Where Strategy Actually Happens

BY IDALIN McKENZIE

We spend a lot of time talking about strategy. Who sets it. How it’s defined. Where it’s going.

But in my experience, strategy doesn’t succeed or fail at the executive table. It succeeds or fails on the frontline.

Where the Work Becomes Real

Frontline leaders are where the work actually happens.

They are the ones translating ideas into action. Taking something high-level and making it real, in the day-to-day decisions that shape how an organization operates.

They are the bridge between what’s intended and what’s experienced. And I’ve seen how much depends on that.

What People Stay For

One of the most immediate impacts of frontline leadership shows up in how people feel at work. Whether they stay. Whether they grow. And whether they feel connected to what they’re doing.

I’ve seen the difference it makes when people feel supported. When they know their voice matters and their contributions are recognized. When there’s a sense of trust within the team.

Those things aren’t abstract. They’re built or not built every day.

Seven Embryos Changed Everything. Just Not the Way I Planned.

BY SHERRI STEVENS
There was never a question in my mind.

I would get married. We would buy a house. And we would have children. Four of them, to be exact. Two girls and two boys. What my mother used to call a “millionaire’s family.”

I’d be close and connected with them, just as my mother and I were close and connected. A bond that passed from generation to generation.

And in many ways, life followed the plan. I walked down the aisle at 26. We got the keys to our first house together. We started trying to have a family.

But the part that felt the most certain… never happened.

I Was Ready to Walk Away

By VINNIE RECILE
There was a moment in my career when I was ready to hand in my resignation.

Not because I wasn’t capable. But because I wasn’t sure if I believed that I was.

I was working as a CFO, sitting at a table where I was the only woman, surrounded by strong, confident voices who seemed certain in every decision they made. And quietly, I was questioning my own.

Learning to Trust What I Knew

I’ve always been drawn to understanding what sits beneath the surface. Not just the numbers but the story they tell. That’s what pulled me into accounting in the first place. The problem-solving. The ability to interpret what’s really happening and help shape decisions from there.

But there’s a difference between knowing something and trusting that you know it. And at that point in my career, I wasn’t sure I did.

The Single Tee That Made Over a Thousand Confident Girls

BY JACKELYN GILL
Taylor Hui holds her pose as the flash washes over her. She knows just how to wear the clothes, part her lips, catch the light. She’s traveled across the world to be on this set.

But there’s one thing the camera doesn’t catch: she’s about to run out of money.

“In my second year of university, I was getting so burnt out. I was traveling overseas constantly. I was working and trying to balance school, trying to run BeaYOUtiful, but couldn’t keep up with the fundraising,” she says.

Taylor founded the BeaYOUtiful Foundation to help girls build self-esteem, mental wellness, and confidence. She kept it alive with bake sales, car washes, bottle drives, door-to-door canvassing, and the occasional partnership.

No matter what she poured in, it wasn’t enough.

The Courage to Remain Human

BY AYESHA SHAH
I have spent much of my life asking difficult questions about identity, freedom, meaning, love, and suffering.

What does it mean to live truthfully in a world that asks us to perform, prove, and become versions of ourselves we barely recognize?

For a long time, I thought the answers lived outside of me, in achievement, knowledge, usefulness, and certainty. But the deeper work was learning how to remain human.

Growing Up Between Contradictions

I was born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia. I am the only girl among four brothers, and from an early age, I learned that love and limitation could exist in the same room.

At home, my father encouraged me to think deeply. Outside the home, I saw freedoms available to others that were not available to me because I was female.

The Beautiful Trap Behind Being Needed

BY JEN LOFGREN
In November 2019, I received my first WXN Entrepreneur award.

I remember feeling proud. I also remember feeling tired in a way that was harder to admit.

On paper, so much was working. I had a 12-year-old daughter, a thriving business, a full roster of executive coaching clients, a talented team of coaches, and meaningful board roles, including with the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. Incito was growing. My work mattered. People were calling. I was needed.

And yet, standing inside that success, I felt lonely.

Not ungrateful. Not unhappy. Just aware that the very thing I had worked so hard to build was becoming difficult to carry. I was proud of what existed, but I was also quietly worried about how I would keep it all going.

At the time, I did not have the language for what I know now. Being needed had given me purpose, success, and community. It had shaped much of my career and identity. But I was beginning to understand that being needed is not the same as belonging.

That realization came slowly, through exhaustion, decision fatigue, and the gradual loss of joy in things I deeply cared about.

I Had a Choice to Make

By DIANE CRAIG
A year after I started my business, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. He was 44 years old. Three months later, he was gone.

My son was 12. My daughter was seven. And suddenly, I was a single mother with a business I wasn’t sure I could sustain.

I had a choice to make. Do I go back and work for someone else? Or do I continue on the path I had just started? I chose to keep going.

Not because it was easy. But because it gave me the flexibility I needed to raise my children, and the belief that I could build something of my own.

