Foundational Talks

Indigenomics By Design: The Rise of Indigenous Economic Empowerment 
Carol Anne Hilton
​An Indigenous worldview brings with it into today the balance of the feminine. Indigenomics By Design names  the concept of Indian Act economics and brings to light the worldview of the patriarchy and colonial  constructs that have shaped the economic regression of Indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. Indigenomics is modern Indigenous economic design.  Indigenomics By Design conceptualizes the potential of the evolution of a 100 billion dollar Indigenous economy. 

Canada is  now embarking on a new pathway of Indigenous economic empowerment through the growth of the Indigenous economy. The Indian Act has been central tool serving the displacement of an Indigenous worldview, ways of being and knowledge systems since 1867. This empowerment  is shaped through economic meaning stemming from within from an Indigenous worldview and through the modern expression of rights and title.
 

What does it mean to  be a feminist business?
Dr. CV Harquail

Being a feminist business ask for more than just being fiercely feminist as you go about your work, although that really helps. It also means building feminist values into your business model, your mission, your products, and your leadership practices. I'll be sharing some insights from my forthcoming book on Feminist Interventions in Business thinking, and help set a foundation for our shared learning throughout the EFF.

Diversity and Inclusion is Not Enough: Decolonized Feminism and Design
Dr. Dori Tunstall
What does it mean to be truly inclusive in design? How do values that we hold as individuals translate to the experiences we design for? Dori Tunstall walks us through the values aligned with decolonization and how to put them into intersectional praxis. Dori will demystify how trends of “Diversity and Inclusion” are not the enough for creating inclusive spaces. Dean of Design at OCAD University, Dori is the first Black and Black female dean of faculty of design anywhere. From this unique perspective, Dori offers guidance on recognizing key barriers and creating new paths towards decolonizing design, so that everyone can participate with a sense of self-determination and belonging. 

Movement Sessions

Embodied Resilience with Jane Clapp
COMING SOON

Boxing with Savoy Howe, Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club
COMING SOON

Workshops 
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Feminist Marketing for an Emerging, More Inclusive Economy
Kelly Diels
This workshop is an overview of feminist marketing and a social media how-to that will get you started on feminist marketing in theory AND practice, now. The mainstream, popular and apparently feminist archetype of “empowerment” and success  (think: professionally pretty white women in heels and sheath dresses a.k.a “The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand”) that’s held out to women leaders and entrepreneurs as a model is an empty one. Worse yet, this archetype reinforces the gendered and racist norms limiting the lives of women and gender non-conforming people. It’s essential that we create new narratives to help grow our feminist businesses. Learn how to deliberately audit your practices and build feminist and culture-making criteria into your marketing app and vendor selections. Develop a system for creating and distributing business-building feminist messaging, and get started creating new materials right away.

Designing and Unleashing the Power of Enterprise Ecosystems
Dr. Barbara Orser and Petra Kassun-Mutch 
The term “ecosystem” was originally used in environmental fields to describe an entire system of living organisms plus abiotic factors such as air, water, minerals that occupy a particular space and inter-relate in that ensures its ability to flourish despite barriers and forces outside of its control. Today, we use the word ecosystem to name and describe a system of relationships related to the advancement or sustainability of an idea, project, or entire enterprise.   Compare mainstream entrepreneurship ecosystems to women’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and look at examples of firm level ecosystems via a feminist lens. Participants will discuss how an ecosystem mindset ensure resilience, accelerates impact, and advances financial sustainability.  Map out your own enterprise ecosystems, apply feminist principles to ecosystem management, and identify new opportunities and “triple plays” that can help your enterprise breakthrough.

Negotiating Like a Feminist​
Olga Semenovych
Negotiation is an essential business practice for entrepreneurs . We engage in formal and informal negotiations almost daily for contracts, compensation, work responsibilities, benefits, and more. Still, it is one of the most gendered processes in the way it privileges characteristics considered to be masculine like assertiveness. Research on the gender gap in entrepreneurship and compensation shows a direct connection to the process of negotiation. However, much of the conversation attributes differences in negotiation styles and outcomes to the individual, essentially saying that this is a problem with women: they don’t ask as often or they aren’t assertive enough. This workshop examines the institutionalized mechanisms that construct a gendered context of behaviours in negotiation. Learn about your own behavioural style and how it impacts your approach to negotiation and gain new strategies and tactics. Who can ask? What is up for negotiation? How will this be negotiated? What would it mean to do negotiations in a feminist way? How can we use the practice of negotiation as a lens to reveal and challenge the gendered order in entrepreneurship and business?

