COMING SOON: Women In Safety Virtual Event

Canadian Occupational Safety is celebrating their Women in Safety event this year online. The event is held “to inspire and boost women in the safety sector,” say event managers.

The annual Women In Safety event is now almost two weeks away.

Canadian Occupational Safety, the largest safety magazine in Canada, is holding the event on March 9, 2021 from 10:45am - 4:30pm EST. The panels this year focus on current issues facing women in the workplace, including personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic, owning your own brand, and how to move from being a mentor to becoming a champion.

Fred Crossley, Media & Business Development Manager for Canadian Occupational Safety, says the event will be accessible to everyone across Canada.

“People can click around to whatever session they want when the session is happening. It's a live stream. There can be up to 500 people watching it at once.”

Covergalls’ founder and CEO, Alicia Woods, will be joining in the event as a panel speaker. Her session will cover the discussion on PPE during a pandemic. 

This event, hosted by Canadian Occupational Safety, is important because it offers a space for specialists to gather and discuss how to improve women’s experiences in the workplace.

Crossley hopes people will engage with the discussions at the event and find tangible ways to enact positive change in the industry.

“I always say if you can walk away from an event having, you know, two or three actionable takeaways that you can apply to your own work or to your own business, then that is success to me. Not everything is going to be relevant to everyone; everyone works in different industries, in different companies, but my goal for every attendee and every sponsor is just to walk away with one to two actionable takeaways.” 

Last year, Canadian Occupational Safety held their first in-person Women in Safety event in Calgary. The event was hosted with stellar specialists and ended up gathering over 200 delegates from across Canada. 

This year the event is being held online, due to the pandemic, but Crossley is positive turnout will still be good.  

“I'm excited. It's going to be great for the attendance [being held virtually] because we're making it a Canada-wide event. It'll be easier for people on the East Coast or from Ontario to tune in to the content.” 

Before 2019 Canadian Occupational Safety only held one annual event, the Canada Safety Employee Awards gala. The company wanted to do more, and be more than a safety publication. This led to the Women in Safety event. 

“There are not a lot of events out there in North America, specific to women in the industries like construction, oil and gas, manufacturing, health care, energy, government, safety employees. So we wanted to be the first to make an event specifically for women and safety in the Canadian market,” said Crossely. 

What you can expect this year

On March 9, the Women in Safety event will bring together entrepreneurs and leaders from across different sectors to discuss important trends in occupational health and safety. It’s a chance to get inspired ahead of International Women’s Day on March 16.

The event’s keynote speaker will be Michele Harradence, Senior Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of the Gas Transmission and Midstream Business Unit for Enbridge

Last year, one of the main themes for Women in Safety was the idea of climbing the corporate ladder and exploring the unique challenges faced by women in Canada’s safety community. 

Crossley says this year will share the same focus.

“The focus...is just to be a forum, a place, where safety professionals can come to learn new content and hear from very senior female safety people from different industries or different companies or different provinces that they might not get the chance to work with, or be connected with.”

“They can grow their network, they can seek mentorship, they can network themselves, learn about different brands, learn about how senior safety people are tackling certain problems, ask questions. That's really what it is: it's just a b2b conference for allies and for female-focused safety companies.”

After the success of last year’s event, we have no doubt this year will also offer interesting discussions. One discussion you shouldn’t miss is the panel at 1:40pm EST, which is the panel Covergalls’ Alicia Woods is participating in!

Alicia will be speaking on the very hot topic, PPE in a pandemic, alongside a group of stellar women:

Leslie Molin, the Market Segment Manager for Personal Safety at Levitt-Safety, Canada’s leading safety equipment supplier. Leslie has over 20 years of experience in the PPE sector.

Robin Van Driel, Principle Occupational Hygienist and founder of VanDriel OHS Consulting. Robin has over 17 years of experience working in health and safety for a variety of industries.

Lika Leshchenko, Head of Health and Safety of ECAN at Lafarge Holcim. Lika has over 13 years of working experience in occupational and operational safety.

The panel will be moderated by Paula Campkin, Vice President of Operations and Safety Centre of Excellence at Energy Safety Canada, who is a rockstar in the Canadian safety world. Paula is the founding member and past Chairperson of the Women in Occupational Health & Safety Society (WOHSS), the media partner for Women in Safety this year. 

You can check out the other speakers, and agenda for the event, by visiting the Women in Safety 2021 website. There is no cut-off date or time for ticket sales, so delegates and sponsors can register even up to the morning of the event day.

More details on how to register here.

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