Co-Founder, Ask Ayla AI | Director, We Love Joy Foundation | Co-Founder, Whispering Springs Wilderness Retreat | Shareholder | Publisher of Children’s Books
The Weight Behind the Welcome:
The 180 acres of Northumberland County that make up Whispering Springs Wilderness Retreat look, to most arriving guests, like an escape. Tall trees. Open sky. The particular quiet that only comes when a property has been shaped by people who actually love the land. On any given weekend between May and October, the retreat hums with the energy of weddings, glamping guests, and families looking for the kind of rest that a hotel lobby cannot deliver. More than 100 weddings happen here each season. Thousands of guests arrive annually. Sixty-five employees keep the whole thing running with the consistency of a much larger operation and the warmth of a much smaller one.
What most guests do not know is that the same property, on specific weekends, becomes something else entirely. It becomes a place where parents of children with disabilities arrive carrying a kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with needing a vacation. And it is there, in that second life of Whispering Springs, that Nancy Corcoran’s real work begins.
The Woman Who Runs Both:
Nancy Corcoran is the co-owner of Whispering Springs Wilderness Retreat and the Executive Director of the We Love Joy Foundation, a registered non-profit dedicated to literacy, accessibility, and emotional support for families and caregivers of children with special needs, based in Colborne, Ontario. She built a thriving hospitality business and, without stepping back from it, built a parallel infrastructure of care for the families her industry would never naturally reach.
A Family Vision, Built Acre by Acre:
Nancy did not arrive at Whispering Springs through a corporate pivot or a calculated market opportunity. She arrived the way most meaningful things begin, through a shared dream between two people willing to do the hard work of making it real.
In 2017, Nancy and her husband John began transforming 180 acres of Northumberland County into what would eventually become one of Ontario’s premier luxury glamping and wedding destinations. Their children, Chris and Jenna, along with Jenna’s husband Dave, joined the effort not as employees but as builders. Construction. Operations. Guest experience. Design. Every member of the family contributed something the property needed, and the result was a retreat that carried the fingerprints of people who had genuine stakes in its success.
Growth came, but not at the expense of quality. Nancy credits three decisions for making scale possible without diluting what made Whispering Springs worth visiting in the first place. “We focused relentlessly on the guest experience rather than simply selling accommodations,” she explains. “We wanted guests to leave with memories, not just a reservation.” The second decision was cultural: building a team where every staff member understood that creating joy was a shared responsibility, not a departmental function. Many employees return season after season, which has given Whispering Springs a consistency rare in hospitality. The third was financial discipline. Rather than chasing rapid expansion, the family reinvested in the property itself, improving infrastructure, wedding facilities, and guest amenities year after year until the retreat became the kind of place that earns its reputation without needing to advertise it loudly.
Today, Whispering Springs hosts more than 100 weddings each season, welcomes thousands of guests annually, and operates with a team of approximately 65 employees. By any conventional measure, the business succeeded.
Nancy measures success differently.
The Work That Changed Everything:
“I’ve always believed that businesses exist to improve people’s lives,” Nancy says. “Profit is essential, but purpose is what creates longevity.”
That belief was tested, and then clarified, when her granddaughter Ayla was born with severe cerebral palsy following a preventable birth injury. What followed for Ayla’s parents, Jenna and Dave Fisher, was the experience shared by families everywhere who are suddenly handed a diagnosis and almost no roadmap. Therapists to find. Specialists to locate. Funding to pursue. Questions with no obvious place to ask them. Nancy watched her family search, and she recognized that the searching itself was part of the suffering.
That recognition became Ask Ayla.
Working with a team of volunteers and technology partner Gambit Co., Nancy helped build an AI-powered platform that connects families navigating cerebral palsy and other disabilities with evidence-informed resources, lived-experience guidance from families like Jenna and Dave’s, and organizations positioned to help. The platform is available in more than 65 languages. Collaborations are already underway with researcher Miriam Gonzalez at McGill University, Dr. Eugene Ng at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and CanChild, with clinicians across Canada contributing to ongoing evaluation and improvement.
“Success isn’t measured by downloads or website traffic,” Nancy says. “It’s measured by the number of parents who tell us they finally feel understood, supported, and less alone.”
The We Love Joy Foundation, which Nancy co-founded alongside her sister and creative partner Jayne Nagy, extends this work further. Through its publishing branch, We Love Joy Inc., the Foundation produces children’s books that celebrate individuality, kindness, and resilience, with proceeds funding literacy and inclusion initiatives across Canada. The Foundation’s partnerships span researchers, hospitals, universities, educators, and community organizations, all connected around one shared goal: ensuring families navigating disability never feel alone in doing it.
And then there is Camp Moonlight.
Held at Whispering Springs, Camp Moonlight is a respite retreat for families raising children with disabilities. The first camp brought together approximately 25 families for a weekend where, as Nancy describes it, they could simply exhale. Parents who had felt isolated found friendships that lasted beyond the weekend. Siblings met other children who understood their particular experience. “For many families, it was the first time they realized they were not alone,” she recalls. “That experience became the inspiration for creating the We Love Joy Foundation.”
The same 180 acres that host weddings and glamping guests now host something harder to quantify and more difficult to forget. A fundraising event is scheduled for September 18 at Whispering Springs. The next Camp Moonlight is set for June 2027.
What the 180 Acres Are Really For:
There is a question worth sitting with when you consider what Nancy Corcoran has built. Most people who create a successful hospitality business stop there. The business becomes the point. Growth becomes the goal. The metric that matters is the one that shows up in the revenue column.
Nancy built the business and then asked what else it could do. She asked that question not in a boardroom but in the middle of her family’s hardest years, while her granddaughter’s parents were searching for answers that should have been easier to find. The retreat that began as a family vision became a place of healing. The publishing company that began with one children’s book became a foundation. The AI platform that began with one family’s exhaustion is now speaking to families in 65 languages.
“Every major decision is filtered through one question,” Nancy says. “Will this improve someone’s life?”
Ayla already knows the answer.
Nancy Corcoran is the co-owner of Whispering Springs Wilderness Retreat and Executive Director of the We Love Joy Foundation, based in Colborne, Ontario, Canada. She builds luxury hospitality experiences and advocacy infrastructure for families of children with disabilities, often from the same 180 acres. To connect with Nancy or learn more, visit her LinkedIn profile at linkedin.com/in/nancy-corcoran-75143b391.
