Melanie Ewan is a world traveler, a passionate advocate for women’s issues, and the co-founder of award-winning Volition Advisors, a Canadian company dedicated to helping fledgling start-ups polish their pitches, develop funding, marketing, and sales strategies, and build overall business resiliency. She is also the lead author of the Discovery Foundation BC Gender Equity Report: A Study of Women in Tech published by Women in Tech World. Hear how she maintains personal mental and emotional health while raising up the voices of the unheard and underheard in society.
Originally published Dec 23, 2018
Transcript link (uncorrected machine translation)
Melanie Ewan is a world traveler, a passionate advocate for women’s issues, and the co-founder of award-winning Volition Advisors, a Canadian company dedicated to helping fledgling start-ups polish their pitches, develop funding, marketing, and sales strategies, and build overall business resiliency. She is also the lead author of the Discovery Foundation BC Gender Equity Report: A Study of Women in Tech published by Women in Tech World. Hear how she maintains personal mental and emotional health while raising up the voices of the unheard and underheard in society.
Discovery Foundation BC Equity Report: A Study of Women in Tech
[00:00:09] Welcome back to the I Am Virago podcast, where we get real about the struggle, drop the occasional F-bomb, and hear how amazing Virago women imperfectly navigate the world around them.
[00:00:20] I was thrilled to meet Melanie Ewan. while participating in the Women in Tech, got in Amsterdam last October. During a break in the action, we got together to discuss
her work as the co-founder of the award winning Felician Partners, a startup advisory
service. Her driving passion to raise up the unheard and under heard voices in society.
How she maintains personal, mental and emotional health. Why? To say yes to
challenges that frighten you.
[00:00:48] So grab that cup of ambition and let's get started.
[00:00:52] Hello. We are live at the Witte Regatta in Amsterdam and I have Melanie
Ewan with me. Melanie. Please introduce yourself.
[00:01:02] Thanks so much for having me here, Janice. First of all, I'm really excited to
be at the regatta in Amsterdam. So I come from Vancouver, Canada, actually moving to
Spain this week. But I'm here in Amsterdam getting to know the community. And so how
I pay the bills is two different ways. So I put on events and I also advising services for
particularly early stage entrepreneurs. So whether people are looking for grant funding,
whether they are trying to figure out their pitch and presentation for investors or
whoever, they're trying to gain trust and time from some form of investment. Everyone
has any some kind of investment that they need. I work with those people to gain what
they need to catalyze their business for a two seed round or the next level, whatever
that happens to look like for them. And a lot of it is working through. What does your
really, really weightless look like? What does your passion look like? What is this
project? What is the next best thing for you? And then let's work together to find if I can
help you with that or if I know someone in my network who can help you with that. So
that's one really big part of what I do.
[00:02:06] That's with my company I co-founded in Vancouver called Volition. And then
the other way that I pay the bills is I'm a freelance writer and my dream is to be able to
write a book one day and I'm still working on that and needed for that on my challenges
list for myself. But right now, I work for a couple of different agencies in Canada working
on ghost writing and also other kind of articles. For instance, Amazon. And then what
my passion is. So it aligns well with how I also pay the bills. I find I always have to align
those two in my life. And my passion is to work particularly with people who are or feel
unheard or under heard and ensure that their voices do get heard. And over my lifetime,
that's been working in poverty reduction. It's meant working in environmental sciences.
I'm really, really fascinated in rural entrepreneurship as well. That's kind of a new area
I'm interested in. And then working with youth, working with kind of anyone who's in that
unheard and underserved space and ensuring that their dream and their voice gets
heard and gets to where they want it to be. That next up.
[00:03:07] That is bold work. Yes, good work. And working with that depth and breadth
of community. I imagine it's very taxing on your soul. How did you remain so positive
and and and energetic?
[00:03:27] Well, I don't always remain so positive and energetic. It really depends on the
day that you happened to catch me. It depends on what my project has been during
those months or year. The past month or year and a half has been particularly difficult
for me. I took on a large research project in Canada where we talked to about a
thousand women and men in the tech industry across Canada for 10 weeks. And I was
in an RV 1998 Winnebago warrior there. It was literally leaking at the seams are falling
apart at the seams.