When Loss Doesn’t Come Just Once

Four years later, I was away on business when I got a call. My daughter had been in a school bus accident. I flew home immediately. It was the longest flight of my life.

The next morning, the doctor told me there was no brain function left. She was 11 years old.

What It Took to Be Free

By MARSHA HERBERT
I wanted my daughter to be free.
And I wanted myself to be free too.

That thought stayed with me for a long time, long before I fully understood what it would take to get there.

Learning to Take Care of Myself Early

I came to Canada from Jamaica when I was 12, with my twin sister. We left our mom to live with our dad.

But things didn’t unfold the way we expected. One day, he told us we were moving to a smaller home. Then suddenly, he left. No warning. No conversation. Just gone.

By the time I was 16, I had made a decision. I left home. My sister followed.

I told her, you finish school—I’ll take care of us. So I did. I got an apartment. I worked full-time at a buffet restaurant. I figured it out as I went.

Use What You’ve Lived to Lift Someone Else

By AMANDA HAMILTON
When I think about the idea of using your voice to elevate others, I don’t think about a single moment. I think about everything that shaped me long before I knew I would need it.

I grew up in a small bungalow with one washroom and seven people. My grandparents, their four children, including my mother, and me. When people talk about “it takes a village,” I lived it.

It wasn’t always easy. Space was limited. Privacy was nonexistent. But what I gained from that environment was something I didn’t fully understand at the time: adaptability. And independence.

Learning to Navigate Change

By the time I finished school, I had attended more than 13 different institutions between Kindergarten and University. You don’t go through that without learning how to adjust quickly. How to read a room. How to start over, again and again.

I didn’t always thrive in change, but I learned how to move through it. And over time, that became a strength.

The Quiet Ways Courage Shows Up

By JACKELYN GILL
We tend to think of courage as something big.

A defining moment. A bold decision. A visible act.

But more often, it shows up quietly.

In the way you speak up.
In the way you keep going.
In the way you choose to show up, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

When we asked our Top 100 winners what courage looks like in practice, their answers weren’t dramatic.

They were lived.

Here’s what they shared.

There’s a Reason for This Season

BY IDALIN McKENZIE
Running My Own Race
The first time I realized I was on a different path, it didn’t feel bold. It felt uncertain.
As the first in my family to pursue a career and entrepreneurial path like this, there was no blueprint to follow. No clear route to the destination. Just a belief that I needed to keep going and figure it out along the way.
From early on, I learned that life is a marathon, not a sprint. That perspective has stayed with me through uncertainty and change, grounding me in moments when the path ahead wasn’t clear. I often remind myself: there is a reason for this season.

SPACE TO BREATHE

BY SIMONE HARRINGTON
Winning WXN’s Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 created a natural pause for me.

A moment to reflect on what brought me here. The people who supported me along the way. And how I might pay that forward in supporting others as they pursue their own ambitions.

In that reflection, I found myself drawn to something familiar.

Nature.

Not because I consider myself particularly outdoorsy. I don’t. I would choose a warm, comfortable cabin over a tent every time. But there is something about being outside, walking through the woods, along the water, moving without urgency, that brings a kind of stillness I don’t find anywhere else.
It’s where my thinking clears.
Where I can hear myself.

The Space I Needed Didn’t Exist. So I Built It.

By TRACY BARRY
When I think about my journey, I don’t think about titles or milestones. I think about moments of uncertainty. Arriving in Canada was one of them.

I remember the feeling of starting over in a new environment. Learning how systems worked. Observing expectations that were never clearly explained. Trying to understand how opportunity was accessed and how credibility was established.

It wasn’t just about finding work. It was about finding direction.

What I Couldn’t Find

What stood out to me most during that time wasn’t just the challenge. It was the gap.

Beyond the Bumpenya:
The Real Work of Being Princess Sarah Culberson

By Jackelyn Gill
It was a childhood proverb in her adopted West Virginia family: “If part of our world is off balance, Sarah, it affects all of us.”

And things around Princess Sarah Culberson were off-balance in the Bumpe Chiefdom of Sierra Leone.

At 28, she learned she was the Mahaloi through her biological lineage. The granddaughter of the Paramount Chief. The Bumpenya, Lady of Bumpe.

A long night of joyful celebration followed her arrival in the village. It was “mind-boggling and overwhelming and shocking and beautiful.” And then her birth father, Joseph Konia Kposowa, Chief of the Mende Tribe, showed her the rest.

We All Have the Power to Be Our Authentic Selves

By Tanya Mushynski

When I was named one of WXN’s Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100, I felt an immediate sense of gratitude. I was honored to be part of a community of women who are not only advancing in their careers but lifting others as they do. I also paused to reflect on what brought me to this moment including the people who supported me along the way.

That reflection stayed with me as I joined the WXN Leadership Summit and Awards Gala. I remembered what Sherri Stevens said to all of us: Pause. Take this in. Reflect on what brought you here.