When Carolyn Cross was first making her way through the business world, finding same-gender peers who could understand the challenges she was facing was a bit like searching for water in the desert.
“I had nobody,” said the CEO of Ondine Biomedical, a recipient of Business in Vancouver's Influential Women in Business award .
That changed seven years ago when she joined the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), a support and networking group that holds monthly meetings worldwide.
“One of the success factors for women is to have peer support and the opportunity to have peer mentoring and championing,” Cross told Business in Vancouver.
“I can reach out to any single member and ask for help. I would get it without a moment’s hesitation.”
She’s since taken a leadership role within the WPO and helped shepherd it through a chapter leadership change.
Her commitment to the organization was recognized earlier this month when she was honoured with the WPO President’s Award.
“Part of the reason I got this award is because I’m really a big champion of innovation and small businesses,” said Cross, who was named to the Canada Research Council in April.
“And only this organization had a group of women entrepreneurs that had the same years of history and same scale of business and understood the challenges.”
Cross will also be using the expertise she’s gained from the WPO when she departs Vancouver for Sao Paulo on May 16 for the first government-sponsored all-women trade mission to Brazil.
The four-day mission is tapping into Brazil's life sciences, education, information technology and agriculture sectors.
“The organization has been very (supportive) as a North American network and going global…(will) allow us to leverage each other’s skills and capabilities,” Cross said.
“And the fact women represent the most (untapped) resource in any of the developed nations, it therefore stands to reason an organization such as WPO that is supportive of its women entrepreneurs is important to the economy.”
