2025 Star Women in Grocery Award Winner Lisa Beausoleil (Q&A)

Lisa Beausoleil 

Business Executive Officer, Foods 
Nestlé Canada

What do you like most about your job? 

I am inspired by the purpose of our business to serve our consumers, patients and customers. I leverage this passion to coach, develop and mentor team members to reach their potential and leverage the strengths of each team member to work together to deliver our business objectives.

What’s your approach to leadership? 

Inspire and align the team around the vision and purpose of the business and how everyone contributes to adding value. I work to understand the needs of team members and how we can, together, productively deliver our business objectives while strengthening our culture. I love to learn and am naturally curious. I ask questions to seek understanding and draw out the diverse perspectives of the team. 

Tell us about a career challenge you’ve faced. 

One of the greatest challenges was making the difficult recommendation to wind down a large business knowing it would have a significant impact to our team, the broader business, our customer and external partners. Once we had aligned with the decision, we socialized the decision with the team responsible [for] winding down the business, with the objective of minimizing the impact to the team, business and customer. Working together with my fellow leaders, we worked extensively on identifying the right team members to do the work, provided context and communicated extensively on why the decision was made, and what we needed to do to contribute to the success of the project. We carefully coached our team members and engaged and empowered them as experts to make recommendations and take actions, and supported them through the process, even though it was difficult at times. The team was successful in winding down the business, while retaining key talent and managing the change in collaboration with our customer and supplier partnerships.

Is that also your proudest moment? 

It was so inspiring to see how the team really stretched themselves and how much they learned along the way.

How do you navigate challenging the status quo? 

I Identify the need for change and provide context to key stakeholders to get their feedback and input to engage them in the process. I spend time to align on what success will look like and engage the stakeholders in ideating and identifying solutions/options to find better outcomes. Focusing on the communication plan and explaining the rationale is key to get buy-in and gaining commitment to what successful outcomes look like.

What do you like to do when you're not working? 

I love being outdoors—paddleboarding, skiing, biking, hiking. I am also a foodie and enjoy cooking and exploring new food experiences and global cuisines.

Click here for the full list of 2025 Star Women in Grocery Award winners.