Ep 045: A Part Of The Solution with Heather Odendaal

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, Cr