Featuring the people behind CIWA’s governance: Meet Nola Heale, CIWA’s Board Vice Chair and Treasurer, and more.

Nola Heale joined CIWA as a non-director member of the finance committee in 2020. Through her role, she feels inspired to support the vast number of services and opportunities CIWA offers to ease women’s settlement journey.

“CIWA is a highly respected organization with enormous reach and impact. It is truly a privilege to be able to volunteer on the board.”

Nola was born and grew up in South Africa. She believes that women often play a key role in the successful settlement and integration of the family into a new society. She sees immigration as often a struggle or a self-sacrificial journey for women.

When Nola immigrated to Canada with her husband and two small children, she did not know about CIWA and struggled on her own. She experienced the difficulty in becoming re-established, building a network, finding work, and just succeeding in a beautiful new country.

Nola is now a qualified Chartered Accountant and Chartered Professional Accountant in four different countries, with a large part of her career focused on helping companies increase their success. She shares that challenges that come with relocating internationally and starting from scratch can be treated as opportunities to overcome hurdles and succeed for the benefit of their family.

“The way to succeed in a new country I felt was to set your mind to it and appreciate the differences between where you were before and where we are now in Calgary.”

Thank you, Nola, for your commitment to help CIWA empower immigrant women and enrich Canadian society.

To learn more about CIWA Board members, click here.

Meet Nola