The Brand is Female

Zoe Whittall is a Canadian Poet, Novelist, TV Writer, and today's guest on the podcast. Her last novel “The Best Kind of People” was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Giller Prize, and is currently being adapted for a limited series by director Sarah Polley. Zoe was also awarded a Canadian Screen Award for her work on “The Baroness von Sketch Show” in addition to contributing to Schitt's Creek. She has has now just published her new novel “The Spectacular”, a story that captures three generations of very different women, who struggle to build an authentic life in the absence of traditional family and marital structures. In her book, Zoe explores sexuality, gender, and the weight of reproductive freedoms.Listen to this episode to hear how Zoe got where she is today, the inspiration behind her books, and why stories about motherhood, womanhood and sexual & reproductive freedoms are so important and relevant today.Thank you to our partners at HarperCollins for their support of today’s episode! This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

This week, host Eva Hartling is joined by Laura Kraber, Co-Founder of Fluide, a gender-inclusive beauty start-up that offers a line of affordable, high-quality, non-toxic cosmetics. Fluide’s mission is to increase the visibility of trans, non-binary, and gender-fluid individuals while promoting a new definition of beauty. The root of this being healthy self-expression and a positive self-image. Founded by Laura and her partner Isabella Giancarlo in 2018, the Brooklyn-based brand donates a portion of sales to LGBTQ non-profits. Fluide also looks to pay tribute to the importance of safe spaces for the LGBTQ community by naming colourful lip and nail shades after queer spaces around the globe. Listen to this episode to hear why this message is so important to Laura, and what it's like to run a brand with such a cult following.This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

Courage >> comfort. This week, Maggie Hewitt joins host Eva Hartling to talk about finding purpose and doing good. Maggie is the founder of sustainable and circular fashion brand Maggie Marilyn. Having grown up on the New Zealand coast, Maggie has always had an interest in protecting our natural world. When she set out to create her own fashion line, she knew she wanted to build a company rooted in principles of circularity. For Maggie, circularity is not just a buzzword— she takes this concept the whole way, from recyclable clothing to repair services for the brand's items. Her company champions transparency and change in an industry whose harmful practices have been destroying our planet for decades. Maggie has even gone so far as to make the tough decision to forego agreements with wholesalers in favour of selling direct to consumers, in order to ensure every aspect of her supply chain would have as low an impact as possible. As a result, Maggie Marilyn has met both commercial and editorial success. Listen to this episode to find out what inspires and drives Maggie as a citizen and a business owner!This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

This week’s guest thinks plastic water bottles should be history. Nicole Doucet is the CEO and Co-Founder of Open Water, a bottled water company that uses aluminum packaging as a more sustainable alternative to single-use plastic bottles. Ten years ago, while still in university and after watching a documentary on plastic pollution, Nicole and her Co-Founder, Jess Page, were inspired to disrupt the bottled water industry with an approach that puts circularity at the forefront. As we continue to face the climate crisis and its very real impact, Nicole and her partner are raising awareness on pollution caused by single-use plastic bottled water — which is, unfortunately, still the industry standard, with the world’s leading consumer goods companies continuing to sell water bottled in harmful plastic. Listen to this episode to find out how Nicole set out to create Open Water to offer a more environmentally and health-friendly solution for drinking water.This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

This week, host Eva Hartling is joined by Misty Koefod. Alongside her wife Kristen, Missy co-founded the famed cocktail mixers and spiked seltzers brand 18.21 Bitters — which got its name from the 18th Amendment that enacted prohibition and the 21st which repealed it. Missy found her way to 18.21 after a career in hospitality, followed by a stint as an attorney, when a fight with cancer made her rethink her life’s priorities. Today, Missy and Kristin’s brand has been celebrated by bar owners, cocktail aficionados as well as International media conglomerates, from GQ, Vogue, Vanity Fair and more. 18.21 is available in 48 states, 6 countries, and counting. But what's most important is 18.21's commitment to fair practices and built on a strong purpose and values. Listen to this episode to hear about her road to 18.21, the fundraising round that just led to over $100,000 from just a dozen of investors through crowdfunding, what she really thinks about working in the hospitality/alcohol industry, and about her personal commitment to social justice and how that translates into their company's valuesThis season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

