The Voice of Women Podcast Episodes: Women's Interesting and Inspiring Real Life Stories
Episode 102 - Chelsea Squires
Chelsea Squires is an extreme data generalist, collaborator, and storyteller with over five years of energy industry experience and a successful pivot into the tech industry. After suffering for many years with a love-hate relationship with her brain, Chelsea was diagnosed with extreme ADHD. Learning to navigate life with her diagnosis has had its ups and downs. Today, I have the privilege of sitting down with Chelsea to openly discuss ADHD and how others going through the same can find resources and support to help guide them through their journey of life.
Episode 99 - Alisha Rai
Dr. Alisha Rai is a mother and the co-founder of Hope for Cerebral Palsy and the Author of Mighty Mr. Aiden. She shares her journey through infertility, multiple miscarriages and her pursuit of motherhood. Dr. Rai will lead our listeners down an unconventional way of finding her miracle rainbow baby. In this episode, Dr. Rai speaks to her experience through a traumatic delivery, NICU and becoming a special-needs mama. After a diagnosis of PTSD, Dr. Rai learnt how to process her grief. The prompting of a still small voice inside, "Your pain won’t have purpose if it’s in private," has led her to openly share her journey and how she's choosing to turn grief into giving, ache into action, and pain into purpose. I have the privilege and honor to speak with her today and share her story in hopes of helping other woman going through a similar experience.
Episode 97 - Gemma Stone
Armed with multiple degrees in psychology, two decades of working one-on-one with individuals, and facilitating internationally, Gemma is laser focused on helping people build emotional intelligence. Gemma is a natural-born storyteller who inspires compassion, with every breath. Her fresh, accelerated and loving approach to healing is changing the psychology industry. I am so lucky to be basking in her presence today sharing her story with our listeners!
Episode 98 - Nina Purewal
Nina Purewal faced an unexpected childhood tragedy, which inspired her mindfulness and meditation journey over twenty years ago. After climbing the corporate ladder in sales and marketing for nearly a decade, she took a sabbatical and moved to California to unplug and live in an ashram for a year to further her learning of ancient wisdom and letting go. It’s been her greatest passion to help others find happiness through adversity. With that, she founded Pure Minds, a social enterprise that conducts mindfulness and meditation workshops for the corporate sector, with over 50 clients. She is the co-author of the International Bestseller, Let That Sh*t Go and has also partnered with A Kids Company About as a podcast host and kids meditation mentor. Today, I am honored to be speaking with Nina as she opens up about the tragedy that changed the trajectory of her life, turning her pain into purpose.
Episode 95 - Atousa Sepehr
Born in Iran and raised in Tehran Atousa Sepehr received her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and worked as an electrical engineer for almost 10 years in Tehran. In 2011, she made the decision to move to Canada with her husband with hopes of finding work as skilled worker immigrants.
On this podcast, Atousa and Tanya discuss the current situation going on in Iran. Protest movements began 8 weeks ago for women and human rights due to the government's brutality on women and young girls. Atousa will share with our listeners and speak to the truth as to what is currently going on in Iran as well as share what we Canadians can do to help.
Episode 94 - Eve Aboka
Eve Aboka is a Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Advocate, and a Career and Academic Advisor with a restorative justice lens approach to informing organizational change, career development and social justice.
She is the Founder and C.E.O at Capability Career Group (CCG) and an Executive Director at Immigrant Champions of Canada (ICC).
Through the Working Workplaces Program at Capability Career Group, Aboka has coached over 70 organizations in Alberta with a result-oriented D&I overhaul approach, that invites organizations to follow the steps of Assessment, Awareness, Alignment, Action, and Advocacy; to realize holistic organizational D&I change.
Aboka's empathy style in delivering D&I sessions has seen many participants demonstrate higher levels of engagement in the sessions and recorded high participation rates in social change advocacy. Employers have also been motivated to rewrite and change their policies to reflect the change required in today's and tomorrow's workplace. Besides D&I, she has published 3 books.
