#Fempire

Welcome back to #FEMPIRE—if this is your first time here, hi, hello, ciao, bonjour.
I’m your host, Julia Pennella, and we’re officially kicking off Season 2.

This is the podcast where we talk power, politics, money, leadership—and all the messy, complicated, very real stuff that comes with building a life and a career on your terms.

Now more than ever, we need community. Real community.

Not transactional networking or cold Linked...

A quiet truth is haunting workplaces right now: speed has become the strategy, and the human cost keeps climbing.

In this episode, we sit down with Jen Phillips—former SVP of Global Marketing Operations at Salesforce and founder of The New Ambition—to unpack how the global race to AI, power dynamics in tech, and political instability are reshaping the very fabric of work.

Jen takes us inside the operational engine room of modern tech...

Success that burns you out isn’t success. In Part 2, we continue the conversation with strategist and execution architect Jen Phillips, founder of The New Ambition, to unpack what sustainable growth really looks like and why so many leaders get stuck in the hero habit. If you’ve ever felt like your business is thriving while you’re barely hanging on, you’ll hear a clear framework to regain control: define your success levers, set a...

Accomplished writer, advocate, and global bridge-builder Mina Sharif takes listeners on a powerful journey in this deeply moving conversation about identity, storytelling, and challenging dominant narratives.

Her new book, Your War, Our Lives: Short Stories of the Afghan Experience, wasn’t born from a publishing plan but from a deeply personal desire to preserve memories and offer counter-narratives to the conflict-driven images of ...

Dr. Daniela Vaca brings an international and revolutionary perspective to plastic surgery, transforming it from a misunderstood field often associated with vanity into a pathway for genuine empowerment and healing. 

Drawing on her clinical research at Harvard Medical School, her experience treating burn victims and breast cancer survivors in Colombia, and her specialized microsurgery training at Toronto General Hospital in Canada, s...

Hunger doesn't discriminate, but our systems often do. In 2024, Statistics Canada reported that 10 million Canadians — including 2.5 million children — lived in households that couldn’t reliably afford food. That’s families skipping meals, parents making impossible choices, and children going to school hungry in one of the world's wealthiest nations.

And while food insecurity touches every province, it cuts even deeper in ...

What does it really take to advocate for over 100 municipalities across Eastern Ontario while breaking barriers as a woman in government relations? Meredith Staveley-Watson opens up about her journey from volunteer to becoming Director of Government Relations and Policy at the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus (EOWC). 

Meredith, affectionately known as "Municipal Meredith" during her Masters of Public Administration at Queen...

What if your hands in the dirt could change your relationship with the Earth? Environmental scientist, Destiny Allen-Green invites us to reconnect with nature through a revolutionary approach to gardening that transforms how we view our place in the natural world.

Destiny Allen-Green is a proud Black Afro-Métis daughter of The Underground Railroad and the First Peoples of Turtle Island. She is an environmental scientist by trade and...

What if your hands in the dirt could change your relationship with the Earth? Environmental scientist, Destiny Allen-Green invites us to reconnect with nature through a revolutionary approach to gardening that transforms how we view our place in the natural world.

Destiny Allen-Green is a proud Black Afro-Métis daughter of The Underground Railroad and the First Peoples of Turtle Island. She is an environmental scientist by trade and...

The road to entrepreneurial success is rarely straight, especially when you're navigating industries that haven't traditionally welcomed women behind the wheel. In this episode of #FEMPIRE, I sit down with Jessi Kessel and Farah Mohammed, the innovative leaders behind Beepzz – a groundbreaking automotive recruitment and talent platform challenging industry norms.

Jessie, co-founder of Beepzz, shares how her two-decade jour...

Welcome back to #FEMPIRE. Today’s guest is a powerhouse in the nonprofit world—shaking things up with bold ideas, lived experience, and a strategic vision for change. Maria Rio is the founder of Further Together, a fundraising consulting firm she launched in 2023. But her story doesn’t start there.

Maria came to Canada as a refugee, and her early experiences with charitable services sparked a lifelong commitment to equity, community...

Quick heads up: This episode contains discussions of workplace harassment, bullying, and sexual harassment, including personal accounts. Listener discretion is advised. Please take care while listening.

Have you ever wondered why workplace harassment persists despite all the policies, training, and public commitments to change? The answer lies in power dynamics and how organizations respond when harm occurs.

Liz LeClair, founder of U...

Quick heads up: This episode contains discussions of workplace harassment, bullying, and sexual harassment, including personal accounts. Listener discretion is advised. Please take care while listening.

What does it really mean to speak truth to power—and what do you risk when you do? For Liz LeClair, founder of Uprising Consulting, the cost was becoming “unhireable” in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After coming forward and speaking out abo...

The nonprofit world has a problem. Behind the mission statements about doing good lurks a troubling reality for many Black professionals—a world where they're expected to leave their authentic selves at the door just to survive.

Nneka Allen, founder of the Empathy Agency Inc. and co-author and editor of Collecting Courage, joins us for a conversation that cuts straight to the heart of racism in supposedly progressive spaces. Wh...

Nneka Allen opens our conversation with a profound declaration: she's a "reluctant entrepreneur" whose path to founding the Empathy Agency Inc emerged from confronting the very real inequities Black people face within the charitable sector. As a proud descendant of African survivors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, her perspective comes from personal history and professional experience spanning over two decades.

What...

Ellen Kushnick pulls back the curtain on Canadian politics with rare candor, sharing insights from her years as a strategic powerhouse on Parliament Hill. From the adrenaline rush of managing swing riding campaigns to the delicate art of crafting policy that truly serves communities, her stories reveal how meaningful political change actually happens.

The conversation takes us through Ellen's most powerful career moments, inclu...

What happens when your career no longer feels safe or aligned? In this powerful and deeply honest conversation, I sit down with a nonprofit leader-turned-consultant, Esther Saehyun Lee, founder of Elevate Philanthropy Consulting who shares what led her to walk away from the traditional 9-to-5 and start her own business rooted in justice, equity, authenticity, and community.

We explore the terrifying and liberating shift to entrepren...

In this thought-provoking episode of #FEMPIRE, we dive deep into the current political climate, examining the rapid shifts happening in both Canada and the U.S. and how they're affecting the nonprofit and fundraising sectors. Our guest, Esther Saehyun Lee, shares her candid perspective that, for her, fundraising isn’t just about money—it needs to be rooted in justice and equity.

Esther dives into the real risks and fears many f...

This week on #FEMPIRE, I’m joined by Rita Rahmati, an absolute force in government relations and communications. From early days writing for the Western Gazette to leading national advocacy for Canada's building trades unions, she's been at the heart of policy and influence across multiple sectors. Now, as the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction, she's tacklin...