When Linda Stephenson, founder and creator of Toronto-based cosmetics company Mèreadesso, left her North Toronto all girls high school, she was in for a bit of a shock. With math and science her favourite subjects at Branksome Hall, the keen teen decided to try for a bachelor of science degree at Toronto’s U of T.
At university, Stephenson was exposed to a different world. “Maybe 20 per cent of the class was female; in physics maybe five per cent of us were female,” she notes.
While at Branksome, Stephenson was oblivious to the fact that the sciences were a field that attracted significantly more males than females.
In fact, while at high school, Stephenson excelled not only in the sciences but math as well, something she now feels may not have been possible if she attended school with boys.
“The key is that when it came to subjects that I loved and naturally gravitated towards — math, physics, chemistry — there was no issue of whether it’s correct for a girl to take these subjects. I was completely gender-blind,” Stephenson says.
In retrospect, she credits her girls-only school for giving her an optimal environment for exploring those subjects.
While working away at high school, Stephenson aced tests in physics, chemistry and math but found herself floundering in English, something she feels had to do in part with the subject’s subjectivity. Stephenson spent hours of her young high school life rewriting assignments and working on extra credits. Her English teacher, Norm McCrae, grew to be a great influence in her life. As Stephenson got to know McCrae better, McCrae became a mentor figure in her life.
The encouragement to rework her assignments to something she felt was amazing in part came from McCrae, and the impact she left in her life is still there today.
“To this day, when I write something and I say, ‘Oh, that’s a dangling participle,’ ” Stephenson says, “and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s still in my head! She’s still there!’ ”
Now at the helm of Mèreadesso, she strives to make her company an international brand, hoping to bring her product in to the U.S. next year, and her success is something she can trace back to her early days in high school.