Canadian Women in Ocean Industries Leadership (CWOIL), an organization meant to engage women in the oceans sector, held its first conference in the Delta Hotel in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador on May 9–11.
The three-day conference, which seeks to discuss success stories as well as strategies for enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for underrepresented groups in the oceans sector, turned out even better than expected according to Cathy Hogan, the executive director of OceansAdvance and one of the lead team members of CWOIL.
“We ended up with twice as many registrants as we had anticipated when we started to plan this conference originally,” said Hogan.
The program planned by CWOIL kicked off with a tour of the Marine Institute’s renewed facility in Holyrood, N.L., which was designed to further research and development of technology in the oceans sector. Participants of this tour were also treated to a fish and chips meal at the institute facility on Signal Hill in St. John’s.
By day two, the program began in earnest, with a wide range of speakers and presentations.
“We’ve had everything from women in research to women on boards. We’ve had a speaker who transitioned in the last couple of years, and she told her story today,” said Hogan.
“We’ve had a tremendous amount of questions, comments and feedback from the audience, even throughout the sessions… We’ve heard an array of phenomenal stories of how people have gotten to where they are.”
One such program, titled “This is What Success Looks Like — Tell Me Your Story!” featured a number of women that have had a significant impact on the oceans sector. Panellists in this section included Nancy Lochhead, the Vice President of Shipbuilding Production at Irving Shipbuilding; Inja Ma, the CEO of SEAMOR Marine Ltd. and Niru Somayajula, the President and CEO of Sensory Technology.
The three panellists spoke on the path they took to get to the position they are in, the struggles they faced and answered questions from the audience. One such question was what strengths women bring to a leadership position.
Somayajula, whose company Sensory Technology Ltd., based out of Collingwood, Ontario, creates ceramic-based piezoelectric acoustic sensors for defence, aquaculture, energy, oceanography and hydrography purposes, said that brining empathy to her position has been beneficial to her career.
“I’ve noticed that that can be a really powerful thing. I like to connect with people, and I like to talk with my employees and my customers, too,” said Somayajula.
“I’m on a project right now, and there’s four different companies working on this project together… Inevitably, throughout the week between calls, each of the CEOs of the different companies will call, and they’ll complain — usually about one of the other ones. And I’m the one that listens. That empathetic piece, it’s really helped, I think, being able to listen and process and hopefully offer an empathetic ear sometimes.”
Another seminar held by CWOIL titled, “Workforce of the Future,” focused on the up-and-coming in the oceans sector. The young panellists included Karen Perry, a mechanical engineer with Hatch; Meaghan King, a senior student at the Marine Institute; Kennedy Sittler, a marine Technical Specialist at COVE and Anna Naylor, a program manager at the SOI Foundation.
With their first conference behind them, CWOIL is looking to the future. They’re in the process of creating and implementing a national plan to increase the representation of women and underrepresented groups in the oceans sector.
“We had 125 participants from across the country — sea to sea to sea — and basically, our plan post-conference is to start implementing some of those suggestions and identifying the opportunities that are already out there, but also identifying partnerships,” said Hogan.
“Women alone are not going to make the difference. We need men, we need everybody on board to make sure we’re going to be able to move that dial. Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency has been a tremendous partner, as has the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, but we’re going to hire, hopefully, a full-time staff person… We’ll hire some professional staff; they will start building those networks that have already started at this event and our consultation process and rolling out the plan. Next year our plan is to have another CWOIL conference, and at that point, we’ll be able to report on some of the programs that are taking place and what the results are from that.”
