Breaking Cycles and Creating Change with Salena Starling
• – • Launch Co-working Space
About the speaker
Meet our Speaker: Salena Starling is an Indigenous youth advocate, public speaker, and the President and CEO of the Community of Big Hearts. A proud First Nations, Swampy Cree woman from the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation (NCN), Salena has dedicated her life to promoting Truth and Reconciliation and uplifting Indigenous youth, especially those who have experienced the foster care system.
As a foster care survivor herself, Salena’s work is deeply rooted in her personal experiences. Growing up in poverty, navigating the child welfare system, and overcoming generational trauma, she has become a powerful voice for change. By sharing her story, she raises awareness about the challenges Indigenous youth face, including issues like poverty, addiction, sex trafficking, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S+).
Salena’s work spans workshops, presentations, and the Reconciliation Road Challenge—a national initiative designed to make reconciliation a daily conversation within organizations. With a mission to create equitable and understanding communities, she has worked with businesses across Canada, helping them understand Indigenous history and its lasting impacts on Indigenous peoples today.
A public speaker since the age of 11, Salena’s advocacy extends beyond education. She is a TEDx speaker and a graduate of the CanU program. Her passion lies in empowering Indigenous youth, reforming the foster care system, and ensuring that reconciliation becomes a meaningful, action-driven practice across society.
Talk: Breaking Cycles: Creating Change through Understanding and Reconciliation
In this powerful session, Salena Starling shares her journey of overcoming systemic challenges as a foster care survivor and Indigenous youth. Through personal stories and deep insights, Salena sheds light on how intergenerational trauma and historic injustices continue to affect Indigenous peoples today. The talk focuses on breaking harmful cycles by fostering understanding, addressing unconscious biases, and promoting truth and reconciliation in communities and workplaces. Salena emphasizes the importance of empathy, education, and action, inspiring participants to be part of creating lasting, equitable change.
Local partners
Red River College is Manitoba’s largest institute of applied learning and research, with more than 200 full- and part-time degree, diploma and certificate options. Through hands-on and online learning opportunities and state-of-the-art instruction, we prepare students to become leaders in their fields — while also ensuring they can meet changing industry demands, and contribute to the province’s economic growth.
New Media Manitoba (NMM) is the non-profit sector council and industry association that represents Manitoba’s Interactive Digital Media (IDM) industry.
We empower people and organizations to solve complex challenges and create positive change through strategic practices, design, marketing, technology and innovation.
Forward Media brings accountability, measurement, and creativity to digital media. We help our clients accelerate growth and drive measurable business outcomes by deploying diversified digital customer acquisition solutions that deliver scalable, sustainable sales results. Our performance digital media and creative group connects our customers’ brands to the right offers at the right time to achieve a desired sales objective. At Forward Media, we are continually innovating to provide new and emerging media, creative, and technology solutions to our clients.
Anyone can shoot a video, but to craft something that truly makes an impact, it takes much more than cameras and lighting. We do it through the power of story. It’s how we help people build stronger connections to their audiences, reach their goals and push their businesses forward.
How does Linda Drosdowech coaching work? Great question! When we work together we:
Find out what feels delicious and delightful to you right now and in the future
Figure out what habits, thoughts, and actions you want to change
Decide your focus, and get to work finding new solutions
Break down goals into bite-size tasks
Deal with rejections, boundaries, frustrations, and everything human about loveable, gorgeous you.
Create healthy ways to process the feelings you’re avoiding. Yes, sometimes there are tears.
Celebrate your wins & have so much fun & laughs
Build powerful forward momentum that comes from you getting comfortable with discomfort
The role of the Exchange District BIZ, a non-profit organization, is to bring local businesses together to promote the area, to improve the District’s physical appearance, to support events that attract people to the community, and to play an advocacy role for local business on issues of common concern.
Johnston Group provides employee benefit solutions to companies from one employee to 10,000 or more. We’re a platinum member of Canada’s Best Managed Companies, having held the Best Managed distinction every year since 2001. We call Winnipeg home and we believe strongly in giving back by contributing to our local health, arts, sports, and other community organizations. Over 30,000 Canadian businesses trust us with their employee benefit needs.
Squarely Social is a digital accessibility consultancy and training company that specializes in helping organizations create and maintain accessible websites, social media and documents. We believe that content can’t be conversational until it’s inclusive, and we believe conversations are deeper and more meaningful by bringing diverse people and perspectives together.
At Harrison Coffee Co., we love coffee! We love coffee so much that we decided to focus on it and become a specialty coffee roaster, meaning we only roast and serve the highest grade coffees available. Our love of coffee comes from understanding and appreciating all the love, attention, and lives affected before the coffee gets into your cup.
As a coworking space, we help people grow ideas through community, collaboration, and collective wisdom. At Launch, we deliver a predicable, flexible, safe, clean, friendly, and fun place for people to focus on their work, meet with colleagues, and host important educational, training and networking events. This is why we’re Winnipeg’s highest reviewed coworking space.
Additional details
ASL Interpretation is available at all CM WPG events! Join us at Launch Co-Working in the Exchange District for a powerful talk by Salena Starling. Our events roughly run from 8:00 to 9:45am.
Agenda 8:00am - Gather for networking 8:30am - Event starts 8:40am – Local performer 8:45am – Community Engagement – Creative Exercise (Introvert-approved) 9:00am – Speaker 9:15am – Q and A 9:25am – Performer and wrap up
Location
Hosted at
Launch Co-working Space
167 Lombard Street (Exchange District), 5th Floor
Winnipeg, MB Canada R3B 0V3
When
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