Photo by Jennifer Friesen.

At 13, Silvia Pikal dreamed bigger than the room she was in.

In a Grade 8 assignment, she wrote out her career dreams: study Journalism and Education, become an English teacher, moonlight as a journalist and bestselling author and, somehow, win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

She has since become a Calgary-based strategic communications leader who helps organizations build strategy, tell better stories and design the systems that make that work sustainable. Her work has doubled web traffic, driven newsletter engagement as high as 60% and received recognition from the Alberta Magazine Awards and the National Magazine Awards: B2B edition.

She is a people-first leader who brings curiosity, calm and clarity to her work and strives to create space for others to do the same. She believes leaders should create the conditions for people to do their best work, help them grow into their potential and feel comfortable speaking up. Psychological safety matters deeply to her. People should be able to disagree, navigate difficult conversations and pursue ambitious work without fear. Mentorship is a core part of her leadership approach because it creates future equals.

She holds a Bachelor of Communication in Journalism from Mount Royal University, is a graduate of the 2025 Poynter Women in Media Leadership Program, and completed the University of Calgary’s Creative Writing Certificate in 2026. She survived six years of magazine journalism—her greatest professional love and ruin—and now leads communications strategy in post-secondary education, very far from the classroom.

One part of the dream never changed: her love for reading and writing.

Books have been her escape, her education, her constant companions and one of the great loves of her life. She believes literature is magic: a book can open a door and carry you somewhere new. Writing opens another door, a place where you can play without word counts or restraints.

Her fiction has appeared in Room, The New Quarterly and the Tap Press Read 1-3-5 anthology, and has been featured on Blindman Brewing beer cans and read on CKUA Radio. Her flash fiction received an Honourable Mention in the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Pandemic Postcards Contest.

She has tried to honour her Grade 8 self. She’s slowly writing a novel. Her goal is simpler: to finish it. She is still waiting for her opportunity to teach. Colleges, please accept this as her formal plea. As for the Nobel, she remains open to a nomination in any category.

She lives in Calgary with her husband, Derek, and their rescue pup, a 28-pound Chihuahua mix with a big attitude, in a 1960s bungalow they are lovingly and slowly restoring to its mid-century modern glory.