Women’s Health Collective Canada With Cally Wesson, Founding Member & Board Director

In a world that often overlooks women’s health needs, we must advocate for a future where women’s health is prioritized and celebrated. Christoph Clodius is joined by Cally Wesson, BC Women’s Health Foundation President & CEO and Women’s Health Collective Canada Founding Member & Board Director. They discuss the initiative’s evolution, from its inception to its current role in amplifying the visibility and funding of crucial research. Cally highlights the Collective’s national collaboration, upcoming challenges and opportunities, and the new executive director’s chance to leverage existing momentum for meaningful progress. Tune in to learn about this exciting movement and the passionate people behind it.

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Women’s Health Collective Canada With Cally Wesson, Founding Member & Board Director

Women’s Health Collective Canada

Welcome to another Opportunity Spotlight episode. I’m delighted to be joined by Cally Wesson. Cally is a longtime friend of the Discovery Group, and she is the President and CEO of the BC Women’s Health Foundation here in Vancouver. She’s also the founding member and a board member of Women’s Health Collective Canada, which is a bit more germane, I suppose, for our conversation.

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Welcome, Cally.

Thanks. I’m so excited to be here and talk about the new opportunity. It’s a great one, so thanks. 

We’re here to talk about that matter and the executive director role at Women’s Health Collective Canada. Without further ado, let’s launch in. For those people who don’t know much about Women’s Health Collective, why don’t you tell us a bit about it? 

Women’s Health Collective is a cool new charity that was set up a few years ago to connect women’s health research across Canada but also the foundations and fundraising for women’s health research. My predecessor and others saw this opportunity to connect with corporate Canada and elevate the need for funding for women’s health research. It’s a tremendous opportunity and a very cool initiative.

For the record, your partner members, maybe tell me a bit more about them. You’ve got national representation and more partners coming on the way. You have partner members. I want to make sure I get the right lingo.

Members are partners, right?

Yeah.

We have members who are partners. The founding members were our foundation, Lois Hole Hospital in Edmonton, and Toronto College Hospital Foundation in Toronto. We’ve been the three pushing the Women’s Health Collective together. IWK from the Maritimes has joined. We have coast-to-coast representation and hope to bring on a few other members or another member in the coming years.

It’s really exciting to see. It’s powerful coming together to amplify women’s health. Women’s health for so long has been really overlooked. It has. Forming Women’s Health Collective Canada gives us that national profile that allows us to have a different conversation with corporates. It allows us to have different conversations with the community. It allows us to elevate the good work that’s not only happening right here in Vancouver at the Women’s Health Research Institute but also across Canada.

It’s been cool too because as we were forming Women’s Health Collective Canada, the research institutes formed something called PWER. Don’t ask me to draw out that acronym, but you can understand this PWR and research collaboration. That network is great because we have so many leaders in women’s health research. In BC, for example, we’ve led cervical cancer, self-collection, free contraception, and a lot of infectious disease work. There’s amazing stuff happening here in Vancouver. My colleagues in Edmonton, Toronto, and the Maritimes could probably tell you amazing things as well. The time is now for women’s health research. 

It does seem self-evident in so many ways. It has been well-documented, in particular, how inequitable health research helped health treatment in so many of those areas that you mentioned has been. The pendulum is really swinging the other way. The benefit is obvious in so many ways. The benefit of the network is great, but corporations and national organizations that want to be a part of this movement want to reflect what it is that they’re doing in their CSR mandates in their corporate philanthropy. They want that venue and that vehicle as well. Maybe talk to me about how the collective has been received from corporate Canada’s perspective. 

We have already been well-received by corporate Canada. We have an amazing partnership with Shoppers Drug Mart. We’re so grateful to them because they’ve allowed the collective to grow with them and the partnership to grow with them. There are so many opportunities. Each foundation has been managing collective relationships off the side of their desk. There are so many opportunities that it’s almost like we’re desperate at this moment to get an executive director in who wants to move some of these relationships forward.

We already have a great marketing partnership with ANC. We have a great social media presence. We have all those things that already exist. Coming into a role like this wouldn’t be creating something, a new marketing plan, etc. You can build on what’s already happening and connect with the corporate community. It’s interesting because even here in Vancouver, we’ll be having conversations with our own partners and they’re like, “Women’s Health Collective, that’s a whole other way. Yeah. Let’s get someone in to help us manage those relationships.”

