The Women in Leadership Conference brings together professional women to talk about the challenges that they face, exchange views, and learn from peers and leaders.

The event provides an invaluable opportunity to listen to industry leaders as they share best practices and insights to help women in leadership roles become more effective leaders and be on top of their game.

Join us at this in-person event. Learn, connect & reconnect, and have fun!

MELANIE DUCHOLKE (Keynote Speaker)
Chief People Officer
Agriculture Financial Services Corporation

Purpose-driven culture: Engaged people

Establishing a healthy organizational culture serves as a catalyst for enhancing team member engagement and well-being. By striking a harmonious balance between your organizational identity (purpose), actions (strategy) and collaborative approach (methods), you can positively impact overall value and engagement.

• • Journey to achieve your organizational culture
• • The impact that unified actionable values and behaviours have on culture
• • The importance of leadership within your culture

JOCELYN TALVIO
Senior Vice President, Enterprise Program Management
ATB Financial

Building your own practice of influence and becoming an inspirational person in your work, community, and life

Influence is a powerful tool and it can take years of practice to build. How you choose to be intentional on growing your own influence, being inspired, and inspiring others can be the jump-off to incredible work and amazing experiences.

• • Influence is a muscle that you stretch, grow and sometimes fail. Whether you are an individual contributor, a leader of teams that you manage, or a leader of work through others, the opportunity to use influence is always present.
• • First, be inspired. Understanding what makes others inspirational to you and how you grow your own inspiration through learning, practice, and courage.
• • The powerful duo of influence + inspiring others. Where the magic happens and being responsible with using it for greatness.

AMIE HEIL
Partner
Dentons

Embracing conflict

Confident leadership flows through the ability to have hard conversations. Avoiding difficult conversations can undermine cohesion, create stress, and result in a failure to know and appreciate the full story when tasked with making important decisions. Conflict doesn’t always have to be perceived as a problem to solve; when we work through conflict with openness and bravery, it can provide unexpected opportunities for growth and relationship building.

• • How to start difficult conversations
• • How to move these discussions forward in the moment
• • How to grow out of conflict

KATHRYN TODD
Deputy Provost (Academics)
University of Alberta

Accepting meaningful change

This is a loaded topic with three words that in themselves could be separate topics – Accepting, Meaningful and Change. Somewhat implied in a topic entitled Accepting Meaningful Change is that one only needs to accept change if it is meaningful. So let’s talk about that.

• • What is “meaningful” change?
• • To whom/what does the change need to be meaningful to be accepted?
• • What does acceptance of change look like?

ERIC DILLON
President 
General Bank of Canada

Promoting gender diversity in the workplace

Greater diversity of leadership is necessary to build high-performing organizations. The development systems in businesses today were created based on dated processes which aren’t leading to different results, both in terms of diversity of leadership groups and business performance. In this presentation, Eric Dillon will share his experience supporting, mentoring and advocating around greater diversity leadership development programming and specifically within financial services.

• • The myths around the need for more diverse leadership teams
• • The trials and tribulations of mentoring emerging business leaders
• • A few key things to think about in accessing and setting up successful mentoring relationships

MICHELLE CAMERON
Vice President and Corporate Controller
TransAlta

Confidence in achieving results

In today’s world of constant change, agility and flexibility are foundational to achieving results. For Michelle Cameron, this begins by focusing on building a culture of trust. In this session, Michelle will share her own leadership and her team’s culture journey, which began with an intentional effort on building trust through improving psychological safety, encouraging divergent opinions and cultivating self-confidence.

• • Building psychological safety on your team
• • Aligning on value, vision and goals
• • Celebrating success and learnings

SHELI MURPHY
President & Senior Operating Officer
Covenant Care and Covenant Living

Ubuntu Philosophy Approach to strategy development

Ubuntu Philosophy advocates offering a humanistic systems approach to inspiring strong strategies that matter to others, and encouraging others to fulfill their ‘calling’ and therefore, flourish in the workplace – achieving great things for others. In this presentation, Sheli Murphy will talk about:

• • Exploring the Philosophy of Ubuntu
• • Co-designing strategies
• • Reflecting and sharing

GINA GRANDY
Dean, Haskayne School of Business
University of Calgary

Leadership as a journey

Leadership offers the gift of continuous learning. As we garner more experience in leadership roles, our comfort, expertise and confidence grow, but how do we balance presenting as credible and still be vulnerable enough to remain open to learning? This session will offer insights from a ‘work in progress’ leader who loves to learn. It will explore three themes:

• • How can we stay alert to our blind spots in the journey of leadership?
• • How can we create an environment where we get the feedback we need to be our best selves from those who lead alongside us?
• • How can we continue to make space to be reflective and invest in ourselves when the demands of our roles never seem to slow?

NICOLE ELTOM
VP, Customer Success
Commercial and Public Sector
TELUS Business Solutions

Morning Chair

Nicole Eltom is an accomplished leader with over 30 years of experience focused on strategy, relationship management and business development. As the national Vice-president of Customer Success, at TELUS Business Solutions, she and her team drive retention and adoption by partnering with customers, understanding business outcomes to stimulate and surface business value, while maintaining an industry best customer experience.

Personally, Nicole enjoys an active lifestyle with her family, traveling and various sports. Nicole is passionate about coaching and empowering others. She believes providing value and giving back is an important part of a fully balanced life and volunteers in many capacities.

TAMMY HAYDEY
Controller
EPCOR

Afternoon Chair

Tammy Haydey recently celebrated her 20-year milestone with EPCOR. Over the course of her career, Tammy has held roles in a master’s rotation program, continuous improvement, operations and finance.

Tammy has a passion for coaching, personal development and improving processes. She has led a number of continuous improvement projects. Most recently, these projects have focused on evolving finance, project management, culture and strategic planning within her organization.