IWK Foundation With Jennifer Gillivan, President & CEO

A strong community can shape the future of healthcare, and Jennifer Gillivan, President and CEO of IWK Foundation, knows this firsthand. Their organization has become a driving force in improving specialized care for women, children, and families across the Maritimes. In this conversation, Jennifer shares how the foundation connects donors with bold healthcare initiatives, the power of community-driven philanthropy, and the challenges of leading in the social profit sector. She also dives into the importance of advancing research in women’s healthcare and what it takes to build a sustainable impact. Join this inspiring discussion as Jennifer and host Douglas Nelson explore what it takes to create lasting change.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

IWK Foundation With Jennifer Gillivan, President & CEO

Introducing Jennifer Gillivan And The IWK Foundation

Our guest is Jennifer Gillivan. Jennifer is the President and CEO of the IWK Foundation in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The foundation is the primary fundraising and outreach partner of IWK Health, which provides critical and specialized care to women, children, youth, and families throughout the Maritimes. Jennifer is passionate about the rights of women and children in our society. She continues to be a national advocate for better healthcare for children across Canada.

Jennifer also continues to be passionate about improving research for women’s healthcare in Canada, and working towards changing the system for all women through a more focused plan of research. Our conversation explores the concept of her foundation being owned by the community it serves, and the implications for how she sets strategy and how our team executes on that strategy. We spend a lot of time digging into the role of leadership in the social profit sector, how it’s been changing, and Jennifer provides her very best advice for people looking to take on greater leadership roles. This is a great conversation. You don’t want to miss it. Thanks for reading.

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Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

I am looking ahead and forward to this conversation. I have pages of notes about things I want to ask you about. Before we get into all of that, tell us a little bit about the IWK Foundation, the work you do and who you serve.

The IWK Foundation celebrated its 40th anniversary, and it is the primary fundraising organization for the IWK Health, which is the tertiary one and number one trauma center East of Montreal for the Atlantic region. Predominantly, the IWK started in the pediatric side. It is also a research and teaching hospital. In the early ‘90s, we amalgamated, which was then called the Grace Hospital. We brought into our fold women’s maternity and newborn health, gynecology, breast health, urology, and all of those areas that support women.

On the regional side, it’s pediatrics and on those particular areas is where we support women. The foundation is the major promoter, storyteller, supporter of the IWK. Also, we are co-owners of a national organization called Canada’s Children’s Hospital Foundations, of which I’m proud to say I was one of the founding leaders of that organization and most with the Women’s Health Collective Canada, which we are starting across the country to support women’s health and research. We are local and national all in the same breadth.

I’m interested in understanding. A lot of our readers and the clients we get to work with at The Discovery Group, especially in healthcare, manage the issue that healthcare is profoundly local. Donors most often want to give to the doctor that is supporting them or themselves or their family, and it is one of the challenges that national health organizations have been struggling with for the last decades. You do have a full region mandate particularly for children’s health. How do you tell that big story and connect it to the individual service or the individual doctor that any given donor or donor family may want to support?

There’s a couple of things. The IWK is very privileged to be held by our community and I mean that word held, in high esteem. They believe they own it and they have built it over the years. It’s very personal to people at the IWK. It’s not another hospital down the street. It’s the IWK. It has its own standing. I would say that donors are very interested specifically in the last few years in big ideas and taking on issues that they feel will move the dial, and want to see it in real time.

Donors have been looking for big ideas in the last few years. They want to take on issues they feel will move the dial and see real-time impact. Click To Tweet

The Importance Of Big Ideas In Healthcare Philanthropy

We have seen our donations increase. We have seen them not only from people locally, but from people with a connection maybe to local but living somewhere else. Most notably our last our biggest gift and the biggest gift to healthcare in the region, one gift of $25 million came in from the Garron family who live in Ontario. Myron Garron originally came from Brier Island in South Nova Scotia. Their passion is mental health and we are attempting to build the first mental health ecosystem for children and youth in the world from here.

People look at you funny when you say that, especially in bigger cities because they think, “How could that be possible?” If you think about innovation, the outliers are usually where it’s coming from. We are the little scrappy outlier region. We are the little train that could because of how we are situated geographically and the way in which we approach mental health, we do not separate it from physical and medical. We keep a bow together and we care for all five levels of care.