Achievements Of The Collective

It’s the saying that the sum is greater than the whole other parts fundamentally. You mentioned it’s a young group since 2019. As a collective, what are you most proud of having achieved so far? You have moved the needle so significantly already but there’s still so much to be done. Tell me a bit more about that foundation that you’re building on. You’ve mentioned a few things.

There are a few things we’re super proud of. One, we are officially our own charity.

Congratulations.

That’s been a really great movement forward. That’s exciting. The collective also has raised its first $1 million, which is huge. From a personal sense, it’s a great network of like-minded individuals. Not only is it its own charity, but through the partnership with Lois Hole and Toronto Women’s College Hospital Foundation, this also has been an opportunity for us all to collaborate and learn from each other too. There’s a benefit to that.

Each foundation is so strong. You’re bringing the knowledge and expertise and bringing it together. We all learn from each other. We’re so excited that IWK is joining too because it’s a whole other perspective. Coming together, if you were to be the successful candidate to step into that role, it would be a unique opportunity because you’re getting the best of everyone and the ability to elevate women’s health.

Each foundation is so strong, and by bringing our knowledge and expertise together, we all learn from each other. Click To Tweet

Collaboration Within The Collective

Tell me more about that collaboration because, from a functional work, I’ve seen the three of you interact. That’s yourself, Charlene from Alberta Women’s, which you’ve called Lois Hole but I know it’s Alberta Women’s as well, so those names are somewhat synonymous for that matter, and Chaim from Women’s College Hospital Foundation as well. How do you work as a collective at that board level? You’ve alluded to how the staff members work together because they’re often holding those corporate partnerships too. There are a few layers of interaction there. 

From the leadership, it’s really us working to set the vision and move things forward. From a team perspective, you have our marketing teams working with our partner, ANC, to take what each foundation is doing and move that into the great research that we’re doing and we’re promoting, making sure that’s getting that national attention. From the corporate partnership side especially, the team is collaborating on moving some of those relationships forward. We all have prospects that we suggest. We all have been working on relationships together.

I’m certain that when the new person comes in, they’ll have that support to amplify and move forward. It’s great too. Alberta, Toronto, and us too, came up with a stewardship report. We have some of those templates already in place. You see each foundation take a lead in something that they’re really good at and help the collective move forward. That’s awesome.

Executive Director Role

You’ve done so much as a collective moving the organization forward doing it. You’ve used the off-the-side-of-your-desk analogy before. I don’t want to overstate that necessarily because you have achieved so much, but the opportunity is here. You’re at a point where you can’t do that anymore, so you’ve created this role of ED, your first dedicated full-time staff member. You’ll have some admin support but this person is going to be leading donor discussions. Tell me a bit more about what you want them to do, what you envision this ED doing in the first 6 months to 1 year for that matter, and then longer.

It would be a really exciting role to step into because there’s already momentum. There are already people that are interested. I see the ED coming in and being able to carry on conversations and move them forward in a faster way than we’ve been able to do. It’s been a little bit off the side of everyone’s desk because we have our own internal goals at our own foundations, so I feel like the person coming in would be coming into a great prospect list but also be able to use their own expertise and own experience to identify other partners as well. They’re coming into the organization and learning about what’s already been done and where you can have those early wins.

There are a lot of conversations that are already happening that need to be pushed forward. I feel like that’s what is really unique about the role. Not only are you able to use your entrepreneurial skills in coming in, pushing forward, and starting a new organization, but there’s already momentum there and excitement that you’d be able to be part of. I personally think the opportunity is amazing. We’re all, in my opinion, great to work with. It needs someone to pull it all together and move it forward. That’s what we’re looking for. It is someone who can do that. 

One thing I want to highlight as well that you alluded to is that for each of the member organizations, you have your own goals. You’re working with your own donors too, but you are collaborating, ultimately. You’re not competing for donors. Donors are being pushed up, if you will, to the collective because the collective work helps the individual organization work, ultimately. It helps you achieve your goals and ultimately improves women’s health in Canada, which is fundamentally what it’s all about. It’s not in competition with anybody. It’s elevating people’s sights fundamentally.

