Jennifer Heil, BCom’13, is an Olympic champion and CEO of Revel, a startup focused on women’s health. She’s now off to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo for her latest role as chef de mission for Team Canada.
Heil recently sat down with Karl Moore, associate professor of strategy and organization in the Desautels Faculty of Management, for his national radio show, The CEO Series, to talk about the upcoming Games and how to think like an Olympian in business and in life.
The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. Be sure to catch the full interview when it airs live on February 7 and 8 on Bell Media stations across the country, or on The CEO Series podcast as of February 9.
You’ve been named Canada’s Chef de Mission for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. For those unfamiliar with the word, what does a chef de mission do?
The role is really team lead for both the athletes and the staff who are on the ground creating the environment and the supports to have the athletes go and have their best performance.
I’ve been meeting with the athletes over the last six to eight months, sharing my experiences. I’ve seen it all basically as a rookie who finished fourth, as a favourite who won gold, and as a reigning champion competing at home on day one. So there’s a lot of knowledge that I can share, but at the end of the day, my biggest message to the athletes is to show up at the starting line of their event and to have no regrets, to do everything in their capacity to build the routines, to create the environment so that they’re ready to perform in the biggest moment of their life on the world’s biggest stage.
“It’s a spark – this dream of challenging yourself and finding your limits and going beyond that. For a time when I retired, I thought that I would never find that joy again, but I realized that it’s everywhere in life.”
Former Olympian Jennifer Heil, the CEO of Revel, a startup focused on women’s health.
I had a chance to have coffee with Nathalie Lambert at the Montreal Athletic Association club in Montreal last week. She was your chef de mission during the Vancouver Olympics. Looking back, were there some key takeaways you got in terms of the role of chef de mission?
Oh, absolutely. She was a fantastic chef de mission. I think the energy a chef brings is super important. There are always challenges to navigate both before the Olympics as a country and at the Olympics. And I think having that sense of leadership, having that sense of ’I’ve seen this before, I’ve done this before,’ really brings calm to the team.
I’m looking to both energize the team but also create that space for the athletes. I say that athletes during the Olympics are not rational actors. They’re under so much stress, so much pressure that we really do have to hold that space. And especially when unpredictable things happen, I think that’s where I can really play a role. So, I’m part of the issues management team. I’m there to be out in front so the athletes aren’t distracted, and to elevate them and elevate their stories.
I plan to be at as many events as possible. And my job there is to be the number one supporter, before, during and after, regardless of the outcome.
The Canadian Olympic Committee has spent almost six years preparing the environment for the athletes. So, we’re very well prepared. We’re not leaving anything to chance, but the reason that sport is so beautiful is that it’s not predictable. We put our best foot forward, we prepare for it, and then we go out and race and compete. And so, as I said, I’m there regardless of the outcome, but we’ve done everything as a team and the athletes have done everything as individuals to be ready for that moment.
A lot of Canadians [will be watching] the opening ceremony. Which is more exciting, the opening or the closing ceremonies?
I’ve never been to an opening ceremony because I always competed on day one. This will be my first opening ceremony as chef de mission. I would say opening ceremonies have a bigger impact on the athletes and on the world. There’s this anticipation of what’s to come, of the great performances that we’re going to witness. You can feel the tension and the excitement.
Closing ceremonies are about the party. And we have an amazing team – great athletes, world champions – we dominate in a few sports like short track speed skating and ski cross. So, I know there’s going to be lots to celebrate in the closing ceremony as well, but the opening ceremony really sets the tone of the games.
After you did your BCom at McGill, after the Olympics, [you] worked in consulting for a while, and now as an entrepreneur. What’s the difference between the heart and mind of a consultant and that of an entrepreneur? How are they different?
I don’t know that you choose being an entrepreneur, I think it chooses you.
As a startup co-founder and CEO of Revel, it’s a tough job. You have to take something incredibly abstract and bring it to life in a very quick way. But I love it completely. I think it really is my core strength. It was like that when I was nine years old: I decided I was going to be an Olympian. I just had to find a sport. And so, to me, it’s very natural to move through this environment.
Revel focuses on women, and it seems that draws on your experience as a world-class athlete. What prompted you to do this? What is missing in the world that Revel needs to be out there to make the world better?
We’re really democratizing this access to elite knowledge and elite experts on the body and health and performance. I find a lot of joy and energy in being able to do something that really hasn’t been done before. There is a shortage of information. There’s a shortage of research, but there is very good information out there and there is research that exists. We want to be able to bring that to people in a way that can be trusted, where they can get to know these experts and their knowledge bases.
Why the focus on women? Do you think women have been neglected in our healthcare system?
Very little research has been carried out on the physiologies of women. Women have been treated as little men for a long time in scientific research. Our physiologies are drastically different. Our hormones change throughout the month and our lifetime.
All these things are understudied and under supported. When we look at supporting women, there’s a lot of gaps around women’s health. A lot of women are dismissed because we don’t have information or that information isn’t in the hands of their doctors or whom they’re getting their support from. We want to help fill that gap.
Everyone listening would like to be a gold medallist in what they do. What advice do you have? What’s the heart of an Olympian, a gold medallist, in terms of my attitude, my thinking, my view of the world?
I think there’s obviously a level of stubbornness. It’s a spark – this dream of challenging yourself and finding your limits and going beyond that. For a time when I retired, I thought that I would never find that joy again, but I realized that it’s everywhere in life. It’s not just in athletics.
Then there’s also the ability to work backwards from what your goal is, to focus on the process, to build those successful routines around getting better every day. It’s something that you have to be committed to and move the dial every day.
And then I would just say the other part that we hear a lot about is resiliency. And you’re not born with resiliency; resiliency is learned. And so, this idea, as an athlete, you fall and you have to get back up. Sometimes, you hurt. Sometimes, you’re required to perform. Sometimes, you’re scared. Sometimes, you have to just learn to feel the emotion and then find a way to keep moving forward. And I think that what’s similar for every part of life is the more you practice not letting the big, the scary, the hard things stop you, you build this really high level of resiliency.