We have all the people and all the programs. What we are attempting to do now with the infrastructure is bring it all together in an ecosystem that we can track progress. More importantly, we are building a blueprint to share what other jurisdictions who want this, but we haven’t been able to find another model like this anywhere in the world. That’s one example. A few years ago, we went to Norway and found the best NICU, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the world. It was in Norway. They had six of these rooms for all individual rooms and the parents can stay.

There are all kinds of technology. They are quite incredible. We came back and we built two neighborhoods. We called them twenty rooms each of these and we modified from the best in the world about 50 to 60 different modifications. We brought cleaners through and do mockups. Every time we build anything, we do a mockup then we modify and keep modifying, so by the time we build something, it’s probably the best it could be.

We have got people from all over the world come to see this. We also built a PICU unit, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, with a similar style. We are in the process of building one of the best mental health emergency departments in North America. We have our own dedicated mental health space, and that mental health space compliments the Garron unit. That’s the Garrons coming in again. They came in several years ago and we built a mental health unit that was still state of the art in the country.

These are the kinds of big ideas that we are not afraid to go after. We are pretty bold in what we want to do, and donors want that. Donors are looking for that. We have the rank and file every day by the equipment like what you’d expect. God loves everybody out there that’s helping us because it’s their IWK and they do that every year.

They come year over year, and then we have the donors or the companies that want to donate that say, “We want to be part of this big idea.” We are a bit of the outlier, I would say, in the country in what we do. It’s only when I tell people we do this and half them don’t believe me, and then when they come down here and look at it, they go, “This is amazing.” I go, “I told you.”

For what it’s worth, I believe you. It’s interesting the way you described that connection between the big ideas about how to make a big difference in healthcare and the areas that your foundation and the hospital serves and those big ideas donors are looking for. Do you ever feel a responsibility to help set a standard for the role of philanthropy in healthcare in Atlantic Canada?

I feel like not only do we try to set a standard. We are held to a bigger standard because it’s the beloved IWK. I’m very aware of the responsibility of that. I feel like I’m always in a fishbowl. It’s like whatever move you make, but we do our best but I don’t have a career in philanthropy. I’m more at home in the business world. We run our organization in a very entrepreneurial way.

We are in the moment going through an EOS model, if you know what EOS is. It’s Entrepreneurial Operating System. We are doing that as a nonprofit. We are operating in an EOS model. I’m the visionary, if you know the language. We have an integrator and our senior team. We are about to roll it out now. We have been at it for about under a year. We operate in a very entrepreneurial startup type of attitude and model.

We have an EOS at The Discovery Group. We could talk about that for a long time. However, how does that role of setting the standard, that community feeling like they own it. It’s their hospital. What are the implications for the conversations you are having with donors about some of these big ideas about these ways you are going to transform the health system?

Connecting With Donors Through Storytelling And Authenticity

We say to the team all the time, anyone who calls our office, anyone who donates, whether it’s $5, $5 million, $25 million, or $500 million or whatever. It’s about how they feel. At the end of the day, if you think about what we are doing in philanthropy, we are promoting or selling an ideal, a set of values and emotionally trying to connect with someone because truly people who give don’t have to give. They don’t have to. They are choosing to do that, and they are choosing it because they have a connection to the cause. They are choosing it because we resonate with them.

We tell a story in a certain way. We connect them to what the big ideal is and what we are trying to do and why we are always striving to try and help the IWK become better ultimately to serve their families, and the community. Always striving to try and find the way to treat the $5 donor and the $5 million donor where they feel the same. It may not be the same treatment in the end, but they feel it. They feel it in some way so we never take for granted a gift.

Every gift recognition is customized as much as we can. It’s the little things in the end that make a difference for donors and it’s honoring them. Some donors want to be completely anonymous, and I know people who’ve tried to make donations and the charities have argued with them. They want to put them out there on the board. If you want to be anonymous, that’s fine. In the end, it’s all about how we serve our patients and their families, and ultimately that means how are we serving our community. It’s about how you serve those donors, and the level of service and authenticity.

 

I have said I’m not a career philanthropist. I passionately believe in the rights of women and children in society. It’s been my calling card in my soul for so long. I think since I could learn to speak English at three or something. I have been involved in that in some way or another. I can come by the work I do, honestly. Could I turn around tomorrow and go and run another organization? Sure, I could run it but if I’m not aligned to it, if it’s not part of my story, I don’t think I could do it as well. I don’t.