In the way as a provincial charity you can engage with corporate X, you’re engaging with them in another way on a national level. It really deepens, I believe, your relationship sometimes with your current partners. It is a great opportunity. Anyone you talk to about Women’s Health Collective Canada seems to get excited about it because women’s health is a topic that should have been top of mind for years, and it is becoming. In the media, we even hear more about menopause and women’s health issues. It’s more prevalent. I do feel like the time is here for women’s health. People want to have those conversations. The ED role is about us having someone who can have those conversations on the national level and be the face of the organization.

Women's health is a topic that should have been top of mind for years. The time is now for women's health. Click To Tweet

Having those conversations, advancing that progress fundamentally, and keeping that progress going that has been achieved so far. From an infrastructure perspective, if you will, the organization, you mentioned that being an official charity. You’ve also got your disbursement agreements. You’ve got your governance documents in place. There are lots of foundational pieces in place. This person isn’t truly starting from scratch. On the other hand, you also don’t have a donor database. There’s no CRM. There are some foundational pieces that can still be created but there are lots of activities.

The structure is there. At the same time, there’s the opportunity to put a process in for prospect management and some of those pieces. We still need to work those out. We had a conversation with IWK and they have some great ideas for prospect management. This person can pull from the expertise of all the foundations to create something that works for Women’s Health Collective Canada. That, to me, is what it’s about. You can pick the best from organizations and pull it together.

You’ve got these great minds.

It’s neat too because we all have different expertise even from a research perspective and each area, but then there’s overlap. Where the magic happens is when there’s overlap and you can propel things forward that way. It’s pretty exciting.

You’re engaging with PWR, the research community as well, and that very foundational level too. How would the ED earn a gold star? When you think about you and the other board members working together with the ED, what would make you say, “This person’s great because they were able to do X worldwide.”

I don’t want to speak for Charlene and Chaim, but I will. We’re looking for that person who’s not afraid to pick up the phone and go out and talk to people about Women’s Health Collective. We do it all with our own partners. We’ve done some work with prospecting quite a few years ago. We went out to ANC who’s the marketing company we’ve been working with. We went out and surveyed potential partners and they were like, “We’d be interested if you pulled this together.”

The gold star goes to the person who can go out and have the conversation. We’re here to raise money, so we want to raise some money, but that’s not going to happen by sitting at your desk. You need to be someone who wants to go out and build those relationships. We’re learning as a collective how we can meaningfully connect with new partners. What is that value proposition? That’s where the new person coming in will have a unique opportunity. Every organization across the country is excited to be part of the collective. They want to see this person successful. From our perspective, we’re here to support. We all know there’s a wealth of people that want to engage with the collective. We need someone to do it.

Fair enough. I like that you said, “We’re learning as we go.” It’s the opportunity to shape the organization in a culture of leaders that are not going to be, “You have to do it this way.” There’s some ambiguity here. There are some best practices. There are other organizations in Canada that have done this model successfully in some way. It’s learning from them but also shaping what’s going to be unique about this organization because the mission is fundamentally unique as well. There’s a lot that’s very compelling here, for sure. I like to ask this in interviews. Is there anything else I should have asked about but didn’t or anything else you wanted to add? What excites you most about the future of the collective when it gets down to it?

Closing

The one thing is it’s a huge opportunity. If you are passionate and you’re driven about women’s health, and you want to amplify women’s health, this is the role for you. Even here in Vancouver at BC Women’s Hospital and Health Center, we are starting a midlife and menopause program. That’s a conversation that is starting. Across Canada, it’s going to be a topic of conversation. To be able to go out, engage, talk about the good research that’s being done, and create more funds to support the research would be so amazing and powerful.

There are so many threads to draw on. There’s so much interest. There’s such a compelling and crucial topic to dive into, for sure. On that note, hopefully, our audience is compelled, interested, and curious, if nothing else for that matter. They should feel free to reach out to me, [email protected], or look up the collective at WHCC.ca, which is your webpage.

Your marketing group has done a fantastic job on social media. You’re on Instagram, X, and so on. There are lots of ways to track you down and learn more information about you. There are four-member organizations as well. There’s a lot of information there. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. I’m always so inspired, engaged, and excited by the work that’s being done. I’m looking forward to working with you and talking with candidates about you and to you.

I’m excited too. We look forward to seeing who applies. We’re excited to meet the successful candidate too and see what they can do. 

Thanks again for your time. We’ll chat soon.

That sounds good.

Thanks.

Important links:

• BC Women’s Health FoundationWomen’s Health Collective Canada
• Instagram – WHCC
• X – Women’s Health Collective Canada
• [email protected]