“I think in an alternate life I would be a therapist or a business life coach,” says Paulina Cameron, powerhouse CEO of The Forum, a Canadian charity that funds and supports female entrepreneurs. “I just really love that intersection of personal development and business.”
This is not surprising to anyone who has spent time with Cameron, or browsed her Instagram feed, where she documents her overlapping professional and domestic spheres with equal parts devotion and candor. Her feed includes a photo of her 10-day-old daughter accompanying her to a board retreat; a picture of the bottle of breast milk she pumped between meetings; a post sharing the judgmental reactions she received when she returned to work after four months of maternity leave.
Her passion for the work of The Forum comes, in part, from that friction and intersection between the personal and professional. She understands intimately what it means to be an ambitious woman in a world that wasn’t designed for your success, and she wants to change it from the ground up, one women-run venture at a time. “Women start businesses that make a difference,” she says. “And I don’t see how we’re going to change so many of the fucked-up systems we’re in, unless their leadership is brought in.”
Cameron has the confidence of a natural leader, but she never tries to make it look easy. She always shows the effort, the balancing act, the hours spent at a laptop long after her two young children have gone to bed. In doing so, she reveals the barriers and challenges faced by women who aim for the professional heights once reserved for white men with wives at home.
Her passion for entrepreneurial ventures started early. “I started babysitting when I was 10 or 11. This was in Poland,” Cameron clarifies, with a laugh. “So, different rules, different vibes. Obviously, I read every single one of The Babysitters Club books. I had a hot pink briefcase, and I would save my money from babysitting and use it to buy things to go in it, like stickers and colouring books, which I would bring to my next babysitting engagement.”
In Grade 12, she moved to B.C., and enrolled in business school at the University of British Columbia.
But at business school, she took all the leadership extracurriculars she could, and started her first non-profit, Young Women in Business. “I ran it for eight years,” she said. “It was two volunteers, but it was like a crash course in leadership.” She learned to network by volunteering at the registration desk for events she couldn’t afford to attend otherwise. “You get to see the guest list and find the people you want to talk to later, and then once the event starts you can usually leave your post,” she explains. To overcome her anxiety, she would prepare three questions in advance before approaching someone.
After a brief stint as an accountant, Cameron found her way into a role that brought her interests in business and relationships together: a friend working at Futurepreneur Canada mentioned they were looking for a Business Development Manager. Two years later, that friend left the organization, and her role as Regional Director was up for grabs. Cameron was interested, but she was also eight months pregnant.
“I had an amazing boss at the time, COO Mitchell Krakower, and he asked if I wanted to consider it.” Cameron reminded him she was about to have a baby. “He was like, ‘So? You’re the best candidate, why would you not do it?’” It would be easy to spin this as an example of lean-in feminism, success borne from pure confidence, but Cameron is straightforward that the support and trust she was extended were critical to her success. She took a six-month maternity leave and came back into the role, supporting young entrepreneurs in B.C., Alberta and Yukon.
At the same time, she joined the Expert Panel on Youth Employment, and got the idea to write a book profiling 150 exceptional Canadian women to coincide with Canada’s 150th anniversary. “Retrospectively, I probably should not have done one of those things for my sanity,” says Cameron, who worked with Page Two Books “at warp speed” to publish it. “I had the idea for the book in early March of 2017, and it was on bookshelves by the end of October.”
The book was a best-seller; even Justin Trudeau, noted male feminist, has a copy. Another person might have been resting on their laurels, but not Cameron. “My whole life I’ve had a propensity for speed and wanting to move through milestones quickly,” she said, which explains why when she got a call that the CEO role with The Forum (formerly, “Forum for Women Entrepreneurs”) was open, she said yes — even though she was four-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child. “Always the conversation was, what do you need in place for this to be successful? Which is not everyone’s experience.”
“Now I joke with my husband that if we don’t have another kid, my career is over.” She’s kidding, but still: it’s thrilling to imagine a world where having a child doesn’t mean sidelining your professional ambitions and sacrificing your goals. Cameron’s vision is a bright one: women can have both careers and children, if they want them; they don’t need to sacrifice one for the other. Cameron’s here to make that change happen. She’s ready to do the work.
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