepreneurship venture, meaning we’re about women’s rights, girls’ rights, giving women a voice, giving them a platform, and anyone who identifies with the feminine or who has a Yoni, that is one of our mandates.

So we’re starting a network where we want to bring people together who are interested in small or big social change. They want to lead with purpose, but maybe they don’t know how to be regulated to do that, or they are regulated and don’t know exactly how to lead with purpose. We want to bring people together who are change makers to get the resources they need to be regulated, but then also know how to lead with purpose, get those insights, the resources, learn how to do the hard work of getting to a place where you can be a leader, right?

Because a leader is the person who does the things that most people don’t want to do. The leader is the person who is the role model, who behaves the way that is going to inspire others, who behaves in a way that is going to create the right kind of social and professional dynamics for a project to advance forward, who does the hard work, who goes the extra mile and is regulated.

I truly believe that for somebody to truly be a leader, to truly be an empowering, inspiring leader for a collective, they must be regulated. They must be able to be calm. When things go down, as they do in any business, how do they respond? If they are regulated, they are going to respond calmly. They are going to look at the situation from a bird’s eye view. They’re not going to get into the weeds and the myopia of the problem and be like and blowing it out of proportion, like with a microscope. They’re going to be able to pan back from a bird’s eye view and go, let’s look at this whole picture.

This thing is happening. It’s unfolding. It may be unfortunate, but it’s simply one thing in a larger perspective. And that ability to have perspective is key to, is a key expressive quality of someone who is regulated. Being able to respond to things that, you know, maybe people have their hangups, or you’re working with employees and they have their challenges, or you’re working with employees and they don’t get along.

And so part of being a leader is being regulated to help others. Let’s talk about this. Let’s have a constructive discussion. Let’s air out what’s going on here in this dynamic. Let’s all come here with good intentions to try to get a positive outcome out of this. So leadership is about that and about giving ourselves this opportunity to change the world with the life that we’re given.

Regulated and leading with purpose network is what we’re doing. It is not started entirely, I’ve started it, but the actual network itself is in the building process. But what I want to do is plot right now to begin with, because we are just a small business, to platform local companies, local individuals, ventures, and talk about what they do.

So on the network would be like videos, for example, made by local wellness practitioners, people who are in that industry, providing the content to help the people in the network to be regulated, while also promoting their own business. So there are businesses being promoted, those videos are on the network, people are learning from them, and then also possibly going off the network to learn more about what that business does, and seeking more resources from them. That has the uptick of platforming that particular business, but it also allows anyone that could be locally or beyond to get the resources they need to lead in the kind of way that will allow for transformative social change.

And I do think it’s possible, I think another world is possible. I do not believe that we are deterministically set in fragmentation and the kind of divisive politics that we’re seeing both in the South, in the U.S., and also in some of the Western provinces among the political leaders. I don’t think it’s a necessary deterministic fact that we have to be in a state of fragmentation, or be in a state of separation, or that simply these divisive, that we must be divided.

I am manifesting a different world. I am manifesting a world where we’re collaborating, we’re working together, we are working towards common goals, we are supporting each other, everyone is healthy, we’re making sure that the people who are falling through the cracks stop falling through the cracks. Because when people fall through the cracks, it’s a load for everybody. And not to mention, it is inhumane. It is truly inhumane to watch people fall through the cracks when you have the capacity to do something and not do something about it.

So we all have our wheelhouses, we all have our strengths, right? And so part of it is just getting into our strengths and being able to build those through collaborations.

So last thing I’ll point to make is that research on social change is very clear. It is not one movement that creates transformative social change. Okay, we see with the LGBT plus Q community, it was not one movement within that community that allowed for the inroads that they’ve made over the past four decades. It was groups, groups and individuals working together in movements, and then other ones working in movements, and then other ones working in movements, talking to the news, talking to the entertainment industry, writing books, going on podcasts, you know, being actors in plays.

All of these things, all created centrifugal forces for the social change that we see, where it’s a better situation now than it was 40 years ago for the gay and lesbian community, the multi-gendered community, to be able to live a life free of being accosted or live a life free of being discriminated against, to get a rent, to get a rental location, or to get an apartment, or to get a job.

So these are what we’re trying to do, and part of it is just a larger vision to bring the message of the Yoni Mudra philosophy to the world.

Where can viewers learn more about you?

So all of our activity online to get in contact with us is mainly through our Instagram account. We’re less active on Facebook. DMS on Instagram is probably the best way, or they can email me, melissa at yonigallery.ca, or my business manager, Kosame, K-O-S-A-M-E at yonigallery.ca, if they want to reach out and connect with us. Those are the main places that we are right now, and also they can send a form on our website.

