Heather Odendaal on WFH changes and the best career advice

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Heather Odendaal.

By Rosemary Counter

Big congratulations are in order for entrepreneur and event organizer Heather Odendaal, whose annual conference and global membership network WNORTH has rounded its 10th birthday. Every spring, for the past decade, members of its network of 1,700 leaders, thinkers, founders, authors and CEOs head to picturesque Whistler, B.C., to one of Canada’s largest gatherings for women in business to meet and connect, expand their networks and minds, and plot the downfall of corporate patriarchy (kidding on that last one… mostly). Here, the founder of WNORTH, Heather Odendaal tells The Get how she landed where she did, how WNORTH was the biggest—and riskiest—endeavour of her career, and why Canada still need women’s conferences in 2026. 

Happy birthday to WNORTH—tell me about how the event was born. 

Thank you. It’s a milestone we are very proud to have achieved. WNORTH came from a simple but persistent gap I saw early on. There were plenty of conferences for entrepreneurs and senior executives. But there were very few spaces for women navigating the in-between—ambition alongside burnout, leadership alongside caregiving, and growth within systems that still weren’t designed with them in mind. 

Launching the very first WNORTH Conference was the biggest risk I ever took. Producing a conference is expensive, and I lost $30,000 on the first one. But from a guest-experience perspective, it was a huge success and our audience encouraged us to keep at it. It took until the third year to turn a profit. I learned so much that I’ve since started advising other conference producers on their own businesses and events.

How close is what you’re doing now to what you wanted to be when you grew up? 

When I was little, I used to arrange the house furniture and put on performances with my siblings. It was the early signs of my event-planning aspirations. I was very involved in the student council and became the social convenor for my school. I planned prom and other special events. In university, I was an executive for UBC’s Ski and Snowboard Club, planning events and destination ski trips for the community. So, it was pretty clear from an early stage that event planning is in my blood. Planning and curating gatherings for impact is my main jam these days.

What’s the best career advice you ever got?

The best career advice I ever received was to invest in finding your business community early on. Initially, I was focused on doing the work well and assumed opportunities would naturally follow. I learned that careers don’t grow in isolation—they grow through relationships, trust and shared values. When you surround yourself with people who challenge you, advocate for you, and see your potential before you do, your career accelerates in ways no job title ever could provide. 

If I could give some advice, I’d say work for a small business owner before you start your own business. For me, it was foundational to learn from another entrepreneur and gain the experience, grit and agility it takes to work in a startup.

Has the world of business changed in the last decade? How would you like to see it change? 

Over the past decade, the business world definitely has changed, but it’s not always in a straight line. We’ve seen real progress in how we talk about leadership, mental health and flexibility, especially during the pandemic. Remote work briefly expanded access to leadership for many women by reducing long-standing barriers tied to caregiving and geography.

But the shift back to rigid return-to-office policies has stalled some of that progress. Flexibility is often treated as a perk rather than a performance enabler, and women have felt the impact in reduced visibility and slower advancement. At the same time, recent pullbacks in DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) funding have weakened programs that support women’s leadership, making progress feel more fragile and uneven.

Looking ahead, I’d like to see less performative change and more structural accountability—workplaces designed around outcomes, not optics; flexibility treated as a leadership strategy; and sustained investment in the systems that advance women’s careers. 

Real progress in the next decade will come from building workplaces and supporting programs that reflect how people actually live today.

Rosemary Counter is a Toronto-based writer and journalist whose reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian and others.