Unmuted: From Pop Star to Powerhouse Founder
“Promise me you’ll come back through butterflies.”
Anna Sinclair sat beside her father, squeezing his hand in his hospital room. She reached for a tissue from the box resting on the table beside him. A box splashed in bright butterfly print. It would now be their symbol.
As stage 4 lung cancer claimed his final breaths, it was how she wanted to remember him. In that moment, her journey from rising pop star to founder to award-winning agency CEO finally made sense.
Because that butterfly also described her own life: a series of metamorphoses, each demanding she fall apart before she could become something stronger.
What $10,000 Can’t Buy
BY JACKELYN GILL
Managing Editor, WXN Media
Congratulations—you’ve just received a $10,000 grant!
Getting to this stage was hard. You built the business. You made the pitch. You’ve fought for every hard-earned and hard-won dollar. You’ve even made plans for how to spend it.
But what actually happens two days from now? Two months? Two years?
For women business owners like Liz Cripps, founder of WACADS Group, those answers aren’t always so clear.
The cash investment she received from the BMO For Women Celebrating Women Grant in 2024 was a welcome infusion. But it wouldn’t solve the credibility roadblocks she faced scaling her smart automation technology business beyond narrowly scoped SMB projects into larger-scale, complex contracts with enterprise-sized clients.
That ambition required more.
She didn’t get even. She got building
Lesley Steele had done everything they asked.
She wanted into the club—never mind that it was only men. They had the purchasing power and the education opportunities. It was exactly the kind of group a young, independent veterinary clinic owner needed to be part of.
The first time she knocked on their door, the threshold for entry was a million dollars in sales. “I was probably at $300,000 or $400,000,” she says, “but I was confident I could do it.”
When she got there, she knocked again. They moved the line. A million and a half. She hired another vet, stretched the business, and hit the target a second time.
Behind the perfect bite: A culinary journey with Chef Nuit Regular
Behind the Perfect Bite: A Culinary Journey With Chef Nuit Regular
When you sit at a table in one of my restaurants and order the Gaeng Phed Moo—my Red Curry Pork—you’re in for a treat.
In my home, Gaeng Phed Moo goes by a different name: “Birthday Curry.” I learned to make it the same way I learned most dishes—alongside my mother in the kitchen. She worked all day in the rice fields, growing vegetables, and serving her food at markets and cafeterias. She came home tired. As a child, I hated cooking, so much so that I eventually picked a different career path in nursing. But even then, every evening, my little hands helped her anyway. My love for her was so great that I would endure anything.