biography
Vanisha Breault is a Canadian executive leader, keynote speaker, author, and leadership developer known for her ability to connect deeply with people while challenging them to think differently, lead courageously, and embrace meaningful change. She commands stages and boardrooms alike with authenticity, conviction, and strategic insight, inspiring audiences to navigate adversity, confront hard truths, and lead with purpose.
For over twenty years, Vanisha has worked at the intersection of leadership, mental health, addiction recovery, community development, and organizational transformation. Her experience spans executive leadership, strategic planning, organizational development, governance, fundraising, and systems change. Whether working with individuals, teams, or organizations, she is passionate about helping people uncover the beliefs, behaviours, and patterns that keep them stuck. Known for her ability to balance compassion with accountability, she creates space for honest reflection, courageous conversations, and meaningful growth, helping people confront what is holding them back and step more fully into who they were created to be.
As Founder and former CEO of the Terminator Foundation, Vanisha pioneered Activity-Based Recovery Therapy (ABRT), an innovative model that integrated movement, mindset, and recovery while helping spark a national conversation around youth addiction and mental health. Her memoir, Ordinary Courage, chronicles her family's journey through trauma, addiction, and recovery, offering a powerful testament to resilience, hope, courageous truth-telling, and the lifelong faith in Jesus Christ who remained her rock through every season of life, walking with her through her darkest moments and giving her the courage to face the truth, heal, and move forward.
Hope + Courage Creator
At the heart of Vanisha's work is a belief that transformation begins when people are willing to tell the truth, face themselves honestly, and take ownership of the life they want to create. She believes that courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to move forward despite it. Grounded in faith and guided by a deep belief in the dignity, worth, and potential of every person, her work is rooted in the conviction that meaningful change becomes possible when truth, accountability, grace, and courage come together.
Today, Vanisha speaks to corporate leaders, healthcare professionals, educators, entrepreneurs, and changemakers across Canada. Through keynote presentations, leadership development, coaching, and consulting, she equips individuals and organizations with the tools to navigate complexity, strengthen culture, develop leaders, and create meaningful and lasting impact.
Her leadership and contributions have been recognized nationally, including the King Charles III Coronation Medal, the Women of Inspiration Difference Maker Award, and the Canadian Mental Health Association's Nadine Stirling Memorial Award. She has served on provincial and national advisory boards, contributing to policy development, strategic planning, and systems-level initiatives in mental health, addiction recovery, and youth support across Canada.
Vanisha is currently completing her Master of Arts in Leadership at Royal Roads University, where she continues to deepen her understanding of leadership, organizational systems, and sustainable change. She lives in Calgary, Alberta, surrounded by her growing family, and remains committed to helping people and organizations lead with courage, live with purpose, and become all they were created to be.
My Story
I grew up in a small town called Dawson Creek, B.C. The winters were cold, with so much snow we could jump from balconies into huge snow piles and build massive forts with tunnels. Our summer days held endless sunshine and the smell of freshly oiled gravel roads. As soon as I could walk, I was in skates. Before long, you’d find me riding my banana-seat bike down the gravel road of Loran Drive.
Skating—and nearly every sport—became my lifeline, the one place I could channel all the pain into motion. But like so many stories, mine took a hard turn early in my childhood. Addiction and mental illness were part of my family story long before they became part of mine.
I picked up my first drink at twelve, and for a long time I lived caught between trauma and survival. In the midst of all that, I was introduced to Jesus Christ at the age of seven. I had my first spiritual encounter with Him then—an experience that became the bedrock of my young faith and has remained my spiritual compass for the rest of my life.
In my early teens, I was introduced to a counselor named Judy to support my healing journey from years of sexual, emotional, and mental trauma. Judy became another lifeline for me. During one particular session, I was talking about feeling suicidal—again. I remember Judy slapping her hand down on her knee, leaning forward in her chair, looking me square in the face, and saying, “You either get busy living, or get busy dying—but you can't do both.”
I was jolted like never before. Something in me broke open, and for the first time in my life, I knew I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live—I just didn’t want to live the way I had been living. I decided to believe what I knew deep down to be true: there had to be more. And I went on my way to find it. That moment became one of the first defining moments of
my life—when I understood that while I wasn’t responsible for the horrible things that had been done to me, I was responsible for how I chose to let them define me. That realization changed everything.
Over time, that fight to live turned into something else—a purpose. My children became my why and the reason I refused to repeat what I came from. My daughter’s own struggle with addiction became the spark that started a small youth addiction awareness run, which grew into what became Terminator Foundation—a movement of recovery and hope for people who thought they were beyond saving.
The full vision of Terminator Foundation truly came to life during the revolutionary experience of training for my first Ironman 70.3. That race pushed me further than I’d ever gone before—physically, mentally, and spiritually. It was there that I began to see how movement, discipline, and endurance could become a pathway to healing. That realization sparked the innovation of Activity-Based Recovery Therapy (ABRT)and became the foundation of the Terminator model.
Since then, I’ve gone on to complete a couple more 70.3 Ironman races—each one a living reminder that transformation is possible: body, mind, and soul.
Today, I speak, write, and lead from a place of truth. I talk about courage, resilience, faith, and the kind of hope that doesn’t break when life does. I don’t sugarcoat what I’ve been through—and I never will. My story didn’t destroy me; it shaped me into a woman who knows exactly who she is and Who sustains her.
I’ve been through hell and back, but I’m still standing—stronger, clearer, and more determined than ever. And honestly… this is just the beginning.