The post Melissa Finn – Scotiabank October Fearless Female appeared first on Greater KW Chamber of Commerce.

POSITION: Director of Financial Stewardship, Board of Directors

LOCATION: Remote (GTHA)

REPORTS TO: Chair, Board of Directors TIME COMMITMENT: 3-5 hours/month TERM: Two-year commitment

The Community Climate Council (CCC) is a committed team of volunteers in Peel Region driven by the urgency of the climate crisis. Through a combination of climate literacy and political advocacy, we empower our community to push for bold climate policies and take proactive steps toward change. Founded with the vision of creating a platform for local voices to demand action, our work is rooted in community-led solutions. We approach every project with a focus on collaboration, ensuring that our efforts are both community-centered and solutions-driven.

The CCC Board is an engaged governance body, with each member expected to attend 12 meetings per year, proactively participate in subcommittee work, and contribute to strategic initiatives between meetings. As is standard in nonprofit governance, board directors cannot be financially compensated for their service — this is a volunteer position.

We strongly encourage applications from youth, individuals across diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, and those with lived experience in environmental and social justice movements. Familiarity with the socio-political and environmental landscape in Peel Region and the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA), as well as previous board experience, are considered assets.

The CCC is seeking a Director of Financial Stewardship to lead and manage the organization’s financial operations, support strategic planning, and strengthen the Council’s long-term financial sustainability. This role is ideal for someone who is detail-oriented, financially literate, and passionate about supporting community-based climate action.

The Director of Financial Stewardship will oversee CCC’s financial accounts, manage and track donations, and collaborate with teams to develop creative fundraising strategies. They will also support CCC Grant Writers by providing direction on priorities, timelines, and next steps in the grant writing process.

• Financial Leadership & Oversight:
  • Present budgets, financial statements, and performance reports to the Board.
  • Support the development of annual budgets and updated financial forecasts.
  • Analyze financial data and provide recommendations to support strategic decision-making.
  • Advise on financial implications of strategic and operational plans.
• Financial Compliance & Controls:
  • Ensure accurate financial record-keeping in collaboration with CCC’s accountant.
  • Maintain strong internal controls and appropriate financial systems.
  • Ensure compliance with CRA requirements and other relevant legislation (e.g., tax returns, etc.).
  • Prepare accounts for audit and liaise with auditors.
  • Ensure fundraising and sales activities follow legislation and financial controls.
  • Establish payroll systems if/when the corporation expands.
• Fundraising & Development:
  • Manage and track donations and financial contributions.
  • Collaborate with teams on creative fundraising strategies.
  • Support grant development by guiding Grant Writers on priorities and deadlines.
• Board & Governance Responsibilities:
  • Attend monthly Board meetings (12 per year).
  • Participate in subcommittee work and strategic initiatives.
  • Stay informed about CCC programs, projects, and external trends.

• Skills and Experience:
  • Highly skilled in Quickbooks.
  • Experience in financial management, accounting, budgeting, or nonprofit finance.
  • Experience pitching products and ideas to other companies and knowledge of scaling businesses and social enterprises.
  • Experience/worked with, or knowledge of credit unions is an asset.
  • Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
  • Ability to interpret financial data and communicate insights clearly.
  • Experience with fundraising, grant writing, or donor management is an asset.
  • Familiarity with nonprofit governance and financial compliance requirements.
  • Knowledge of the environmental sector, climate justice, or community advocacy is an asset.
• Personal Attributes:
  • Passion for climate justice and enthusiastic about contributing to community-based climate action.
  • Self-motivated and able to manage multiple priorities.
  • Committed to equity, transparency, and collaborative decision-making.
  • Adaptable and comfortable working in a dynamic volunteer environment.

• Contribute to meaningful climate action and community resilience in Peel Region and beyond.
• Gain experience in nonprofit governance, strategic leadership, and community engagement.
• Build a professional network with community leaders and environmental advocates.
• Support a mission-driven organization working toward a just and sustainable future.

Please submit your application via our Google Form and indicate your interest in the Director of Financial Stewardship, Board of Directors position.

If you have any questions, prefer to apply through an alternate format, or require any additional information/accommodations during the application process, please contact us at hr@cccpeel.org.

The post Community Climate Council appeared first on Capacity Canada.