Picking that up in my own experience, I had a leadership position as CEO in a place that I cared about, loved, and felt in my core. I did leave to lead another organization and I found it hard to change. My heart was still with the first place. My head and my hands were certainly more than busy at the second place. It’s a unique thing that many leaders experience and often don’t talk about. How did you know that this was the place, that the IWK was the place that was going to bring those things together? Other than what’s in the purpose statement in the documents before you start. Once you were in the role, how did you know, “This is it. This is where I need to be?”

First of all, I’m originally from Dublin, Ireland. I have lived in five places across Canada. I started in Vancouver, and again moved West to East. I loved the coasts and ocean. We came here because my of husband’s role and the kids got settled in school. We have two daughters who are now grown up and mothers themselves, but at the time they were in school. I was like, “What am I going to do?” I had left a great role in Burlington, Ontario at the time.

I was at an event, and this is a great place to make connections in the East Coast. They have a different way of doing things. It’s great. Somebody said to me, “It’s the 10th anniversary of the Children’s Hospital.” I think about it, now it’s passed the 40th. They said, “We need to find the money and then we need to produce a 10th anniversary magazine. Can you do it? Have you ever done it?” I said, “I will do it.”

I have never ever put a magazine in my life together, but I wanted to try something, so I did. I found the money and put the thing together. Out of that, I learned about the IWK. It’s a very unique place. It’s a very special place, and it gets under your skin, especially when you are a mom yourself and you’ve got your kids. I then went on and did other things in a career. I ran a business with a business partner and then we were brought back on contract. I helped them at a time when they were in dire need like things had gone wrong.

We came in a crisis in time and helped them to turn it around again. Here I was back at the IWK again, then I went to the CBC. I’m passionate about public broadcasting and grew up on the BBC and RTE and fundamentally believe it’s part of democracy. I did work all across Canada. I was all across Canada. I’ve always wanted to run my own organization and do something for women and children. That’s always been my North Star.

I remember in the middle of the night waking up like a bolt of lightning and going, “That’s it. I got to do this.” I have never looked back. I have always known it was the right role for me at the time. It’s not easy. We have had challenges and leadership challenges, but at the end of the day, I have to say the cause is amazing. I know we have made a difference. I know the work that my team has done and it’s not me. It’s the team. We have helped save lives. You can get up every day and do other things or you can do this.

To me, I remember one saying to staff, “This is a privilege.” Some people were like, “What do you mean a privilege?” I said, “It’s a true privilege to do this work.” I know that the team members who thrive are aligned to those values. It’s a value set. It’s your values. I don’t think when I do something different, it will still be within the realm of helping women and children always.

I hope you’ve got many more years there at IWK for the progress you are making and the great work you are doing. I appreciate you taking that time to explain your journey there to get to the IWK. A number of our readers are individuals who are in the sector. Maybe 5 to 7 years that’s been in the sector and they are thinking that they maybe want to have that head of fundraising role or that chief executive or executive director role. They are wanting to know how they get from where they are now to get to the big chair where it’s cushy and all you have to do is make 1 or 2 decisions.

Advice For Aspiring Leaders In The Social Profit Sector

Be careful what you wish for. It’s not cushy.

What advice would you have?

I mentor a lot of young people, especially women. A lot of them are coming out of their business schools and got their MBAs. You name it. They have got it. They say to me, “How did you plan to become a CEO?” I didn’t. When I said I wanted to lead, I didn’t have a title attached to that. I just wanted to do work in the space that would make a difference for women and children in this country. I also became a Canadian in this country and that was a way to give back in Canada is to do this work.

I was raising two daughters and now I have three grandchildren. They have always been my motivation. I say to people all the time, especially the kids that come out and are like, “I don’t know what I want to be. I don’t know what I want to do.” They have had amazing opportunities already. I always say, “Go back to when you were 3 or 4 before you had to conform. This is harder to do than it sounds. What were the things that you were doing when you were 3 or 4 that no matter what, you loved it? It was in your gut. It was your thing.”

