Can the skills that make an Olympic champion, the obsession, the resilience, the ability to surrender under pressure, be transferred to the real world? What happens when the cheering stops, the medal tarnishes, and you have to build an entirely new identity from scratch? And can a mission bigger than yourself actually pull you out of the darkest chapter of your life?

In this powerful episode of Giants, host Nejeed Kassam sits down with Jennifer Heil at the beautiful Cypress Mountain, the very site where she won Canada's first medal of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Jennifer is one of Canada's most decorated athletes, an Olympic gold and silver medalist, a four time world champion, and most recently the chef de mission for Team Canada at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics. But she is also so much more: a relentless entrepreneur, an advocate for safe sport and women's health, a Stanford GSB graduate, and a mother of three.

She opens up about her small town Alberta childhood, where she was raised with a "no gender norms" philosophy and learned to meditate before it was cool. We hear about the intense pressure of competing at home in 2010, the personal challenges she faced behind the scenes, including a friend's tragic accident that made her hate her sport, and the crushing disappointment of winning silver when gold was the only acceptable outcome. She talks about the physiological and emotional toll of retiring from sport, the "obsession to build" that led her to co-found B2Ten, and the difficult decision to close her first startup, Raya Health. She explains the mission behind her new venture, Revvel, which uses AI to scale the expertise of world class practitioners to support women's injury recovery.

It's a raw, honest, and insightful conversation about grief, identity, the burden of being an expert, and the realization that success isn't about the color of a medal. It's about the systems you build and the people you empower along the way. Let's dive in!

In This Episode:

• [01:09] Welcome & Framing: The Human Behind the Athlete
• [03:43] Small-Town Alberta, Family Toughness, & Choosing the Olympics at 9
• [08:05] Inner Competitiveness & Believing Before Anyone Else
• [10:43] Highs, Sacrifices, & Control in Elite Sport
• [16:27] Mental Training, Managing Expectations, & the Road to 2010
• [18:52] 2010 Vancouver Olympics: Competing at Home, Silver Medal, & Retirement
• [22:07] Post-Sport Realities: Physiological Toll & Canadian Athlete Funding
• [25:56] Transition to Entrepreneurship: Early Startups & Founding B2Ten
• [31:08] SafeSport Advocacy & Abuse Safeguards
• [36:09] Athlete-to-Founder Evolution & Stanford
• [37:35] Raya Health & Gaps in Women’s Health
• [45:12] Closing Raya & Pivot to Revvel (AI-Powered Reconditioning)
• [49:25] Redefining Success
• [51:51] Rapid Fire Questions

Our Guest

Jennifer Heil is an Olympic gold and silver medalist in freestyle skiing, four-time World Champion, and chef de mission for Team Canada at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics. While competing, she co-founded B2Ten, transforming how Canadian athletes are supported. After retiring, she earned an MBA from Stanford GSB and co-founded Raya Health. She now leads Revvel, using AI to scale elite injury reconditioning for women.

Giants

• Link

Jennifer Heil

• LinkedIn

• This Is Victory Podcast

• Revvel

• B2Ten

Nejeed Kassam

• LinkedIn

Resources and Links

How does one person decide to save a neighborhood everyone else has written off? What does it take to turn family stories of resilience into real change on the ground? And can a mission bigger than yourself actually end up saving you in return?

She opens up about growing up with her dad, the legendary Bob Lee, a man so kind he’d bring a security guard a tie from Hong Kong, and how that quiet example of treating everyone with respect shaped everything she does.

It’s a warm, honest conversation about purpose, perseverance, and what happens when you decide a place is worth fighting for, even when the odds say otherwise. Let’s dive in!

In This Episode:

[00:00] Welcome to Giants

[01:35] Balancing it all

[02:08] An ecosystem of people

[02:36] Remembering Bob Lee

[04:13] Growing up in the Lee family

[05:30] The kindest man in the room

[06:30] Pressure and expectations

[07:18] Working with her father

[08:31] Building a village, not a team

[10:06] Her grandfather's one-way ticket

[11:01] A wartime survival story

[12:43] Second-generation identity

[13:49] Rediscovering Chinatown in 2004

[14:42] Values passed down

[15:38] Teaching resilience to the next generation

[16:16] Why "Storytelling Centre," not museum

[19:40] Launching Linacare

[20:14] A drug delivery breakthrough

[22:09] Turning down the exit

[23:09] Sophie's choice: Linacare or Chinatown

[24:15] The search before the calling

[25:30] Falling into her life's work

[26:51] Pitching an "impossible" idea to her dad

[27:22] Where the Chinatown Foundation began

[29:20] The first gala, three months to launch

[30:13] The 3-pillar approach

[30:52] Validating the idea

[31:55] Perseverance vs. stubbornness

[34:03] The philosophy of partnership

[35:38] Trust as currency

[36:38] Addressing the Downtown Eastside

[38:16] Building Bob and Michael's Place

[40:19] Seeing her father's name on the building

[41:53] Redefining success after cancer

[43:16] Rapid fire

Notable Quotes

[04:51] "You learn by example. You don't learn by people telling you what to do. You learn by watching somebody." — Carol Lee

[08:03] "Trying to revitalize Chinatown is going to be 10 times harder than UBC Properties Trust." — Bob Lee (as recalled by Carol)

[13:17] "You don't realize how important something is until you're at the risk of losing it." — Carol Lee

[16:29] "There wasn't any one big heroic figure. It was all these little stories that, if you put them together, created a lot of impact." — Carol Lee

[23:29] "Saving Chinatown... you'll leave a legacy for future generations." — Henry Fung (as recalled by Carol)

[25:17] "You don't really know how the dots are gonna connect. You can only have faith that they will connect." — Carol Lee

[42:26] "I thought I was gonna come and save Chinatown. In some ways, this mission saved me." — Carol Lee

Our Guest

Carol Lee is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur, philanthropist, and community leader. She is the chair of the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation, which she helped found to revitalize Vancouver's historic Chinatown through a three-pillar approach: physical revitalization and social housing, economic development, and cultural preservation. She is also the owner of Chinatown Barbecue and the soon-to-reopen Ho restaurant. Carol is the chair of the UBC Properties Trust and serves on numerous boards. She has been recognized with both the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia, and in 2026 she was inducted into Vancouver Magazine's Power 50 Hall of Fame after 10 consecutive appearances on the list.

Resources and Links

Giants

Link

Carol Lee

LinkedIn

Vancouver Chinatown Foundation Become a member: https://www.chinatownfoundation.org/membershipDonate to their mission: https://www.chinatownfoundation.org/donate Get involved with the organization: https://www.chinatownfoundation.org/work-with-us#volunteer Chinatown Storytelling Centre: https://www.chinatownstorytellingcentre.org Linacare Cosmotherapy IncNejeed KassamLinkedIn