WOOLWICH TWN., WATERLOO REGION & ONTARIO GOVERNMENT HAVE SABOTAGED THE BRAKES AND STEERING, ENSURING THE CRASH

Our federal government is currently Liberal and our provincial government is currently Conservative. Neither one is doing a thing to seriously address Climate Change other than giving lip service to it. Lip service is but one half a step better than the right wing idiot south of the border who calls Climate Change a hoax despite world wide scientific positions otherwise. David Suzuki was interviewed with The Canadian Press and the published article is on the front page of today's Waterloo Region Record as well as on page A2. The title of the article is "Climate policy driving Canada" into a ditch", says David Suzuki". 

 Mr. Suzuki states that when looking at our political, legal and economic systems we can see that the planet we live on has been left out and ignored. The main system driving us and the world to destruction is the economic system. Politicians pretend that they are doing us all a favour by always putting the economy first when in fact what they are always doing is ensuring that the already well off and entitled remain that way generally at the expense of the rest of us. The well off and entitled are putting money into the political system at all levels and they expect favourable treatment as a result. Do you really think that developers, builders, industrialists really give a hoot about the homeless, the unemployed and those living in poverty? All they care for is a compliant, non union, low wage work force willing to do what they are told. Mass immigration in this country has never been about humanitarianism and helping the already overpopulated areas of the world. It's been about labour supply and demand and employers wanting a large pool of unemployed labour to assist in keeping unionism rates low and wages down.

Here in Elmira/Woolwich Township it is absolutely breathtaking how even anti social, dirty, stinking and polluting local industries are treated as saviours. Whether it is the former Breslube (Safety-Kleen) infamous for their stench and responsible for the shutting of the downstream drinking wells along the Grand River in Breslau (particularly K70, K71) or Varnicolor Chemical and Uniroyal Chemical in Elmira responsible for foul, toxic air and ruined drinking water aquifers; they are all treated by our municipal and regional politicians as the bastions of our society. This behaviour especially by our regional government has kept criticism of our rapidly diminishing groundwater quality by literally dozens of manufacturers over the last 100 years to a bare minimum. They never want to publicly criticize even the very worst polluters of which there are many in Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo.    

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The post Thanksgiving Hours appeared first on Grand River Rocks Climbing Gym.

While I have discussed a variety of environmental and political issues here since last December; three issues have been predominate for which no apology is required based upon their significance. FIRSTLY as has been obvious literally since May 2010 when I started this Blog I have spoken to the Elmira Water Crisis from day one. SECONDLY since last December I have also focused upon the Region of Waterloo Water Crisis which I commend the K-W Record for following in detail for weeks and months after December 2025. Unfortunately despite their own research and hard work it was absolutely amazing to me as to how they dropped the issue like a hot potato literally five minutes after the Region of Waterloo self declared their victory over the water shortage. This despite my sending them (and many others) detailed and specific information as to which wells, which wellfields, dates and locations thereof as well as naming specific contaminants in those wells including the industrial sources they came from. THIRDLY  I have discussed the incredible chutzpah, arrogance and blatant contempt of citizens, residents and taxpayers by the Region of Waterloo and Wilmot Council regarding the mostly secret land acquisition of 770 acres allegedly for some out of this world, beneficial to all, industrial megagiant who is too shy to reveal their name. Please feel free to lie to us, steal our money, farmland, drinking water but peeing in our faces is too much. I am about to advise you the readers and public as to whom out of approximately 60 recipients of my close to daily Blog /e-mails have responded, commented, denied or agreed with my Blog postings.  The following groups are the near daily recipients with the number in brackets indicating how many individual recipients for each group. These have gone to the Ont. Min. of Environment (4),  a very few to Mike Harris M.P.P., Woolwich Council (6), Waterloo Region Council (16), TRAC (8), Lanxess Canada (2), GHD (1),  GREN (4),  Green Party (1), Susan Koswan, K-W Record (5), Woolwich Observer (3), CTV (1) and CPAC (9). The last one, the Citizens Public Advisory Committee (CPAC) has been the only one to comment/respond since last December. 

Please note the various government bodies municipal, regional and provincial who have NEVER so much as asked for clarification, discussion or even a meeting. I include TRAC as a government body because they are not in charge of their own Agenda, membership etc. as they are a committee of Woolwich Council totally controlled by them. While disgusted by the three tiers of government blindness and deafness I also am appalled by our local media's seeming willingness to be good little boys and girls and not rock either the government or corporate boat.  

P.S. It took decades of lying, disrespect and contempt by the polluter, regulator (MECP) and other government bodies to hone me into the chiseled, acerbic and disrespectful to authority individual I am today.    

The post Pebbles Registration appeared first on Grand River Rocks Climbing Gym.

