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Celebrating the accomplishments of our partners on International Women’s Day ‪ ‬

Posted in : Blog
Posted on : March 8, 2016

Susan Rogers, MBA - Chief Officer, Partner Relations

We get to work with so many wonderful organizations that are at different stages of managing their diversity and creating inclusion. As we were preparing to recognize some of their achievements on International Women’s Day in social media, the story grew into a bigger one. So we’d like to honour our employer partners who have been winning recognition for supporting the advancement of women – with apologies to those we might have missed. We encourage readers to include our partners and awards we’ve overlooked in the comments of our various social postings.

Accenture wrote a report that digitally savvy women are helping to close the gender gap in the workplace. None of our employer partners would have made this list without advancing women at work. Canada’s Best Diversity Employers recognizes exceptional workplace diversity and inclusion, and we are proud of our partners who were included among the country’s leaders:

• Accenture
• Air Canada
• Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP
• Children’s Aid Society of Toronto
• CIBC
• Deloitte
• Dentons
• Home Depot of Canada Inc.
• Loblaw Companies Limited
• McCarthy Tétrault
• RBC
• City of Saskatoon
• Shell Canada Ltd.
• Sodexo Canada Ltd.
• TD Bank Group
• TELUS Corporation

Our founding partners in the financial sector, CIBC, RBC and Scotiabank – and employer partners Manulife Financial and TD Bank Group – have all been receiving awards for their programs supporting women in leadership. We were proud to see them recognized for leadership in finance from nonprofit organization, Women In Capital Markets’ Champions of Change this year:

• From CIBC, Marc St-Onge and CIBC Capital Markets’ Susan Rimmer
• From Manulife, Halina von dem Hagen and Warren A. Thomson
• From RBC, Mark Hughes and Patti Perras Shugart (RBC Capital Markets)
• From Scotiabank, Pruyn Haskins and Marian Lawson
• From TD Securities, Cecile Baker and Todd Hargarten

Women’s Executive Network (WXN) celebrates Canada’s Most Powerful Women with their Top 100 list, which includes 17 women from our employer partners. Read their list of profiles for more about these inspiring women:

• Jane Allen, Partner & Global Leader, Renewable Energy, Deloitte
• Micheline Bouchard, Corporate Director, TELUS
• Norie Campbell, Group Head Legal, Compliance, Anti-Money Laundering, Financial Crimes and Fraud Management, Enterprise Projects and General Counsel, TD Bank Group
• Laura Dottori-Attanasio, Senior EVP & Chief Risk Officer, CIBC
• Cindy Forbes, EVP & Chief Actuary, Manulife Financial Corporation
• Marianne Hasold-Schilter, EVP & Chief Administrative Officer, International Banking, Scotiabank
• Blaize Horner Reich, Dean; RBC Professor of Technology & Innovation, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University
• Sandy McIntosh, EVP, People & Culture & Chief Human Resources Officer, TELUS
• Monique Mercier, EVP, Corporate Affairs, Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary, TELUS
• Ikram Al Mouaswas, Senior Manager, Deloitte
• Carol Osler, SVP & Head of Financial Crimes and Fraud Management Group and Enterprise Project Management, TD Bank Group
• Asifa Samji, VP, Environmental Services, Stantec
• Linda Seymour, EVP & Country Head of Commercial Banking, HSBC Bank Canada
• Patti Perras Shugart, Managing Director & Head, Corporate Banking & Global Credit, RBC Capital Markets
• Jennifer Tory, Group Head, Personal and Commercial Banking, RBC
• Eleanor Wachtel, Host, Writers & Company and Wachtel on the Arts, CBC Radio

Women’s advancement has been acknowledged as an issue in law and at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, their Women@Blakes network has been focused on business development and leadership opportunities for female lawyers and clients. Dentons Canadian office has been committed to representation in the boardroom with their Women’s Leadership and Growth Network and another of our founding partners, McCarthy Tétrault, has been winning recognition within legal circles.

In Alberta, the Deloitte Women's Initiative For Leadership Learning connects women with established careers to mentor women who are new to the workforce with a female-centric model. The RBC Capital Markets Scholarship for Women is supporting young talent with up to four $5,000 scholarships each year, with employment and mentoring opportunities attached. Last fall, CIBC CEO Victor Dodig was reported as saying that supportive attitudes are not enough to get more women to the top of the corporate ladder in Canada; companies need to adopt concrete processes and goals to make it happen. Cisco Canada’s Women Entrepreneurs’ Circle empowers women leading small and medium businesses in Canada with the training and IT support they need to build capacity, grow and succeed.

Within our employer partners we see so many organizations develop strong employee resources groups for women. Our case studies of Canadian diversity and inclusion, has launched with CIBC’s Success Story and later this month, we’ll be publishing one about Sodexo Canada and supplier diversity – with an inspiring anecdote about how the company helped an Aboriginal woman grow her line of food products from a single ingredient into a successful business.

This International Women’s Day, we are reminded of the wage gap in Canada, where we are not performing as well as we might be, as the Globe and Mail wrote in an article littered with statistics that go against how many of us think about our country, and opportunity. Women make 73.5 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Our employer partners represent the organizations that are working hard to be inclusive, free of prejudice and discrimination – and to generate the awareness, dialogue and action for people to recognize diversity as an asset and not an obstacle. We honour those who advance women and celebrate their successes.

Related reading:  Learn more about becoming an Employer Partner. 

Tags Employer Partners International Women's Day Observance Women