Generative Decision-Making: Sharing Power in Our Organizations
Samantha Slade
Decision making tends to be a source of confusion, tension, and conflict in organizations. The good news is there are ways to make decisions together that are both human and efficient for doing business. This is one of the key domains of practice for more horizontal organizational ways. Decision making methods we are most familiar with have patriarchal roots. Not only does it feel good to reconnect with a decision-making process that is more true to our nature, is more effective. In this session, participants will gain a live experience of “generative decision making” and share stories of power and decision making. Participants will learn how to make consent based decisions with sensing, what kind of decision making system they want to use, and how to unravel some of their own stories of power and decision making.

This is What a Feminist Business Looks Like: Lunapads' Insights  & Actions from the Frontlines
Madeleine Shaw & Suzanne Siemens, Lunapads
Explore and expand your definition of feminist business values with founders Suzanne Siemens and Madeleine Shaw of Lunapads. As pioneers in the reusable period care industry, the pair will share their diverse personal leadership journeys, including stories of the (literal!) blood, sweat and tears that have built their 7-figure, internationally recognized, multiple award-winning company. How have their feminist values and politics inspired, shaped and/or collided with the discipline of building a successful business over 25 years, and what can be learned from their journey? Learn how personal identity and narratives about being a feminist, businessperson, and/or entrepreneur are can limit or lift us. Deconstruct the gender binary in organizational design and marketing. Learn how to approach financing, competition, HR, and social impact with a feminist lens. Take away a list of real-time next steps to enhance your feminist business practice. As a participant, you’ll have the opportunity to share your own challenges and receive feedback from peers.  

What Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders Can Learn from Activists
Rivera Sun
Audre Lorde wrote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” This unique session brings the tools of constructive activism and power of enterprise together to introduce alternative ways to drive systems change. Participants will discuss how to create and support movements for social change in a powerfully transformative cycle. Learn about economic activism, the key characteristics of leaderfull organizing, the connections between mass movements and cooperatives, and how constructive programs, like Gandhi's Salt Campaign, demonstrate how the merging of business and social change can become an unstoppable force. If you are disillusioned with the pace of change and looking for new ways to move the dial at little faster, this workshop is for you!

Make Better Business Decisions Using a Personal Governance Framework
Theresa Yuan
It is accepted wisdom that diversity drives both performance and innovation. Companies who fail to build diverse and inclusive workforces risk being left behind. But it’s not enough to encourage “best practices”; gender equality must be enacted in our laws, cultural norms, and business values and practices. Understanding the “gender gap” in entrepreneurship requires a focus on individual, institutional, and structural barriers. This workshop will employ constructivist learning methods to illuminate ways in which gender bias has informed the entrepreneurial process, the underlying enabling conditions for diversity and/or inclusion, and how a personal governance framework for responding to these conditions can help entrepreneurs align their work and vision with building sustainable businesses centered on feminist values. Learn which values guide your business choices and goals and how institutional and systemic structures either support you or hold you back. Learn governance structures you can work with to move the needle forward in enacting your entrepreneurial feminist vision. 

Put Your Values into Policy and Practice In Your Business: The Case of The Gladstone Hotel
Chris Mitchell and Christina Zeidler, The Gladstone
As feminist entrepreneurs, we model new ways of working, living, creating, and flourishing together. We acknowledge and appreciate the whole humanness of our employees, clients, suppliers, and partners and value our inter-independence. In this workshop we will collectively explore how to formalize and evolve “feminist best business practices” and share key learnings from the herstory and case study of the Gladstone Hotel as a feminist-led arts and hospitality-based business. Inspired by the Gladstone’s arts-based strategies we will workshop how to develop a partnership framework that aligns values, goals, and expectations to build collaborations that impact a higher social purpose beyond profit. Activities will include case study of policy development, facilitated work to draft a partnership/collaboration framework unique to your business, and group collaboration to explore how we can aggregate, share, and build on how we individually operate as feminist entrepreneurs to create a collective feminist business model for now and the future.

Lightning Talks
​COMING SOON