Claire Masikewich is a Canadian keynote speaker, marketing and communications professional, and founder of the Strong Like Sloane Foundation. She's redefining resiliency, teaching audiences that real strength isn't something you find after a hard season ends, but something you build and live inside of while you're still in it.
Her framework grew out of her own experience navigating her daughter's stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and it's the foundation of her signature keynote,
Shift Happens: How to Thrive In Hard Times.
Shift Happens will change how you think about resilience altogether — not as something you build for later, but as something you practice right now, in the middle of whatever's hard.
Walk away with a framework for finding clarity, control, and even peace, while you're still in it — not just after.
HEY, I’M CLAIRE!
I'm a marketer, communicator, and storyteller at heart — before I ever stepped on a stage, I spent my career as a Director of Marketing and Communications, most recently helping lead a company launch and, later, an acquisition. But my greatest story didn't start in a boardroom. It began during the most challenging chapter of my life.
When my youngest daughter was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, my world flipped upside down. In the face of heartbreak, I turned to what I knew best: marketing and advocacy. Leaning into my skills became my lifeline, transforming what felt like a downward spiral into a mission with purpose. I realized I couldn’t change what was happening to my daughter, but I could use my voice to bring awareness to pediatric cancer.
Late nights spent in hospital rooms weren’t draining—they were energizing. Why? Because channeling my strengths into advocacy wasn’t just a distraction; it was a way to make a difference. It's how I learned to find clarity and control right in the middle of the hardest thing I'd ever faced — not after it, in it.
As difficult as it is to say, my daughter’s cancer diagnosis gave me a new sense of purpose: to teach others not just to survive life's hardest moments, but to find real strength and peace right in the middle of them.
Through my work as a speaker, I teach audiences how to redefine resiliency for themselves — not as something you reach for once a hard season ends, but as something you build and practice while you're still living it.
As a seasoned marketing and communications professional who helped launch a company during the pandemic, Claire is no stranger to overcoming challenges.
Long before any of that, though, she'd already been building the same skill in a quieter way: she's lived with anxiety for as long as she can remember. As a child, it often felt like an invisible weight, making even small tasks feel overwhelming. By her early twenties, that anxiety was tied to feeling unsettled and unfulfilled in her work, questioning her purpose and doubting her abilities.
By her late thirties and after a huge wake up call from the Universe, Claire had found her own version of the framework she now teaches: instead of waiting for the anxiety to pass, she learned to move toward the things that scared her — new roles, unfamiliar challenges, stepping outside her comfort zone — and to find steadiness inside the discomfort itself, not just on the other side of it.
Today, Claire draws on both that experience and her daughter's cancer diagnosis to teach audiences the same thing: that real resilience isn't a reward waiting for you once things calm down. It's a skill you build and practice right in the middle of whatever's hard — starting now.
The Strong Like Sloane Foundation was born out of the urgent need for increased funding for pediatric cancer research in Canada.
Our mission is to drive awareness, advocacy, and action to support life-saving research, groundbreaking trials, and advancements that offer hope, better outcomes, and improved support for children fighting cancer.
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