[00:03:53] And it was talking to these people about what were they experiencing the
tech industry and what successes had they had, what challenges, what were ideas that
they weren't put into place to actively change. And because I was facilitating these
conversations, I was taking in a lot of these stories and I was is triggering things in me
that I didn't realize was triggering. And because I was facilitating an event every day
with my colleagues. None of us had time to really let any of us think and process it and
do anything healthy with it for ourselves. So I got home last year, last November, and it
took me about two months of having to not put on events and having to not be in front of
people and having to sit in knowing that I was not in a good place and verbalizing that.
So when you ask was a tool that I have, I talked to my partner, I talked to my friends
and I said, this is where I'm at. I don't even know what's going on for me right now. So I
need to have a couple of months of breathing space and just focus on my work.
[00:04:49] And that's all just you rather than just cramming it through and trying to
ignore it. It sounds like you stopped and you took inventory and. Said something's not
right. Absolutely. Yes. That's courageous.
[00:05:04] It's something that's really important to me. Something I've worked on for a
decade or so. I did my yoga teacher training in 2011, and that also was because of a
lifelong journey of trying to understand how to self assess where I'm at. And and then I
wanted tools to be able to address the situation. So the beginning of twenty eighteen, I
did something called the twelve minute wellness ad that I created in my mind, which
was 30 minutes of meditation, three minutes of stretching, three minutes of exercise and
three minutes of journaling. And I found also with journaling, if you start to journal.
That's the hardest steps that actually turn into 20 minutes, 30 minutes of journaling.
Nice. And this was such a beautiful way for me to refocus, get my thoughts on paper. I
was actually just reading an article today that was about the power of journaling and
how it allows you to take those feelings that you're having put them on paper so that
they're not coming out in your life in ways that you don't expect and that they're that
you're able to have the introspection and look over the last month of, oh, this is what I
was feeling. And these are the patterns that I'm seeing. And so this is a practice that I've
gone out of. And I really want to get back in to because, again, I started the year that
way and then life got in the way.
[00:06:17] We always do this, don't we? We know the tools that work for us. And we get
out of those habits because life happens, exciting things happen, opportunities come
up. Coming to Amsterdam, for instance, moving to a whole new continent comes up and
that's exciting and big and it takes all of our energy and concentration. And then your
body starts to break down again. So my practice is to be as self-aware as possible,
have my husband also. He is a really great sounding board for me. He's great at saying,
let's just sit down and have some tea and let's talk about this, because he knows when
I'm starting to get to a place where I'm not paying attention to my own health and
wellness. So it has been a really difficult year and a half. And the way I stay positive,
even in those moments where I'm feeling really drained, is also because I am doing
something I'm passionate about. I'm doing something that drives me. And even when I
am tired, someone will say something in a meeting or in a conversation that sparks me
and says, yes, this is why I'm doing this. And I've been in other jobs where I didn't have
that for about 10 years. I didn't have that spark of, yes, this is why I'm doing it. This is a
great reminder. So I take care of myself. But yes, this is what keeps me positive.
[00:07:26] So you did this. How many weeks of the ten weeks? Ten weeks. What were
the biggest takeaways?
[00:07:34] I came from working in government for ten years and then I did health
sciences my degree and then came into the tech community of Vía, the startup
community. So hearing these stories, I just hadn't realized how much was going on in
what people perceived to be a country, that everything's great and everyone's really
pleasant and we're all very polite and things are good and it's just not the case in so
many places. So there was particularly shocking stories where around young woman
and girls who go to their guidance counselors in high school and say, I'd really like to go
into a STEM field. And they say, oh, no, dear, that's not for you. That's too difficult. You
should go into English and the amount of times a story came up across and it was
shocking. Yes, I know it's physically harmful to my heart. And I think another thing that
maybe isn't shocking, but I'm really glad that it was affirmed was that we across
geographic regions were experiencing the same things. I've also found that in talking
people here in Amsterdam talking people in Norway and England that we're all
experiencing as women, similar barriers and successes, challenges, all of these words.
