By Sonia Edmonds
A Quiet Realization
I didn’t expect the moment that changed me to be so quiet.
I was sitting in a conference audience when someone beside me leaned over and whispered, “There are no women leaders on this stage.”
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t confrontational. It was simply true.
And in that instant, something shifted.
By Sheila Vijeyarasa
Can I tell you something?
As women in leadership, we talk a lot about energy.
How to protect it.
How to sustain it.
How to show up with enough of it to be the executive, the mother, the partner, the visionary.
We invest in morning routines and optimize our calendars, and yet so many of us are still running on empty.
Here’s where I’ve landed after years as a Chief Financial Officer and now as a mentor who works with women in high-stakes roles: the fastest way to leak energy isn’t a bad night’s sleep or a packed schedule, it is a boundary you haven’t set, or worse, one you set and then quietly retracted.
By Jackelyn Gill
“Live your truth” sounds simple.
Until you try to do it.
Because it’s not one decision. It’s a series of them. Small moments where you choose what matters, what you believe, and how you show up, even when it’s uncomfortable.
When we asked our Top 100 winners what living their truth looks like in practice, their answers weren’t abstract.
They were grounded. Personal. Sometimes hard-earned.
Here’s what they shared.
By DESIRÉE BOMBENON
For ten years, I ran my company with a focus on something that, at the time, wasn’t always easy to define. I wanted the business to be a force for doing good. Not just in what we produced or delivered, but in how people experienced the work itself.
BY KRISTI PESHAL HONEY
The first time I sat at a boardroom table, I did not say a word.
The conversation moved quickly. Seasoned executives traded acronyms like currency, referencing strategies and frameworks I only half understood. I nodded when others nodded. I had worked hard to earn that seat, but in that moment, I felt small. I told myself I was learning. In truth, I was hiding.
What I did not know then was that boldness is not always loud. Sometimes it begins in silence. In the gathering of courage. In the pause before the leap. Be Bold is not a single act. It is a practice you return to, especially when it would be easier not to.
A few years later, I found myself at another table. Again, I was the only woman. The only public sector voice. The youngest person in the room. The discussion centered on a major project that had started to drift. The slides were polished. The numbers looked reassuring. But something did not sit right.
No one was asking the hard questions.
Where was the risk register?
What were the mitigation plans?
Why was the burn rate not being discussed?
I hesitated. That familiar voice crept in. Do not push too hard. You are the only one asking.
But this time, boldness spoke louder.
I leaned forward and asked anyway.
BY DR. NARDINE NAKHLA
In healthcare, bold ideas are not the problem.
We talk constantly about innovation, access, scope of practice, and transformation. The science is there. The training is there. The urgency is obvious. And yet, progress often stalls somewhere between policy and practice.
Rising boldly in healthcare isn’t about vision alone. It’s about execution. About building the systems that allow good intentions to actually show up in patient care.
Over the past eighteen years, my work has lived in that gap. Here’s what I’ve learned about what bold leadership really requires when lives, trust, and outcomes are on the line.
BY JACKELYN GILL
It takes only a second to lose yourself when you walk into Patricia Gagic’s studio.
One work calls to you. Something abstract, contemporary. You’re drawn to the collision of color, shape, and texture. Light and dark. You stand there just long enough to tease out layers of meaning before you notice the piece beside it. And the one beside that. On and on until you’ve lost track of time and your place in the room.
This is the work of a Gold Medal winner at the Salon National des Beaux-Arts at the Carrousel du Louvre. Of a Dame of the Order of St. George. An artist whose own master has named her “Maestro.”
“And if I didn’t have my husband’s income, I’d be penniless,” she says.
BY DIANE ROSS
I walked onto a stage in Dallas looking like I had everything together.
The event was called North America’s Next Greatest Speaker. Ten finalists. Three minutes each. The top three would move on to the finals.
I had the outfit. The hair. Two coaches. Hours of TED Talks trying to reverse-engineer someone else’s magic until I’d completely lost track of my own.
I was ninth to go on, which meant nearly an hour backstage watching other speakers do the one thing I couldn’t seem to do.
Sound like themselves.
When Preparation Becomes a Disguise
One woman stood out. Sassy, fast, irreverent. She broke every professional speaking rule I’d been taught. The audience adored her, not because she was polished. Because she was present.
Standing backstage, I knew.
I had gone about this completely wrong.
By Jackelyn Gill
We don’t usually think of ourselves as legends.
That word feels reserved, for history books, for names we learned long before we ever imagined what our own path might look like.
But when we asked Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winners what it means to live “Like a Legend,” their answers didn’t sound distant or unattainable.
They sounded lived.
Grounded in decisions, in setbacks, in the quiet moments where you choose who you’re going to be, again and again.
Here’s what they shared.
BY DR. KATHERINE CHUBBS
I went to school in a rowboat.
That’s where my story begins.
I grew up in a remote community in Labrador, about 50 people. My father was a fisherman, and my mother owned the only business in town. We had a summer home and a winter home, and twice a year we would travel inland and then back to the ocean.
I remember when we didn’t have bathrooms. I remember when we didn’t have hot water or television. We were, in many ways, about 50 years behind other parts of the country.
And when you’re 14 or 15 years old, if you want to continue your education, you have to leave.
So I did. I moved away from home to live with strangers. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
BY CYBELE NEGRIS
When I was named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women, I didn’t feel powerful. I felt exposed.
I remember the moment clearly. Being recognized for work I had poured years into, leading a successful, award-winning tech company in a male-dominated industry.
I should have felt proud. And I did… partially. I felt honored. Grateful. Humbled.
But underneath all of that, there was something else. A quiet, persistent feeling that I didn’t belong there.
BY JENNY COLEMAN
When I got the email telling me I’d been named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women, my first reaction wasn’t pride. It was disbelief.
Me? Powerful? Really?
That morning had started the same way most mornings do. Changing a poopy diaper. Getting our eldest daughter, who is profoundly disabled, dressed, fed, and onto the school bus. Stripping her bed. Starting a load of laundry. Not exactly the image that comes to mind when you hear “high-powered businesswoman.”
By Tanya Geisler
On capacity realism, the all-or-nothing bargain, and what actually keeps leadership intact.
On our Monday call, she told me she was fine. The way high achievers say fine when they mean: I am holding this together through sheer force of will, and I need a better system, a cleaner routine, a full reset, preferably before the end of this sentence.
Her week ahead looked like this: leadership calls, a performance issue on her team, board prep, teenager in flux, an elderly parent whose needs had begun to escalate, flight Thursday, back Friday in time to host an event that night. No seams. No white space.
BY REBECCA SHIELDS
There were moments when the project felt like it was slipping away.
Building sites lost. Timelines pushed back. Funding pressures mounting. Criticism building. And more than once, I found myself picking up the pieces and starting again.
BY KRISTINA PAIDER
Big decisions are tricky.
Red pill or blue pill? Ask the question or stay silent? Double down or walk away?
Either choice could lead to a better life; either choice could end in disaster. No pressure. A major crossroad. Irreversible consequences. And you can’t stay where you are.
This is a main character moment. One where the choice made will shape the future.
But it’s not just this moment. Because in fact, we craft our life story with every decision we make and every action we take. It’s no secret that to make life a masterpiece, we sometimes have to step back and get a different perspective. It’s not a formula—it’s an art form.