Frankly I'm in a quandry. I am optimistic simply because Sandy Shantz is done. She has been a disaster environmentally as she continues swallowing the crap coming from both the MECP and Lanxess Canada. Look where twelve years of that has gotten us as in exactly nowhere. Back in 2012 the new CPAC (Dan Holt, Sebastian S. A., Viv Delaney, Ron Campbell, Graham Chevreau along with Rich Clausi, Henry Regier and myself as sub-committee members advised Council and the public that the 2028 cleanup wasn't going to happen. Chemtura/Jeff Merriman/Conestoga Rovers lied like dogs six months later claiming that they would TRIPLE  the amount of pumping of groundwater in order to achieve full cleanup. They never even got close to Doubling much less Tripling. Sandy took over in 2014 and eliminated CPAC via dirty tricks including throwing out our formal renewal applications and then demanding new ones. That is precisely how lying pieces of crap operate and she did it on the demands of Chemtura and the Min. of Environment.

The failed cleanup has been official for several years now as Lanxess have made a few admissions that their lying, self-serving predecessors' never did  This last council did not appear willing or able to demand public transparency or accountability on the Uniroyal/Lanxess file. Maybe they will depending on whom is the new mayor. I have to admit that I do not know either candidate well although there are things that I like about both of them. Being an old phart myself, if I have a bias it's probably towards the older more senior of the two namely Eric Schwindt.  Again however I can't point to anything negative with Evan Burgess. One positive in his favour is how he smoothly handled public criticism from his fellow councillor Nathan Cadeau.  Nathan and I got off on the wrong foot early as he from a position of zero knowledge attempted to lecture me by e-mail on groundwater and cleanup issues. Basically as questions and answers went back and forth it became clear that he had a proxy answering for him which most likely was CAO Dave Brenneman. God there's one that really needs to go along with Nathan. 

TRAC has been abysmal only partly due to high turnover over the years. Far too many good ones with potential have walked while along with some dead wood still there are newer members with brains but zero long term background on the Elmira issues. Sycophants  like Tiffany and Eric are no help and Sebastian admits how overmatched TRAC is by Lanxess, MECP and GHD (consultants) and how deferential TRAC are as a result. Master manipulater Pat Mclean thank goodness is long gone. Too bad she didn't take her wingman Susan with her. TRAC are simply a cheerleading team for Lanxess and the Ministry (MECP) and they are protecting their interests not Woolwich residents.     

.  

Why didn’t someone type “Dudes, we’re not doing this” into the group chat?

Why didn’t someone intervene?

I’m thinking about the alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity house that took place about two years ago. Recently, the victim filed a civil lawsuit against the university and the men she said attacked her, and earlier this week, prosecutors reopened their investigation.

The Guardian reports that while two people were sexually assaulting her, someone posted in a fraternity Snapchat group that there was “free pussy upstairs.” In her lawsuit, the woman says at least five other members joined in.

The case raises an interesting question for bystanders. Why didn’t anyone intervene, raise an alarm, or stop the behavior?

We can face much smaller versions of this dynamic at work, especially in private group chats and backchannels. It might look like:

• Making sexist and objectifying comments about a potential client’s appearance in a backchannel group chat mid-meeting. Source: Pedestrian
• Spreading rumors that a colleague is trading sexual favors for career advancement. Source: Latitude Management
• Discussing an interview candidate’s physical attractiveness in a private Slack thread instead of evaluating their qualifications. Source: personal conversation.

So if you see a group chat heading somewhere harmful, please don’t assume someone else will say something.

Instead, push back. It could be as simple as, “We don’t do that here.”

Share this action on Instagram or LinkedIn.

This week’s Better Allies content is sponsored by:

Inclusion starts with the documents you share. Every inaccessible PDF leaves out a colleague or candidate using a screen reader. Grackle PDF helps you change that easily: drag, drop, done. Start your 14-day free trial, no cost, at app.gracklepdf.com.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), a month to celebrate and recognize the achievements of disabled people.

A few years ago, I remember reading in the 2023 Women in the Workplace Study, produced by McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, about the experience of women with disabilities. For example,

• 32% reported that others get credit for their ideas, compared to 21% of women overall and 14% of men.
• 35% said they’re interrupted or spoken over more than others, compared to 22% of women overall and 10% of men.
• 14% reported they’d been mistaken for someone more junior, compared to 9% of women overall and 5% of men.

Let’s make sure disabled coworkers (of any gender) get credit for their ideas. E.g., “I like that idea a lot. In fact, when Ana brought that up last week, I remember her saying …”

Let’s challenge ourselves to notice and act when they’re interrupted in meetings. “I’d like to hear Bob finish what he was saying.”

Let’s speak up when a colleague assumes that someone with a disability holds a position lower in status or expertise than they actually do. “Deepa is heading up that initiative. Let’s meet with her.”