They say, “It was yours?” When I was 3 or 4, I remember a couple of things. I remember standing in front of the China cabinet in Dublin and my parents were having a whole bunch of people in. We were working class. We weren’t wealthy, and so there must have been some big idea or some big occasion. I don’t know what it was. My mother to this day can’t figure it out for me. Anyway, I thought they were all coming to hear me. I was standing there with my hands open and talking to them. God knows what gobbledygook I was saying to them.

Now, if you ask me with no notice to get up in front of 10,000 people and start speaking, I will do it, and I feel totally at home. It is the one place I feel so at home. I can speak to one person or a million people. It doesn’t bother me, but I also remember being treated differently than the boys and wanting a cowgirl outfit with the guns and the caps because the boys had cowboy outfits. I wanted the same, and I didn’t understand why you couldn’t.

All the way along in my childhood, I was always about women and girls being treated differently. I think it came in with it. You fast forward to now, the role I play, I’m always the champion for a cause. I’m always about social justice. I’m always about women’s and children’s rights. The alignment is perfect, but I also work very hard. I’m an immigrant and as my daughters have said, “We are first generation immigrants. We don’t know anything else but how to work hard,” because that’s the model their father and I gave them. We are still both working full time.

Don’t chase the title. Align your values. Whatever that is. If you love dogs, then align yourself with nonprofits with animals. Work hard and learn to be a servant leader. Leadership isn’t always from the front. Leadership is often from the back. Some of the best stuff we get or the best ideas come from the most unlikely team members that aren’t even connected in the first place to what we are doing. If you chase titles, some people will get them. Especially if you are good at promoting yourself in an interview.

Leadership is not always from the front. It is often from the back. Click To Tweet

Donors know when you are authentic. They just do. The higher up you go in an organization, the more you are going to be put in front of the potential of big donations from donors. The stakes are higher and are higher to succeed, too. It’s the authenticity. Every time I have made a connection and built a relationship, they know I’m serious. There’s something powerful about being able to go out there and fight the cause and look for the opportunities and convince the donors because you are not doing it for yourself.

There’s no agenda other than to help the cause you are doing it for. If you are doing it for yourself in terms of your power, ambition, and your title, it will show up not in a good way. The work you need to do at the front end of your career is work hard. You’ve got to learn the nuts and bolts of the business and spend more time looking at business communities and entrepreneurs. Not just people in the sector because then you end up talking to yourself. Your head needs to be challenged.

The Importance Of Social Profit Businesses And Modernization

That’s why we ended up doing EOS because it made more sense. As a nonprofit industry, we have to get more modernized about what it is. It is a social profit business. That’s what we are and we have to run. I have to have the best HR policies, and the DEIs. I have to balance our books and clean audits every year. I have to do all that stuff that a business has to do, but I can’t carry bad debt. If you see a good leader in a nonprofit sector, they can go run any business anywhere.

I couldn’t agree with you more. You said social profit, which is how we talk about the sector here and it’s for a couple of reasons. One, because the benefit of the work that happens across the sector is primarily social and it is profit and an advantage. I am convinced that when we define ourselves as nonprofit or not-for-profit, it’s anchored in a negative definition. We are not something which is, “I’m Canadian. I’m not American.” It’s much stronger to assert who you are and what you do rather than to start with, here’s what we don’t do.

First of all, we don’t make a profit, which is about lowering expectations and creating space to figure things out. Ultimately, it comes down to being rooted in scarcity rather than abundance. Anything that we can do and anything that organizations and organizational leaders can do to focus on what is working, what is abundant, and what is successful in our organization. Starting there and then filling in the gaps rather than starting with all of the wants, lack, and gaps which contributes to burnout and wears folks out and simply don’t get enough done.

Learning how to work smart and not hard and looking for the constraints and the efficiencies. All of those things that regular businesses should be doing or do. I will stack my team up against any for-profit business out there. We are pretty sophisticated. Cybersecurity and IT, and all the stuff that 5 or 6 years ago, you wouldn’t have even thought would be an issue to have to deal with and we are doing it all. The board governance. All of that work. It’s a lot but it’s an amazing training ground. It’s almost like if you are part business and you’ve got a social heart. You put the two together, you can do very well in the sector.