We're experiencing all of these in similar ways, at different points in our career, at
different points, depending on the demographics of the region and the economics of the
region. We're kind of at different spaces along the challenges spectrum and in some
places, the bias that we're seeing of a lot more overt in other places, particularly larger
tech hubs. It's a lot more hidden, but it's still there. Like the same things are happening
in these places, but at different levels on the spectrum.
[00:09:02] So you've you've found that there are similarities in the challenges that are
faced. Did you find that there's similarities in approaches in trying to address these
challenges?
[00:09:11] We're talking a lot of action plans and pretty much everywhere we went,
people said we need to come at this from a very young age. So this needs to be a
generational lens. So these programs that are place that are amazing for 16 year olds
and above. Fantastic. Let's keep doing that. But we need to go younger and we need to
be talking about gender roles in a different way at a young age. So education was by far
and away the piece that came up over and over again, which is not shocking, but there
were some interesting ideas that came up. And then role models is something that is
big. And the interesting thing about that was some areas where they literally said, I do
not see any role models in my community. There are other areas that said I do see
them, but there's not enough. We don't have that 20 percent or 30 percent critical mass.
Yet for it to be making a difference, there are bigger role models that we see are all
men. So kind of dependent on how not even how small or large the city was, but just
who was in that space. So, for instance, in Kamloops, in British Columbia, there are
some powerhouse women in tech and they are amazing and they're amazing rollout's.
Everybody knows their nginx is a small community relative to Vancouver, Toronto. And
they know their names and they can reach out and go for coffee with these people. And
that's so wonderful. And they're connected. So that was really the difference we saw is
that every community seemed to have at least a couple of role models, but they maybe
didn't feel connected to them, didn't feel like they could reach out to them. They had no
idea who was even in their space.
[00:10:39] Maybe they are a library technician and they didn't look into like the fintech
space. So getting these people together that are across fields that are across ages,
across stage of their career. But there are potential formal role models everywhere. And
I think it's about having that conversation and connecting the people there. So, yes,
education role models were big. Having formal mentorship programs in place, a lot of
places said we have informal ones, but finding a really solid way to even build a formal
mentorship program is still something that I think a lot of people are struggling with. And
dude, any advice for anyone? Yes. That's a great question. No, I do not. Not
particularly. It's something that I want to look into. I've been hearing about programs
where how do we open the doors? I think this just happened in D.C., actually, I'm
recalling a headline I saw this morning where they opened their doors to a hundred high
school girls to come in. And I think having these kinds of like interesting mentorship
programs where you have someone from business working with someone who is in
school or you have someone in one field of business working with another area, I think if
we can start thinking outside the box room internship programs and how do we create
mentorship along the entire range of your career. So it is mentorship for high school
students, mentorship for university, mentorship for when you first get into the workplace
mentorship or when you're re-entering the workforce. If you want to re-enter, there's an
interesting point in time. It's 35 to 55 year old segment that we learned. There's this
revival of what you often experience when you're 20, where you have all these ideas
and you want to create something new.
[00:12:18] So this is revival of this these women who are saying, OK, I've now got to this
age where I don't care what anyone thinks and I know what I'm passionate about. I
know who I am. And I'm going to talk about it. And so I want to create a business or I
want to be an intimate partner and create something in my company and something to
support. Those women who are just like that is such a huge asset. And it's not being
taken advantage whatsoever.
[00:12:39] I wish I wish the listeners could see you right now. You are so animated and
excited about it.
[00:12:46] And it's it's amazing to see the passion that you bring to this. You have found
your true calling. You have found the work that you want to be doing. Which leads me to
is there a professional or personal success that you'd like to tell us that's happened
recently?
[00:13:02] Yes. I mean, there's a couple, but the I was going talk about how coming
here to Amsterdam as a huge professional success for me. But as you ask that, the one
that came to mind was actually just in just earlier this year, my company volition, we
won Entrepreneur Support Award from Star Canada. Congratulations. Yes, thank you.