Sometimes, we might think we’re being supportive, yet we’re unaware of the harm our actions cause.

In But it’s for Your Benefit: Benevolent Ableism in the Workplace and Its Impact on Autistic Individuals, Ludmila Praslova, PhD, points out how a manager, once learning about someone’s diagnosis, might start micromanaging their work, exclude them from high-stakes decisions and assignments, and generally operate on “the misguided belief that the individual might not be up to the task — even if they have a strong record of success.”

By “protecting” an employee, a manager essentially denies them the opportunity to develop their skills and advance their career.

Praslova recommends a few actions to truly support autistic and other neurodivergent individuals:

• Understand that autistic adults are adults and do not need decisions made on their behalf.
• Avoid assumptions and ableist stereotypes. Ask employees what kind of support they might need.
• Learn about neurodiversity and the varied abilities and potential of autistic individuals.

I’ll also suggest checking out Praslova’s book The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work.

More than 100 years ago, psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike documented what became known as the halo effect: the tendency to let one positive impression of someone influence how we perceive other qualities. For example, when commanding officers were asked to rate their subordinates without speaking to them, they rated taller, more attractive people as smarter and better soldiers.

Now, a new Harvard University study shows that four leading AI large-language models (LLMs) can make similar judgments.

The models made assumptions about people’s competence and trustworthiness based on facial features. In the study, these biases appeared at higher magnitudes than those measured in humans.

It’s a reminder that AI can reproduce, and potentially amplify, human biases.

As I’ve shared in previous newsletters, don’t let AI make decisions about humans unchecked.

Instead, advocate for a short pause step in the hiring or talent management process:

“Before we finalize the top performers, let’s review the AI-generated materials for possible biased assumptions.”

About five years ago, subscriber Matthew Fieldman co-founded Rekindle to drive meaningful social change by fostering collaboration between Black and Jewish American leaders. Today, it’s active in 20 cities across the US.

He encourages all of us on the journey to be better allies to actively search for and join one of the rising number of bridge-building organizations. Doing so can strengthen our allyship muscle by helping us meet people from different backgrounds or ideologies, challenge our own worldview, practice civil dialogue, and learn new perspectives.

In addition to Rekindle, Matthew also recommends these outstanding organizations based in the US:

• Braver Angels, which brings political conservatives and liberals together to lower political contempt and build consensus around where we agree.
• StoryCorps — One Small Step, which matches two people with different views for a recorded 50-minute conversation about their lives, not politics. You enter a zip code, fill out a 10-minute questionnaire, and get paired.
• Inheritance Theater Project, which creates original theater focused on increasing intercultural understanding at the local level.
• Urban Rural Action, which brings Americans together across differences to solve urgent local problems, with locally led hubs in six states and collaboration-skills workshops elsewhere.

I bet there are wonderful bridge-building organizations located in other parts of the world, too. If you belong to one, please tell me about it. I look forward to hearing from you.

And if you’ve taken a step towards being a better ally, please reply to this email and tell me about it. Please mention if I can quote you by name or credit you anonymously in an upcoming newsletter.

That’s all for this week. I’m glad you’re on this journey with me,

Karen Catlin (she/her), Author of the Better Allies® book series

100% written by me. I use AI for researching a personal archive of my books and past newsletters, and for light editing.

Copyright © 2026 Karen Catlin. All rights reserved.

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Challenge The Group Chat, and Other Actions for Allies was originally published in Code Like A Girl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• Presented by: Waterloo Region Friends of Palestine ♦
• What: We Belong to the Land
• When: 7:00pm to 9:30pm on Saturday 3 October 2026 (doors open 6:30pm)
• Where: St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church
• Location: 54 Queen Street North, Kitchener Map
• Register: www.eventbrite.ca/e/we-belong-to-the-land-tickets-1999437436195
• Contact: wrfriendsofpalestine@gmail.com

A unique event of words, drama, music and more to celebrate our belonging to the land from Turtle Island to Palestine.

On the third anniversary of October 7, we look to the land, the common element uniting all Indigenous peoples. From Turtle Island to Palestine we celebrate belonging, resilience and cultural resistance. We recognize Indigenous ties to the land and honour good stewardship of the land.

Join for an evening of community sharing to raise urgently needed funds to help feed families in Gaza. The night includes speakers featuring Elder Myeengun Henry, Robert Massoud, Healing the Seven Generations, dramatic reading of an original play specially written for this event. And much more.

Funds will be collected on site by IDRF, a Canadian registered charity which will issue tax-deductible receipts.

♦