 

Listening to you talk about your connection to women’s health and issues, children health, issues, and rights issues, there is a convergence in how you describe the work of the IWK between the mission, the social equity element of the work, and the institution of the IWK itself. We see increasingly organizations in healthcare trying to move from being defined as an institution or the four walls of the hospital or the four walls plus the clinics, the ambulatory clinics, to be something bigger than that. You’ve managed to accomplish that at IWK by reputation, result, and message that our readers learned what you shared. What is the element that makes the biggest difference in terms of being able to tell that mission-driven message for an institution?

Not the foundation but the IWK itself has been very astute and it’s genuine in what they have done. Over the years, they have built so many partnerships and relationships with other smaller hospitals in the region and clinics that they can partner. They train and they run research. At the end of the day, the core principle of the IWK is family centered care, and they walk that talk. The doctors will say if the mother or father looks confused, you don’t leave that. When they are training the young doctors, you do not leave there until that family understands what’s going on.

They empower the patients. You should see some of these kids. I say all the time that we are not curing hopefully, or at least helping children in their medical needs. We are turning out some of Canada’s next leaders. These kids would wipe the floor with you and me and everyone else in between. They are incredible because some of them have faced the possibility of dying, or unbelievable challenges physically, and they have come out the other side.

What the IWK does, we did a picture with a story. That’s what’s reminding me of it. There were twins and then one of the twin boys got a form of leukemia. Anyway, he’s fine now. We have this program and it’s called Selfie. They showed him his cells and what they had to do to fix it. He was completely empowered. This kid on his school picture day, put the white coat that they’d given him and the stethoscope on. That’s what he wanted us to look like for his picture day. That child’s going on to medicine. You can tell just by looking at him.

We have a young girl now working in intensive services and mental health. These are some of the sickest kids. This is tough work. This is hard work. She was in intensive services herself a few years ago and she’s now back doing it at the IWK. It’s incredible, some of the stories we have of the kids. The foundation has the privilege because once they come out of their treatment and so on, a lot of the kids and their families want to give back because that’s how they make sense of it all.

That’s how they can say, “This was awful, but here we go. We can help other kids coming up and other families.” We get to know them and we get to then go with them as they grow up. They are always checking in with us. A lot of them go into the nonprofit or social profit sector. A lot of them do that work. It’s a genuine empowerment of kids and families. They are in the center of their care. They are not aside from the doctors and nurses. They are part of it. The ethos of that culture is baked into the IWK over the last hundreds of years.

It’s baked in there. That permeates out into the regions, clinics, hubs, and traveling clinics. We do all that but the same cultures there like the same way of caring as you go in there as a young nurse, or doctor, or physiotherapist, you are going to be brought into that culture very quickly. You stick out if you don’t believe in that culture at the IWK.

It doesn’t sound like you’d last very long if you didn’t have that culture. I asked how you connect purpose to the institution and you told some great stories. Storytelling is a big part of that.

It’s the main part.

It has to be true of the organization you are supporting as well as the foundation, which comes through. You mentioned your board. How does that idea of the community owning or holding the IWK Foundation show up around your board table?

The Role Of Board In The IWK Foundation’s Success

We have got a wide range of board members from the three provinces, and we have board members who used to live here who now live in Ontario. They are not all rooted in Halifax, and there are a wide range of backgrounds. A lot of them have a personal connection. Our last two chairs, both of their kids’ lives were saved at the IWK. They went on to give back and then kept going.

What they found is working at the foundation, there’s such a satisfaction in it because you see the NICU built and you see the emergency room getting built. There’s some tangible impact that they can say, “That’s part of it.” We pride ourselves on strong governance. There’s a rigor attached to it. They are called trustees, our board, and that means they are in trust. The donors and the community have put them as the people in trust along with the team at the foundation with their donations to be trusted to make sure that we make the most of those donations. It’s on purpose. They are called the board of trustees for a reason.

I would imagine we hear from time to time in our travels, conversations with board members who maybe don’t have that direct connection and don’t have that deep rooted connection to the organization. Part of what they are doing in their first few years on the boards is learning the organization and learning what’s important, which has its own challenges. I would imagine that having a board that is that committed, that is personally on the line as a trustee, and as the holder of trust on behalf of the whole community, must add a degree. Does it ever add a degree of difficulty to the work you are doing as CEO to move things forward?

No. I’m ICD designated and I did that on purpose. I’m a firm believer that in any organization, even private boards, the role of a board is very clear and the or should be. The role of management is very clear. Its noses in and fingers out. The minute you mix that up, you are in trouble on either side. We have been very clear on their role and our role. They are there also at the advisor.

