WIBC 16 is pleased to welcome Brenda Halloran!
WIBC 2016 is pleased to welcome Brenda Halloran as one of the speakers at its upcoming conference on March 9th.
A quick look at Brenda’s resume would make you think that she is impressive because she made it as a woman in a man’s world – first in a Japanese air freight forwarding company, then as a Customs and Traffic Manager with a large international Japanese Trading Company. In addition, in 2006 she topped it off by successfully running as Mayor of Waterloo against not one but two challenging, male opponents: the incumbent Mayor and a returning Mayor.
It is impressive that she made it up and through predominantly male industries. However, while the male environments in which she found herself certainly posed a number of challenges, a closer look reveals that it was women who proved to be her greatest opponents.
Says Brenda, “I have found and have personally experienced the frustration of not having the support of women throughout my career. Especially when I decided to run for Mayor. I had more women than men telling me I wasn’t good enough, who did I think I was, [that no one] would vote for me. It was so challenging, so difficult to understand why women were not supportive. I still see this happening and speak about it openly whenever I have the opportunity. My experience has been that if a woman wants to [rise] from the group, the group tries to bring [her] back. We don’t seem to want to encourage others, and we absolutely do need to come together and support each other.”
Brenda succeeded despite the lack of support by women and she went on to additional accomplishments: being hired by one of the members of the Dragon’s Den to be CEO of the Waterloo Innovation Network and more recently being offered a job by the same ‘Dragon’ to create a charitable foundation for him.
Come listen to Brenda as she shares what she’s learned through these experiences and why it’s so fundamentally important for women to support each other. We all think we’re supportive of other women, but are we really? Let Brenda challenge your thinking and show you how to make it through even when someone tells you it can’t be done!