Team 20s - Madeline Birkhold

Originally from Seattle, Madeline's path has taken her all around the world. She moved to New York City after school and started a career in advertising leading campaigns for Google, Netflix and Samsung. After years in NYC she took the biggest leap possible and quit her job, let go of her studio and moved to Budapest, Hungary to pursue an adventure. That adventure has landed her in Toronto, where she's entered a new phase of balance pursuing sustainable style through a weekly newsletter while building her career at Rethink. Beyond work, travelling reignited a love of art and design - helping to foster a period of expression and acceptance in the second half of her 20s. Linkedin Substack Instagram

Team 30s - Rebecca Bitton

Rebecca Bitton is a speaker, educator, and mental health advocate whose story is a testament to the power of breaking down, waking up, and choosing to begin again on your own terms. In her 20s, Rebecca chased every marker of success the fast-paced career, the accolades, the image of the woman who could do it all. But behind the scenes, the pressure to perform led her into four full-blown manic episodes, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and a crash course in everything the world doesn’t teach you about rest, self-trust, and enoughness. Now in her 30s, she’s rewriting the rules. Rebecca is the founder of Be and Become, a movement that helps people and organizations shift from burnout to embodiment from performative success to grounded inner power. She’s hosted national summits on trauma-informed leadership, coached women and entrepreneurs through reinvention, and created healing spaces where high-achieving people are allowed to just be. Her talks don’t sugarcoat the hard parts. They honour the messy middles, the mental health detours, the identity crises, and the sacred choice to keep showing up for yourself even when life falls apart. Rebecca has spoken at major institutions like CAMH, OPSEU, and the Women’s Healing and Motivational Summit. She’s also an educator, podcast host, and storytelling coach who teaches that your pain is not just something to overcome it’s the very soil from which purpose can grow. Whether in corporate boardrooms or late-night journal entries, her message is simple: You are not broken. You’re becoming.

Team 40s - Meryl Fernandes

Meryl is a marketing strategist with over a decade of experience, a suitcase that’s been well-used especially in recent years, and a life that’s been rebuilt more than once. While her career has been about building brands and crafting other people’s stories, her 40s have been about rewriting her own. She moved from research and strategy to caregiving for her parents during a tender chapter, learning what connection really means along the way. From avid traveler to first-time solo traveler and now certified travel advisor, she’s embraced new adventures. And she’s shifted from holding things in to sharing her story with her 24 followers in a quiet corner of the internet. She’s still figuring it out. But she’s learned that life doesn’t follow a script, that unlearning can teach you more than anything else, that success can outgrow its old definitions and that’s not a loss, it’s a sign of life. And sometimes the life you build after everything shifts, while wildly unfamiliar, can be the one that feels most like home. LinkedIn Instagram Web

Team 50s - Alix Sideris (she/they)

Alix Sideris is a multi-hyphenated artist; a professional actor, movement director, intimacy coordinator, writer, director, as well as a somatics practitioner, educator, meditation leader, intuitive body/spirit worker, life doula, and most importantly, mother to Hannah Kaya, friend to many, and proud mentor to several emerging artists. Alix’s life principles point to kindness, transparency, playfulness, a deep respect for our planet, and a calling to uplift the beings that inhabit it. Her work has been seen at the Stratford Festival of Canada, the National Arts Centre, Theatre Calgary, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Glenn Gould School,the National Society of Intimacy Professionals, Canadian Opera Company, Young People’s Theatre, and the universities of York, Waterloo, Brock, Queens to name only a few. Alix was also a resident actor with the National Arts Centre, the Curator/Industry Associate for the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, a founding member of Prix Rideau Awards, and served as a 2 term Canadian Actor's Equity councillor. Originally from Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal and presently living in Tkaronto/Toronto, Alix is an artist invested in embodiment, mind/body connection, and creative investigation. Their over 25 years of artistic practice has been anchored in investigating modalities that help artists develop inspired and sustainable practices so that the strongest, most evocative and exciting stories can be shared with holistic artfulness.  Website Instagram

Team 60s - Erica Herbert

Born and raised in Tobago, Erica is a mother of four, accountant, property investor, and hotelier. After decades in real estate, she co-founded Ode with her children, transforming a family-owned building into a boutique hotel celebrated for its culture, community, and creativity. Ode has been featured in Forbes, Vogue, The New York Times, Refinery29, and Condé Nast Traveler, a testament to Erica’s vision of thoughtful, independent hospitality. With a sharp business mind and a passion for true hospitality, she continues to shape the industry while keeping family at the heart of it all. Ode Website Instagram

Team 70s - Wendy MacKeigan

With a successful and dynamic career in the film and television industry spanning more than three decades, SK Films is fortunate to have Wendy as its CEO. She has produced, executive-produced and written several multiple award-winning films including Flight of the Butterflies, Wings Over Water and Blue Whales: Return of the Giants for which SK is the worldwide distributor.   Wendy has a passion for understanding how the natural world works and she is dedicated to bringing interesting stories about our planet, its incredible wildlife and ecosystems and the people who study them to audiences around the globe. She feels privileged to be a filmmaker and storyteller in the Giant Screen medium and to work with world renowned scientists, other advisors and prestigious scientific organizations dedicated to science literacy.   Wendy’s achievements include the only ever “clean sweeps” of all Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA) industry film awards for Flight of the Butterflies. She also led the script writing/research team behind Amazon Adventure, produced in partnership between SK and HHMI/TBS, which was praised in Variety as being “a large-screen triumph” with “such a high level of writing, acting and production polish.” Wendy was also Executive Producer and Co-Writer for Backyard Wilderness. Both films received five major GSCA Achievement Awards.   Prior to joining SK Films, Wendy spent 10 years as Chair/CEO of the feature film development/TV production investment arm of Astral Media (Bell Media). She was a founding executive of Ontario Creates, served on various committees of the GSCA and was Chair of Women in Film and Television. Other boards and committees include the Toronto International Film Festival, the Directors Guild of Canada, the Banff Television Festival, Cinematheque Ontario, the Canadian Film Centre and the Toronto Film Advisory Board. Web