We have a risk committee outside of finance because risk now can be everything, emerging reputational risk to cybersecurity. There are so many things in the complex world we now live in. That’s an interesting committee. We are a governance committee. The board members gravitate that have the background to these different types of committees. They are robust.

I will say we are 3 or 4 in the country now that still do our old-fashioned telethon. Even the word sounds so old-fashioned now, but it’s increasing year over year. For many years, we have held a telethon in this community. In 2024, it was $7.6 million or $7.8 million. It’s something like that. I can’t remember now, but it was a big amount. That’s the main place where people see the stories and hear the stories because we radio goes with it and social media.

It’s where we can tell those amazing stories of these kids in the hospital. It’s also where the board can become involved. It’s one of these traditions. That’s what I love about the East Coast. They are very into their traditions. This is one where beginning of every June it tools down on that weekend and here comes the telethon. The community loves it. Newfoundland is the same way. They love it. They love the stories and the connection. They love volunteering at it and coming in.

It’s got its own life. The more you can involve people who are on your board in different events. Our biggest one is telethons. We have third party events and some very big ones. We have got one called the Great Big Dig, which the construction association. They are amazing. This is 1,000 people every year. The board can come to that and their own businesses support that. We have another one with the grocery gal.

There are all these different events that happen, so there are ways for them to be connected. We regularly advise them, “If you are out in the next month, so and so is running Sobe stores. All across are doing this. Make sure you say thank you and you are buying your groceries or that type of thing.” There are lots of ways to be involved if you want to be.

It’s to activate them as ambassadors in the community.

They are ambassadors.

There are a couple of ways to take the conversation. You’ve mentioned your team a couple of times in very flattering ways. As a CEO that’s come to your role, not from the sector. I’m sure there was some adjusting to what that looked like as being CEO of a social profit foundation. What does it mean or what does it take for a member of your team to earn a gold star with you?

To be an owner. When you are an owner, you approach your work differently because you own it. If you came in from another country or something and you met me. You would think I own the IWK Foundation. For the time, I’m a custodian of it until someone else takes that role. One of our main values is to be an owner. That means you might do something over and above your own roles and responsibilities. You might help another teammate or it’s that attitude of together, we can make this amazing. We all own the journey. It’s not the philanthropy team or the sales, or the marketing team.

When you own an organization, you approach your work differently because you own it. Click To Tweet

It’s right from the get go. All of us own this. For me, the biggest trait is being an owner. We have very flexible work post-pandemic. I saw the writing on the wall and I thought, “I’m going to make this work for us.” We have a very flexible in and out work people. We don’t measure. “I don’t measure,” as I say to people because we have got people who’ve come back from maternity leave. They say, “It’s so amazing here. You are so flexible.” I go, “You could all be sitting outside my office potentially working away. I wouldn’t have a clue.”

You could be there 9:00 to 5:00 for 5 days a week and that means nothing. What means something is a scorecard and measuring the right things, and so we do. We measure the right things. We have never done better in the post-pandemic than we have now. It depends on the day who’s in the office. I haven’t got a clue where half of them are. I’m doing this. For example, I usually work at home on Mondays. It’s my day to get it all, do stuff like this. The minute I go in there, they are on top of me, so I need to focus. I have to do it from my home office.

When I was there, it was dark and it was finished. The day was almost up. Something was wrong with the door. One of my staff who had nothing to do with the office park, said, “I’m going to continue to work. You go because the day is done. I’m waiting for the guy to come to fix the thing and once it’s fixed, then I will leave.” I said, “No. I don’t want you to stay.” She said, “No. I’m good.” Did that and then sent a note around to the staff saying, “This is what you got to do with the door.” The door thing getting broken had nothing to do with her job. That teammate was an owner. That’s an owner move.

How do you manage if you’ve got an employee that isn’t acting like an owner?

The Key Trait Of Ownership And Its Impact On Donors

They stick out. It’s taken me several years to get to the space where we are now because some people don’t want that. Some people want to come in, do something, get paid for it and go again. If you are giving the flexibility and the support, then on the other flip side there’s going to be moments. It’s 24/7 just because of whatever’s happening.

