Ep 045: A Part Of The Solution with Heather Odendaal
Play • 37 min

This week we welcome Heather Odendaal. She shares her purpose of helping women get into a position of power, as the pandemic has heightened women falling off mid-career. “We have gone backwards as we have lost the pipeline for women in leadership roles”, explains Heather and drives into 3 strategies to reverse this trend. She explains how the pandemic has allowed women to rethink their day-to-day, created opportunities for inner work to help them shift from entrepreneurship to Corporate Roles, and how women are making lateral moves and changing departments. 

About the Guest:

Meet Heather Odendaal -- an accomplished Canadian entrepreneur, brand builder and event producer whose experience in corporate environments inspired her to create and co-found WNORTH, a global organization dedicated to the development of women mid-career on a trajectory towards senior executive Leadership.

What originally started off as an annual conference in 2015, WNORTH now connects top female business leaders in corporate, public and entrepreneurial sectors through The Members’ Club which provides a 100% virtual forum of online content and development opportunities including workshops, leadership masterminds, events and courses and more.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Heather and her team quickly pivoted to create virtual experiences for their members and conference attendees. They are hard at work highlighting and solving the problem of the insufficient support structures in North America for women in the workforce, which was even more pronounced in the last 12 months.

Prior to launching her organization, Heather was employed as a sales executive for a Fortune 500company. There, she noticed the lack of women in senior executive positions and she and her husband decided to take matters into their own hands and launch WNORTH.

Recognized in BizBash's 2021 and 2020 roundup of Canada's Most Influential Event Pros, Odendaal has worked on some of the world's largest and most influential events including the Whistler Film Festival, Crankworx Mountain Bike Festival and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Odendaal was previously nominated for the 2021 YWCA Women of Distinction Awards, the Whistler

Excellence Awards Rising Star (2015 and 2016) and Innovative Business of the Year (2018). She is consistently featured in a variety of top tier publications and podcasts, and sits on the Forbes Business Council. Heather currently resides in Whistler, BC, and is a Director on the board of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce. In her spare time, you can find her judging local food & wine festivals, and skiing with her husband and two children.

Heather Odendaal

https://www.instagram.com/heatherodendaal/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherodendaal/

https://twitter.com/hmwhistler

WNORTH

https://www.instagram.com/wnorthconnect/

https://www.facebook.com/WNORTHConnect

https://www.linkedin.com/company/wnorth/

https://twitter.com/wnorthconnect

https://www.youtube.com/user/wnorthconf

About the Hosts:

Blair Kaplan Venables is an expert in social media marketing and the president of Blair Kaplan Communications, a British Columbia-based PR agency. As a pioneer in the industry, she brings more than a decade of experience to her clients, which includes global wellness, entertainment, and lifestyle brands. Blair has helped her customers grow their followers into the tens of thousands in just one month, win integrative marketing awards, and more. She has spoken on national stages and her expertise has been featured in media outlets including CBC Radio, CEOWORLD Magazine, She Owns It, and Thrive Global. Blair is also the #1 best-selling author of Pulsing Through My Veins: Raw and Real Stories from an Entrepreneur. When she’s not working on the board for her local chamber of commerce, you can find Blair growing the “I Am Resilient Project,” an online community where users share their stories of overcoming life’s most difficult moments.

https://www.blairkaplan.ca/ 

Theresa Lambert is a High-Performance Lifestyle and Success Coach, Speaker, and Bestselling Author of “Achieve with Grace: A guide to elegance and effectiveness in intense workplaces. She founded her coaching and consulting firm, Theresa Lambert Coaching & Consulting Inc., to help ambitious women succeed with more elegance and less struggle so they can lead with focus and nourish themselves to the top. Drawing from her nearly 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry and most recently her 6-year tenure as the General Manager of Nita Lake Lodge she brings both a real world view and proven applicable tools to support her clients. Theresa has been recognized as a business leader in Whistler’s Profiles of Excellence, featured in Thrive Global, Authority Magazine, Hotelier Magazine, and Beyourown, and spoken at Women in Hospitality Leadership events, including Empower Her. Originally from Stuttgart, Germany, Theresa now lives in Whistler, BC where you can most often find her on the golf course in the summer months or relaxing by a fireplace in winter.

https://www.theresalambertcoaching.com

 

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