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What's Hot March 29, 2019

Woman of the Week: Kim Smiley

A look back at our Woman of the Week from 2013 …

Beneath its glittering surface, the jewelry world can be a pretty ugly place. From blood diamonds to ivory poachers, the history of jewelry is filled with examples of the darkness to which a person can descend in the pursuit of precious stones.

That’s why it is such a relief to see people like Kim Smiley, the creator of Sapphô by Kim Smiley, using jewelry to create a positive impact on the world and giving these baubles a reason to shine.

“The essence of my vision,” Kim says, “is to use fashion as a platform for empowering women with meaningful work.” By providing marginalized women the opportunity to work for Sapphô and earn a living wage, Kim is changing lives.

“I have always loved fine art and fashion, but my heart has always drawn me to the charitable sector. Sapphô marries my passion for social justice with my love of aesthetics and style.”

Sapphô, Kim’s jewelry collection, is named after the ancient Greek poet. Known for her lyrical odes to the beauty of women, she is a fitting namesake for a jewelry company that is aiming to use its pieces to introduce people to great poetry.

Each one-of-a-kind and handmade piece of jewelry in the collection is inspired by a poet, and comes with a poem from said poet’s collection.

“We juxtapose Nobel Laureates like Pablo Neruda with brilliant emerging poets like American Jessica McFarland, whom I met while a graduate student [at Harvard] in Boston,” Kim says.

This unique marketing scheme is one of the many ways Kim sets her company apart from the pack. However, this was not a decision made just to creatively market her collection. Kim really believes in the power of poetry.

“We’re using fashion as a portal to open people’s eyes to the beauty and wonder of poetry,” Kim explains. “Many people are turned off by poetry because they think it’s inaccessible or elitist. We want to turn them on. Who ever thought jewelry could get people to read Pablo Neruda? We’re feeling pretty optimistic.”

Drawing attention to beautiful poetry by linking it to stunning jewelry, the impact of Sapphô would be enough reason to laud Kim as a supreme businesswoman (as well as a fashionista). But she doesn’t stop there. Kim also has solid work experience in the non-profit sector.

Currently, she serves as the vice president of community capacity building at the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. This role allows her to once again use her social consciousness to make a difference, but focuses it more on the Jewish community in the GTA.

Prior to her work with the UJA Federation, she served as vice president of marketing and development for Habitat for Humanity and assistant director for the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre & Museum.

Clearly, Kim has spent much of her life striving to make the world a prettier place, both literally and metaphorically. What’s the next step for her?

“I’m joking with friends that maybe I should start a modest poetry library where people can check out books and try on jewelry,” she says.

All joking aside, such an endeavour would be a natural fit for a woman who has so adeptly combined the worlds of charity, literacy and jewelry.

*** Kim Smiley is doing even greater things to find out what she is up to now go to: https://www.kimsmiley.com/

Business April 13, 2018

Tanya Ramond, aerospace engineer and BridgeSat leader, talks focus, balance and equality

I had the chance to speak to a truly remarkable woman. Her name is Tanya Ramond and she is an aerospace engineer. Currently she works at BridgeSat as the Director of Product Development and prior to this she had worked with big companies like NASA and York Space.

Initially I thought she would be an intimidating figure to talk with but that wasn’t the case at all. She is actually extremely friendly, and thoughtful. She spoke with purpose, thinking carefully about the answers she was giving to my questions in our discussion.

Tanya’s main focus is on engineering and science but she has a great interest in business and marketing, which is why she chose to step out and join BridgeSat. She is in a leadership role and is a member of the company which focuses on connecting satellites from space to the ground while meeting the demand for big data collection from low Earth orbit.

She spent 10 years in aerospace engineering at large companies, but knew that she wanted to expand into development and marketing.

“I think that I was ready to just go for something different. I’ve worked at a fairly large established aerospace company…but I think at that point my interest in not just engineering but also the business, was coming to life.”

Tanya completed her MBA, and now uses these relative skills in her role at BridgeSat. Ramond has her sights set on taking control by making an impact and pioneering development and new technologies with her team. She shares that this is what BridgeSat and herself will focus on from this point.

Tanya has achieved great success over the years , but the roles she has held, have also come with great challenges.

She is often the lone woman in a room filled with men. Tanya is open and explained that while her team came up with groundbreaking technologies and products, as the only woman often in the group, she sometimes feels like an outsider and is treated differently.

“There’s this layer of blatant sexism. Past that is a deeper layer that is a lot harder to articulate,” she said

When other women are present, Ramond encourages them to voice their opinions and mentors female co-workers to “chime in and to not be made to feel intimidated.”