And that was huge because we had spent at that point in two and a half years building
this community in Vancouver around pitch nights and really focusing on education and
community, creating really high quality events where entrepreneurs can come and they
can not only practice their pitch in the safe community with their peers, but they're also
going to get feedback to increase their chances of success in their investor
conversations. And investors in Vancouver said since the pitch nights have started,
they've seen a really high, different nice. So nice work. Absolutely. Thank you so much.
And it was just so amazing to get this award that kind of validated all the extremely hard
work that had gone into building this community.
[00:14:04] Because we, you know, to go high, then you must balance it out and go low.
Is there a professional or personal struggle you'd want to share with us?
[00:14:12] The one that has been standing up to me and the reason is top of mind right
now is because we're at the ricotta and we've been talking about some difficult subjects,
including the whole when women turn on each other piece. So this one's top of mind
from you right now. I had led a fairly privileged existence in my work and career in that
when I was in the government, all of my superiors were women. And I always had really
fantastic support in the mentoring, the startup Paul, my my now business partner. He is
such a supportive man as well who's really sponsored me and really always ensured I
was getting all the support I needed and felt supported. And so I really had an
experience, this one woman turn on each other piece until I actually entered the
advocacy space for women in tech. Really? I know. Yes. And so that was really difficult.
Because I didn't expect it. I was also, as I mentioned, I come from a non-technical
background, so I was already feeling a bit imposter syndrome. Me and I started to reach
out to people in the way that I do, where I'm trying to build connections and
partnerships. And I'm thinking, let's collaborate, let's work together. Genuinely not.
There was just no I didn't have any ill intention in these reach outs whatsoever.
[00:15:19] And I had someone come back to me and say, you don't have a technical
background. How dare you? And what right do you have to be facilitating these
conversations with women in tech? So this really cut deep for me. And I actually had a
moment of what am I doing here? And it really made me have to look at my entire life
history up to that moment and who I was and why I was passionate. I sat down and I
wrote out, I am passionate about working with women in tech because and then I
started writing to convince myself that this was something that, yes, I have a right to be
here and I care so deeply about working with the unheard and the understood people in
general. And I got to that space of, yes, this is where I want to be and owned it. And I
found a way to own it. And it came back to that like we need the diversity roundtable.
We need to support each other. We need to have the people who are the developers
sitting with people who are the marketers and the salespeople and all these different
things is going to be uncomfortable at times. And we've different ways of thinking about
things at times, but we need to have those different perspectives around the table.
[00:16:28] Absolutely. And what's what's what's amazing about your story is that you
had some can and really burst your bubble, come in and jump in and try to decimate
what you were trying to do with really good intention. And so you took a step back and
you considered what you were doing and you found a way to keep moving forward.
Yeah, but what's what what kills me is how many people that we just stopped in their
tracks. Yes. And they wouldn't do that. And how many things have we not seen evolve
into the world because of that?
[00:17:02] So and we heard that on the tour. Woman say it only took one thing, one
person saying one thing to make me leave the tech industry. And it would be as little as
I walked into my first computer science class. And Boy turned to me and said, What are
you doing here? You don't know how to play games. You've been playing games your
whole life. You don't belong in tech. And so she turned around and walked away as just
one person saying one thing as well.
[00:17:31] And it takes we can get a whole string of positive feedback and then we get
one piece of constructive feedback. And it's like it negates all the positive feedback we
get. And, you know, I if there was a way to fix that, I think we would be millionaires. We
could figure it out. So if that were to happen to somebody here listening, what would be
your advice to them? Actually, you said something yesterday, Janice, that was really
great.
