profile

WIA Profile: Shaliza Somani

What is your role and responsibility at your company?

My main role is to oversee the Toronto sales and marketing department. We focus primarily on expanding our distribution as well as management and support for ePassporte business accounts. My department also is responsible for constructing new products and updates, so we spend a lot of time on creative design and development.

My main role is to oversee the Toronto sales and marketing department.

Give us a typical Monday at your desk?

I usually start the day off by hitting the snooze button four or five times. LOL! Mondays are mad. Everyone at our company uses Monday as a way to lay out the action items for the week to come. It’s a busy day, lots of meetings, progress assessments, deadlines and all the usual stuff. Having a solid Monday is important to ensure our week is as productive as possible.

What do you think is your greatest challenge or asset being a woman in the adult industry?

I don’t think my challenges are any different than anyone else’s in the industry. In the end, all of us are working hard to achieve the goals we have laid out for ourselves. My mentors in business are both male and female, and whether I follow in Michael Dell or Ruth Parasol’s footsteps, it’s all the same to me.

What strategies do you use to maintain balance in your life?

After a hard day at work, I like to go home, put up a picture of Chris Mallick on my wall and have a fun game of darts. It helps me unwind. All joking aside, it’s hard to find the right balance between your career and your personal life, but I think a little planning goes a long way. I schedule my social life and my alone time in advance, and I try to stick to it. Most of the time this works but there are instances when emergencies come up or deadlines must be met.

What advice would you give other women who want to enter your field?

Commit yourself and look at the company as if it is your very own. EPassporte is my little baby, and I take pride in knowing I make a difference on a day-to-day basis regardless of whether I’m offering help to an account holder or presenting an idea to the CEO. For me, really understanding the business means you get hands on at every level. This philosophy has helped me understand the business from the ground up and with much more detail.

Each month, industry news media organization XBIZ spotlights the career accomplishments and outstanding contributions of Women in Adult. WIA profiles offer an intimate look at the professional lives of the industry's most influential female executives.

Copyright © 2026 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More Articles

profile

Stripchat's Jessica on Building Creator Success, One Step at a Time

At most industry events, the spotlight naturally falls on the creators whose personalities light up screens and social feeds. Behind the booths, parties and perfectly timed photo ops, however, there is someone else shaping the experience.

Jackie Backman ·
opinion

Inside the OCC's Debanking Review and Its Impact on the Adult Industry

For years, adult performers, creators, producers and adjacent businesses have routinely had their access to basic financial services curtailed — not because they are inherently higher-risk customers, but because a whole category of lawful work has long been treated as unacceptable.

Corey Silverstein ·
opinion

How to Build Operational Resilience Into Your Payment Ecosystem

Over the past year, we’ve watched adult merchants weather a variety of disruptions and speedbumps. Some even lost entire revenue streams overnight — simply because they relied too heavily on a single cloud provider that suffered an outage, lacked sufficient redundancy and failover, or otherwise fell short when it came to making sure their business was protected in case of unwelcome surprises.

Cathy Beardsley ·
opinion

Building a Stronger Strategy Against Card-Testing Bots

It’s a scenario every high-risk merchant dreads. You wake up one morning, check your dashboard and see a massive spike in transaction volume. For a fleeting moment, you’re excited at the premise that something went viral — but then reality sets in. You find thousands of transactions, all for $0.50 and all declined.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

A Creator's Guide to Starting the Year With Strong Financial Habits

Every January brings that familiar rush of new ideas and big goals. Creators feel ready to overhaul their content, commit to new posting schedules and jump on fresh opportunities.

Megan Stokes ·
opinion

Pornnhub's Jade Talks Trust and Community

If you’ve ever interacted with Jade at Pornhub, you already know one thing to be true: Whether you’re coordinating an event, confirming deliverables or simply trying to get an answer quickly, things move more smoothly when she’s involved. Emails get answered. Details are confirmed. Deadlines don’t drift. And through it all, her tone remains warm, friendly and grounded.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Outlook 2026: Industry Execs Weigh In on Strategy, Monetization and Risk

The adult industry enters 2026 at a moment of concentrated change. Over the past year, the sector’s evolution has accelerated. Creators have become full-scale businesses, managing branding, compliance, distribution and community under intensifying competition. Studios and platforms are refining production and business models in response to pressures ranging from regulatory mandates to shifting consumer preferences.

Jackie Backman ·
opinion

How Platforms Can Tap AI to Moderate Content at Scale

Every day, billions of posts, images and videos are uploaded to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X. As social media has grown, so has the amount of content that must be reviewed — including hate speech, misinformation, deepfakes, violent material and coordinated manipulation campaigns.

Christoph Hermes ·
opinion

What DSA and GDPR Enforcement Means for Adult Platforms

Adult platforms have never been more visible to regulators than they are right now. For years, the industry operated in a gray zone: enormous traffic, massive data volume and minimal oversight. Those days are over.

Corey D. Silverstein ·
opinion

Making the Case for Network Tokens in Recurring Billing

A declined transaction isn’t just a technical error; it’s lost revenue you fought hard to earn. But here’s some good news for adult merchants: The same technology that helps the world’s largest subscription services smoothly process millions of monthly subscriptions is now available to you as well.

Jonathan Corona ·
Show More