Tanya spoke with me about how most of the challenges she has had come down to being a woman in a workplace filled with men. She knows there is a need for change and that it takes each one of us to step forward and explain what is and isn’t acceptable- as many are doing now that the #MeToo movement is sweeping the globe. Gender disparity must be driven out of the workplace and like many women, she wonders if she has the power to change the current environment.

Tanya agrees that “awareness is of most importance” and that “just the common acceptance that [these actions are] not OK” is a step in the right direction toward change.

It would be wonderful to have the power to make that change instantly happen, but many more hurdles need to be cleared. I asked Tanya what super power she would most want to have and her response is what you might think an aerospace engineer would select-the power to fly. “If I were flying the plane, I’d do better,” she said.

As I think back to my interview with her I realize that Tanya is a strong, brilliant woman, she is a leader in her field and in her own way she soared beyond the limited structure of a male-dominated industry.

For more about the remarkable work that Tanya Ramond and BridgeSat do, go to http://www.bridgesatinc.com/

#TOpoli February 23, 2016

Woman of the Week: Ana Bailão

Ana Bailão moved to Canada, specifically to the Davenport area in Toronto, from Portugal at the age of 15 — and she hasn’t left. In fact, she now represents the ward as a city councilor.

“It’s a part of the city that feels like home,” she said during an interview at city hall.

Her office is tidy and clean, with the perfect eastern view to capture the sunlight. Her desk, however, is full of papers, reports, and documents in file folders —organization is key when you’ve got one of the largest files in the city to date: affordable housing. While the conversation moves from her teenage interests to her current responsibilities within city politics, Bailão speaks with poise and passion. She gets excited about the possibility of change, especially in her own neighbourhood.

“I know what the community has gone through. At the same time, I was like so many that worked in the neighbourhood: I had family. I was a young professional. I could relate to both,” she said. “People are always very scared of gentrification and I always say changes happen. It’s how you manage it that makes the difference.”

Bailão didn’t always want to go into politics. While studying sociology and European studies at the University of Toronto, her plan was to pursue social work. “Sociology was really my passion,” she said. “I always felt very interested in how things affect society: how one area of society has such an impact on another and how you are able to affect change.”

It wasn’t until her local councillor took notice of the work she was doing within the community and invited her to participate in a project that Bailão considered jumping into the political realm.

“At first I said no, but then I thought – most of my classes are at night, maybe I can coordinate this. I called them back and said I could do it if he accommodated my school schedule. I got started as a part-time and it turned into a full-time five-year position. I fell in love with the work you can have at city hall.”

Since then, Bailão has been focused on public service. When she lost the municipal election in 2003, she fell back on the private sector, working with banks and IT healthcare, always in a marketing or communications role. “But, I always kept involved in local organizations, because there was a need to come back to other types of work.”

When the opportunity presented itself in 2010, she ran for office a second time and won. In her first term she was asked to chair the Affordable Housing Committee and when she was re-elected in 2014, Bailão was offered the position as Toronto’s Housing Advocate. Since then, she has been fighting for a better understanding of what affordable housing means for the city, something she says has improved in the last few years.

“I think what we’ve been able to get is more attention to the issue, and I’m happy to say that,” said Bailão. “I’m happy to see the three levels of government talking about this issue.”

Housing is becoming a large file at city hall, with Mayor John Tory’s Task Force on Toronto Community Housing included in the 2016 budget. The Task Force spoke with over 1,000 tenants and community members, 100 different stakeholder groups, officials from the city, province, and federal governments, as well as international housing experts, and made 29 recommendations to improve and strengthen the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC).

“I think that it’s bold,” said Bailão. “It goes outside the typical recommendations. For me, what’s really exciting is this concept of using TCHC to strengthen our non-profit housing sector.”

Bailão has been an advocate for the merging of the private and public sectors to aide affordable housing. In Toronto, she said, we have the second largest landlord in North America and the units are based on an average income of $15,000. “That’s not healthy financially for the corporation, but also socially.”

Her suggestion: let not-for-profits and the private sector help.

“Once the buildings are repaired, it’s about more than the bricks. It’s about the people who live there and so how do we turn into a more resident-friendly and resident-focus approach. The non-profit sector can really help us with that.”

Her hope over the next year is that the city focuses on implementation. What will make this new Task Force different from the many reports already presented to council will be the results.

“The devil is always in the details,” she said. “Let’s hope we can do something substantially different from what has happened before.”

Suffice to say, Bailão has a lot of work to do. So much so that she finds it difficult to make time for herself, a fact that is reiterated by the pile of unread books she bought around Christmas. She does do a little bit of travelling, mostly to visit family and friends in Portugal. She started running in the summer and has continued it during the winter.