This week, host Eva Hartling is joined by Nana aba Duncan. Nana aba is a Canadian Journalist who was recently appointed as Associate Professor and the Inaugural Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies at Carleton University. You may know her from her gigs as guest host of q, an arts and culture show on CBC Radio, and As It Happens, one of the network's most popular radio titles. She has also guest-hosted CBC Toronto's leading weekday morning radio show Metro Morning, the city's afternoon radio show Here & Now, and the Canada-wide Saturday radio show Day 6. After winning the International Development and Research Centre’s international journalism award, Nana aba headed back to her birthplace of Ghana, where she reported with Ghana Broadcasting Corporation and moved on to produce human rights stories and help establish the radio division of Journalists for Human Rights. In this conversation, Eva speaks to Nana Aba about racial and gender representation in media and what improvements are needed to achieve equity in the industry — a goal she gets to tackle in her new role at Carleton University.This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

In case you missed it, this week, we’re re-airing one of our season’s most popular episodes again! Meet Koa Beck, acclaimed author of the best-selling book ‘White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to influencers and Who They Leave Behind,' published in January. Koa is the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel, previously the executive director of Vogue.com and senior features editor at Marie Claire.com. To add to her impressive resumé, in 2019, Koa was was awarded the Joan Shorenstein Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, and she published an academic paper entitled “Self-Optimization in the Face of Patriarchy: How Mainstream Women’s Media Facilitates White Feminism.” This became her jumping-off point and inspiration in writing White Feminism. In this eye-opening episode, Koa and Eva Hartling, discuss her book, and the way our society has commodified feminism and continues to systemically shut out women of colour.This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

This week, host Eva Hartling is joined by Hannah Alper, a Canadian Activist, Blogger, and Motivational Speaker who addresses issues such as the environment, anti-bullying, and social justice. Hannah writes for HuffPost, has given a TED Talk, and published a book called Momentus: Small Acts, Big Change. This would already be pretty impressive on its own, but Hannah has accomplished all this incredible work at just 18 years old. Tune in to our conversation to hear about why Hannah thinks no gesture is too small when one sets out to change the world.This episode is brought to you by GLAD and the #GLADForChange initiative. Join the movement and make a goal to collect at least 50 pieces of litter this summer in your neighbourhood. To take part in the GLAD for Change program, download the ‘One Piece a Day’ app to log the waste you have collected and see the national impact our efforts have had!This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

In case you missed it, we’re airing one of our season’s most popular episodes again! Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning journalist and author whose writing appears regularly in media around the world. Her work centres around defining what it means to be a woman in a world built by men. Her narrative skill, careful research, and humorous tone have been described by the New Yorker as "relentless and revelatory." In her book, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, Soraya uses these skills to offer a critical look at the social construction of anger and its effects on women's lives. Soraya and host Eva Hartling share an invigorating conversation about why women should be angry, the 'steps backward' we have taken when it comes to gender equity, which has now been further amplified by the impact of the pandemic, and the many other nuances of living in the 'boxes' that society has created for women.This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemale

This week, host Eva Hartling is joined by Maayan Ziv, activist, photographer and founder of AccessNow, a connected, global platform with information on accessibility. Through mapping as many places around the world as possible, and with the help of users’ reviews and feedback, AccessNow makes it possible to locate spots that offer accessible resources to visitors, clients and guests. Living with muscular dystrophy herself, Maayan knows firsthand the limitations and stigma experienced by people who live with disabilities. In this interview, Maayan shares her thoughts on a path to greater inclusivity, her views on the impact COVID has had on people with disabilities, and her hopes for our future.This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing, and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!————Visit: TBIF: thebrandisfemale.com //TD Women Entrepreneurs: td.com/ca/en/business-banking/small-business/women-in-business //Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/thebrandisfemaleFor a written transcript of this podcast interview, visit: www.thebrandisfemale.com/podcast/season4episode37