Episode 93 - Beth Hoel
Beth Hoel began her career in criminal justice in 1998 at just eighteen years old when she began working in the Presentence Division of the Maricopa County Adult Probation Department while attending college at Arizona State University. During this time, Beth went to the Maricopa County jails where she interviewed hundreds of inmates awaiting sentencing for felony offenses ranging from drug sales, kidnapping, manslaughter, murder, and sexual crimes. After graduating from college with a B.A. in Sociology, she became an Adult Probation Officer where she supervised a caseload of sexual offenders on probation for child molestation, rape, voyeurism, and other sexual offenses. She supervised this caseload for nearly five years before promoting to management in 2009. Beth was a supervisor in the Presentence Division for fifteen months before transferring to a sex offender unit where she spent thirteen years managing a team of Intensive and Standard Officers who supervised sexual offenders. During her time in this role, she has managed thousands of complex cases, expertly navigating the complexities of each. Beth has developed several pieces of training related to sex offender topics regarding supervision and treatment in collaboration with treatment providers. She managed a grant for a dynamic risk assessment and is trained on several risk assessment tools for general offenders and sexual offenders. In 2022, Beth retired from Maricopa County after nearly twenty-five years of service to start BHG Consulting Group, where she believes in taking a holistic approach to cases to make families healthier and communities safer. Beth provides consultation to attorneys, clients, and their families regarding the justice system specific to sexual offenses and provides in-depth, quality mitigation reports to the Court on all types of criminal cases. Beth also collaborates with treatment providers as well to ensure clients have access to the most appropriate treatment for their specific situation.
Beth is a native of Maricopa County, Arizona where she resides today. She has been a member of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers since 2017 and serves as a Commissioner for Governor Ducey’s Commission to Prevent Violence Against Women in Arizona. You can contact her at beth@bhgconsultinggroup.com or www.bhgconsultinggroup.com
Episode 91 - Ashley Toye
Ashley is an author, recipe creator, and fitness enthusiast with a master’s degree in nutrition. After being awarded a tennis scholarship in her late teens, she moved from Kelowna to the United States to start her post-secondary studies. For over a decade, she’s worked as a nutritionist in the US and Canada – offering individualized guidance and meal prep services. She takes a compassionate approach to educating others on the importance of a healthy lifestyle, and she primarily focuses on sugar awareness and flexible balanced eating strategies. Ashley currently lives in Calgary and has recently branched into a micro-influencing role on Instagram, while creating and facilitating a home fitness program. If she’s not busy in the kitchen, she’s enjoying moments with her family, husband, friends, fur babies, and nature.
The last fifteen years of her life took her on an unpredictable journey filled with darkness and shame. She neglected her own needs and suffered through PTSD, trauma, and hurtful relationships in silence. The hardships, fatigue, pain, and feeling like a societal misfit finally made sense when she discovered she was an empath. Ashley is now breaking her silence, hoping to bring awareness and comfort to those who need it.
Episode 89 - Lisa Webb
Lisa Webb is a true global citizen, having lived on four different continents and travelled to over 60 countries with her husband and two kids. She’s spent over a decade of her adult life rebuilding her community, networking, and finding sisterhood all over the world. Lisa has chronicled her journey through writing as a Canadian Expat Mom, publishing six children’s books, two anthologies, and her memoir, ‘Becoming French’.
Lisa’s global experiences have taught her the power of community, which became the foundation of her creating Wine, Women & Well-Being; where monthly events are held in 26 cities across Canada, providing a space for women to build community, connection and belonging while getting inspired alongside like-minded women.
Episode 88 - Sarah Kirkpatrick
I owned a 6-figure digital marketing company for 9 years, working with brands to create digital 'spaces' that represented who they were through their websites and social media. After battling through another case of 'burnout' I decided to close it down, change course, and follow my own motto: 'Figure out what you love to do and find a way to make money doing it. Interior design and home staging became my new career.
Women often stay in careers because the income is good but often don't feel fulfilled. Tune in to Sarah's journey on how she discovered what she was truly meant to be doing.
As an avid traveller with a goal of visiting 1 new country per year (33 and counting), I have stayed in well over 200 Airbnb in the last 10 years, all across the world. This has given me insight into what gets clicked, what gets booked, and what earns those coveted 5-star ratings. My interior decorating business is more successful in its first year than the marketing company was in its last few, and my first retail location is opening up this fall!
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