It sticks out, and then it’s in the hiring now. We are finding. If we stick to our values and we tease them out in interviews, we can hire the right people, and they are not the obvious people. You are going to have all the best credentials in the world, but if you adopt that sense of ownership. Not just intellectually but truly do it. It doesn’t show up.

I’m always like, “Great. You had this experience.” I’m trying to find out who you are, how you show up, how do you give back generally as a person, and scenarios style interviewing to tease out those values. I would say the biggest one for me is ownership. It’s giving caring to your core because then you are going to translate that into how you treat the donor, and it’s all about how you treat the donor. It’s all about the relationship. That’s what we are in. We are in the business of relationships and emotion. That’s what it is.

You have shared some great advice over the course of our conversation and I hope our readers are taking quite avid notes. As we come to the end of our conversation, Jennifer, what are you looking forward to?

Jennifer’s Vision For The Future Of Women’s Health

I am looking forward to hopefully having the opportunity along with my team to be the organization with others to change the game for women’s health now in research. The world is ready for this. The Dalai Lama said it will be the Western woman who saves the world. She better be a healthy one, and if the right things are going, it’s going the opposite way.

Women are suffering in silence a lot of times unnecessarily. Some of them are dying. The more you delve into women’s health or the lack of training, focus, money, and research, the more you realize the opportunity. It won’t be that women will benefit. Men will benefit too and the communities. You can’t have healthy children if you don’t have healthy women. Women can’t attain equality, which I firmly believe until we have a true 50% portion of seats at the table in all levels of power to help save this planet. You can’t attain that equality if you are not healthy and strong.

 

I had to pick a lane of where I was going to make the biggest impact on myself too and I will do this work personally and not just professionally for the rest of my life. It’s, how we change the game so that doctors are trained male and female on women’s bodies. That women are taken seriously and we do not have to suffer and we do not have to have 80% of all autoimmune diseases. We do not have to have 79% of all negative drug reactions are ours.

We don’t need to die from heart attacks that can’t be diagnosed because we show up with symptoms that are different and play it out over and over. Women are done and it’s time. What’s happening is through the menopause push now, which affects. It’s not like you can avoid it. It’s happening. It’s like taxes and death. It’s going to happen.

It happens and it spans women from their mid-30s until their 80s, the whole span. It’s a great one to open the lock on almost everything else, and we are noticing. We are talking to people worldwide and it’s happening. It’s bubbling. I’m predicting it’s going to be the biggest movement that we have ever had. It’s going to be bigger even than the suffrage movement. Buckle in. That’s what I’m excited about.

That’s what you are looking forward to. That’s amazing. Jennifer, I so appreciate all the great work that you and your colleagues do at the IWK Foundation. I appreciate the great advice and the stories that you’ve shared with us on the show.

Thank you for reading, the opportunity, and the work you do. I want to thank all the donors out there and my amazing team because without them, I wouldn’t have the story to tell you.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

 

Important Links

• IWK Foundation
• IWK Health
• Canada’s Children’s Hospital Foundations
• Women’s Health Collective Canada
• Jennifer Gillivan on LinkedIn
• The Discovery Group

 

About Jennifer Gillivan

As the President and CEO of the IWK Health Centre Foundation, I’m passionate about securing the future of world-class health care and research at the IWK. Every day along with my team, Board of Trustees,and some of the most generous donors on the planet we get to build the best in the world right here at home on the East Coast.

Over the past several years we have raised over $200 million dollars privately to help transform our regions Children’s Hospital and we are not finished. We are supporting the Emerge Campaign to transform the IWK’s Emergency Department into one of the best in North America. Come on the journey with us and help create a legacy for generations to come.

We are now embarking on a new journey to develop the best health care possible and research for women in our region. To also work nationally and internationally to lift women up, support health research that is female focused. The time is now, the mission is clear, women deserve better and we will do all we can to help create better care, best in class facilities and groundbreaking research.

I was honoured to be Chair of the Board of Directors for Canada’s Children’s Hospital Foundations (CCHF) for the past three years.In my new role as Past Chair I will be advocating for Children in Canada to have a national healthcare strategy and support. CCHF provides the largest funds next to Government for Children’s health in Canada. CCHF represents thirteen Children’s Hospital Foundations across Canada. Our philosophy is If “ We can change the health of children we can change the health of Canada”

“We can all be great because we can all serve” Martin Luther King