[00:17:58] That was around. I'm curious as to the intent of what you meant by your
comment and come at it from a curiosity and try to have that dialogue if like in my case,
that dialogue is just not going to happen. I think it's really important for us to have
people in our network that we know we can talk to, that you can go back to and say this
is what happened, because I can almost guarantee that at least one person in your tribe
has experienced something similar. And that's really the beauty of having these
community conversations and building these networks in these connections is that
we've dealt with so many similar things. And we can help you, your sounding board. We
can help talking through what is the language you want to use around this? What is the
next step you want to take? Because it's so contextual and there's no way that I can
provide an answer right now that's going to make sense for you in that moment. Aside
from take a deep breath, I guess as a piece of it, I just take a deep breath. No matter
what you want to do in that moment, that person take a really deep breath and think,
okay, I'm not going to say anything. And that will sometimes defuse what you're feeling
inside a little bit. Enough to get home or get off that that Skype call or whatever it
happens to be out of that forum, off of that Facebook chat Situation Room.
[00:19:06] Don't send the e-mail. Give us an e-mail.
[00:19:08] And that's the other thing is actually I've gotten a habit of rewriting emails
multiple times if it's something that I'm feeling very charged up and passionate about.
But that's also taken a certain amount of awareness that I sometimes react to things
and then literally 10 minutes later will wish that I did it a little bit differently. So I will now
write something and I will leave for an hour and I'll go on a walk or have a cup of tea,
whatever happens to be your thing, glass of red wine, whatever it is. And then I'll come
back to it and see if I still feel the same way.
[00:19:36] That is a great deal of self-awareness on your part. And I think building that
self awareness is one of the most important things that as individuals we can do to help
us get through the world. So this is the I am Virago podcasts. And so, Melanie, what
makes you a farrago?
[00:19:58] I'm very much known for saying. What I feel, I can't even not be authentic. I
own my space and it has. This is not something I was born with or rolled out of bed with.
Doing this has taken a lot of self reflection, a lot of work, like we're talking like 13 years
of me realizing when I was still a teenager that I needed to change some things about
myself because I had such grand ideas and so many big things I wanted to do. And I,
for instance, has terrified of public speaking as like I want to use the world how I can do
that without, you know, talk to people. So I started putting myself in situations where I
had to talk in front people constantly. It was terrifying. And so now what that's allowed
me to do, though, is that I am confident in my voice I will speak up. I love the introvert
way of being a leader as well. I've now nurtured the part that speaks up and is bold and
speaks out for people. And I will address something in a space if I don't feel like it's
right. My mom, you say I have the Napoleon complex. I'm quite short, but I seem to
think that I am really, really large and I can kind of take on anything. And I think that's
just something that just noted that there are people here to support you. Reach out to
me on LinkedIn. If you have something that you really want to do and you have that fear
in your guide, which probably means that you should do it, say yes first and then go
through all the emotions of terror, of being terrified and then make a plan and then do it.
[00:21:26] Yes, absolutely. And your LinkedIn address is on the podcast page. So they'll
be able to find that fantastic.
[00:21:33] So we're coming to a close. I know, said Panda. What question do you wish I
would have asked you? That I didn't. What are you excited to do next? OK, Melanie,
what are you excited to do next?
[00:21:47] Well, I'm really excited to go to space again. I'm the reason I'm excited is
because when I went across Canada on this tour, I'd never been going to professional
kind of situations when I was traveling.
[00:21:59] So I'd be going, you know, being tourist, eating a lot food and love food. But I
wasn't going to conferences. I was not talking professionals. So doing that in a different
way made me realize all these different professional worlds out there and that I could
learn from these started communities, from these women in tech community. So I was
immediately excited by the fact that I had this opportunity to go to Europe and meet new
people, meet new communities, be terrified again. I really like to put myself in this, the
space of being terrified. It's exhausting, but I think it's it's something that is just so
important to me to constantly be challenging myself and constantly be learning and to
not have a moment. I really wish I'd done.
[00:22:40] No regrets. Yes. Fantastic. Well, perhaps we can check in with you in about a
year and see how things are going.
[00:22:46] Where in the world is Melanie you?
[00:22:48] Very nice. Well, Emily, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for taking
time out from the regatta to talk to us. And I wish you a lot of luck in Madrid. Thank you
so much.
[00:23:02] Thank you, my Viragos, for listening to the I Am Virago podcast. Check out new episodes every Tuesday. If you have ideas or suggestions of whom you'd like to hear from on this podcast, go to IAmVirago.com and leave a message. And remember, you are Virago.