Jen Rogers, co-owner and brewmaster at Calgary’s Wild Winds Brewery, sought out other women brewmasters as she learned her craft and co-founded Wild Winds.SUPPLIED
Jen Rogers, co-owner, brewmaster and self-described chief awesome officer at Calgary’s Wild Winds Brewery, remembers what it was like to be a first-year brewing student.
“I was very self-conscious in class and I had no brewing experience,” says Ms. Rogers, who has created several beers available for sale and is launching Wild Winds, a brewery that will be open to the public. “It’s kind of intimidating when you’re in a class of 30 and there’s only seven women.”
She says she sought out other women to help guide her, both in brewing and eventually the business side of her fledgling company. She found women mentors were easier to relate to and they better understood her specific barriers and challenges.
“Working in a male-dominated industry like brewing, when you see [a woman] driving in that space, it reinforces that you belong there too,” says Ms. Rogers. “They understand the challenges that women face: being underestimated, overlooked and constantly having to prove your expertise.”
Ms. Rogers, who also works as a brewer at another Calgary brewery, says she makes a point of helping other women coming up in the industry. A former teacher in the Olds College brewing program, she continues to mentor new brewers by having them shadow her at work, and through a leadership role in the Pink Boots Society, a non-profit that gives scholarships to women and non-binary people to advance their careers in the fermented beverages industry.
“If anyone is creating their first recipe, I’m happy to walk you through it,” she says. “I’ve been in that position before and it’s nice to have somebody who can relate and feel the same things you’re going through.”
Ms. Rogers is one of many women entrepreneurs whose business flourished thanks to advice and support from other women, and who are paying it forward to the next generation of women business owners. Entrepreneurs say having women to look up to gave them confidence, inspiration and business education that was comfortable and tailored to their values. Now they’re trying to pass on those benefits.
According to the State of Women’s Entrepreneurship in Canada: 2025, an annual report produced by the federally-funded Women’s Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, women were majority owners in 19 per cent of all Canadian businesses last year, edging up from 18.4 per cent the previous year.
However, the report also says women still face more challenges than men getting access to capital, noting such businesses were “less likely than the average business owner to be able to take on more debt (55 per cent versus 60 per cent). They are also less likely to have the cash or liquid assets required to operate (65.9 per cent versus 72.7 per cent).”
This is one of the challenges that Shannon Pestun and Shauna Frederick sought to alleviate when they founded The Finance Cafe in Calgary in 2020. Since then, Ms. Pestun, a former banker, and Ms. Frederick, a chartered professional accountant, have helped more than 2,000 women entrepreneurs – including Ms. Rogers, the brewer – to better understand and present the financial sides of their businesses, which is essential to securing financing.
“There’s so many classes on how to pitch your business, how to market your business,” says Ms. Pestun, who says there is still a lack of financial mentorship available for women entrepreneurs. “What [funders] want to see is, ‘If we give you this money, how does it change the business?’ ”
Ms. Pestun is Métis and started a bursary for Indigenous women studying business or entrepreneurship at Mount Royal University. She says women entrepreneurs who are Black, Indigenous and people of colour, and those from the LGBTQ+ community, face even more barriers accessing capital, and as a result, have fewer role models that look like themselves.
“They don’t always feel safe talking in a male-dominated space,” says Ms. Pestun, listing The Forum’s Mentor Program, the Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship Program and TD Women in Enterprise as among the mentorship programs that do a better job helping women access capital.
“The goal one day is that we don’t have to have all these separate programs and there will be enough diverse women in the ecosystem.”
Andrea Mendoza, founder and chief executive officer of the ScoliClinic, a Vancouver-area network of physiotherapy clinics fully dedicated to treating scoliosis and other spinal conditions, says she has a caring approach to leadership to inspire her staff and aims to be a mentor to them as well.SUPPLIED
Andrea Mendoza, founder and chief executive officer of the ScoliClinic, a Vancouver-area network of physiotherapy clinics fully dedicated to treating scoliosis and other spinal conditions, hired leadership coach Susan Washington when she started her business to learn how to be a good leader. Ms. Mendoza says she feels that guidance helped her learn to lead with a more empathetic style than some of the male coaches she interviewed.
“I like the approach of nurturing the people who work for you, and with you, and coming from a perspective of trying to elevate them and inspire them rather than trying to illicit performance through exertion of power,” says Ms. Mendoza.
She started the business in 2016 and now runs a team of 10 physiotherapists, two massage therapists and a post-doctorate researcher across three locations. “I want to be making sure they are [capable]and inspired to do excellent work.”
Ms. Mendoza acknowledges many men use a caring approach to leadership but says she has found the most support for this style through other female entrepreneurs. She now uses what she learned to coach the junior managers on her team and has been a mentor in a program for people early in their careers, students and newcomers to Canada offered by the Burnaby Board of Trade.
“My business ownership and leadership journey has been so rich, and by rich, I mean hard,” says Ms. Mendoza, who did not picture running her own operation when she studied to be a physiotherapist. “I’ve learned so much and it would be a shame to just hold it all to myself.”
“Women can do exceptionally well in leadership positions, they often just need confidence, and that’s the role mentorship can play,” she says.