Board of directors

Career

Jacques Martin is a corporate director. He has been the Chair of the Board since September 2018. He spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs in London and New York where he was Managing Director and Head of International Equities at the time of his departure in 2003. From 2004 until 2008, he was Senior Vice-President, International Equities, based in New York, for the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Quebec.

Mr. Martin is currently a member of the Board of Directors of RGA Life Reinsurance Company of Canada.

Mr. Martin holds a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University and a Bachelor of Law from Université de Montréal. He also holds an MBA and a certificate in corporate governance from INSEAD. He is a member of the Quebec Bar.

Career

William F. Chinery is a corporate director. Until early 2013, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock Asset Management Canada. During his 13 years with BlackRock and its predecessor, Barclays Global Investors, Mr. Chinery was a Managing Director in both the Toronto and San Francisco offices with various responsibilities including heading Latin America and the Americas Institutional Business. Prior to BlackRock, he spent 6 years as Senior Vice-President Quantitative Products at YMG Capital Management Inc. where he was responsible for managing Tactical Asset Allocation products for pension plans and mutual funds. He started his career at Mercer where he had account responsibility for some of the largest pension plans in Canada. He also started the Mercer Investment Consulting practice.

Mr. Chinery was formerly on the Board of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and was the past Chair of their Investment Committee. He is also a Trustee and Chair of the Board of the Toronto Fire Department Superannuation and Benefit Fund. Finally, he is a member of the Investment Committee of GreenSky Capital Inc.

Mr. Chinery is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries. He holds a B.Math. with honours from the University of Waterloo and has his ICD.D title from the Institute of Corporate Directors.

Career

Benoit Daignault is a corporate director. He was President and Chief Executive Officer of EDC between February 2014 and February 2019. Prior to this appointment, Mr. Daignault served as Senior Vice-President, Financing and Investments, after having served as Senior Vice-President, Business Development. Prior to joining EDC in 2004, Mr. Daignault worked for more than 10 years at General Electric Capital, where he held increasingly senior positions in both Canada and the United States.

Mr. Daignault currently serves on the Advisory Committee of COPAP Inc., a corporation offering international trade finance and supply chain solutions. He also previously served on the Board of Directors of the Conference Board of Canada.

Mr. Daignault holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from HEC Montréal and is a designated Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). He completed the Proteus Programme at the London Business School and the Senior Executive Program at Columbia University.

Career

Nicolas Darveau-Garneau is Chief Growth and Strategy Officer of Coveo Solutions Inc. (TSX: CVO), a leading applied artificial intelligence software company providing digital solutions for companies.

Prior to that, Mr. Darveau-Garneau was Chief Strategist at Google Search. He started with Google as Manager of the Montreal Office and then was Director of Sales in charge of a $1.2 billion division. Prior to Google, Mr. Darveau-Garneau was an Internet entrepreneur, consultant and investor. Since 1995, he has co-founded many Internet companies, including Imix.com, BigDeal and Liquor.com. Mr. Darveau-Garneau is also an angel investor in Silicon Valley, California. He worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Co. in Montreal and senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC in New York. He specializes in marketing and Internet product development.

Since 2012, Mr. Darveau-Garneau has been a director of several not-for-profit organizations. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Alida Inc., a customer experience software company.

Mr. Darveau-Garneau holds an MBA with honours from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of Waterloo.

Career

Emma K. Griffin is a corporate director. From 2015 to 2018, she was a director and strategic advisor for Golder Associates, now part of WSP Inc. From 2016 to 2019, Ms. Griffin was also a director of Aimia Inc. From 2014 to 2015, she was managing director and co-founder of Refined Selection Limited, a holding company created to invest in the professional services and recruitment industries. From 2002 to 2013, Ms. Griffin was a founding partner of Oriel Securities, an independent brokerage firm recognized for its independence and for providing trusted advice, which was sold to Stifel Financial Corp. Until November 2016, Ms. Griffin was also Chair of the board of Cancer Research UK’s Catalyst Club, a pioneering venture that raises money for personalized medicine research.

Since November 2017, Ms. Griffin acts as director of Claridge Inc., a private investment company. Since January 2020, she is a director at Groupe Solotech inc., an audiovisual and entertainment technology services company. In December 2020, she joined the Board of Directors of ED&F Man Holdings Limited, an agricultural commodities merchant.

Ms. Griffin holds a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree from Oxford University.

Career

Ginette Maillé has been Vice-President, Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer at Aéroports de Montréal since April 2017. She has more than 30 years of financial, operational and strategic experience in startups and large companies, both private and publicly listed (TSX and NASDAQ), operating nationally and internationally. In particular, she was with Yellow Pages Ltd. for 14 years, where she held the position of Vice-President and Chief Accounting Officer to later be promoted to Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer. She has also held several management positions in the field of information technology, particularly in the area of digital transformation. She sat on the board of Financial Executives International Canada (Quebec chapter) from 2014 to 2017.

Ms. Maillé is currently a member of the Board of Directors of La Fondation Le Chaînon.

A Chartered Professional Accountant, Ms. Maillé holds a Bachelor of Accounting Science from Université du Québec à Montréal and has her ICD.D title from the Institute of Corporate Directors.

Career

Monique Mercier is a corporate director. She is also a Senior Advisor with the law firm Bennett Jones. During her career, she has held various executive roles in the telecommunications and technology industry. From 2014 until she retired in December 2018, she held the position of Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Legal and Governance Officer at TELUS. She oversaw legal and regulatory affairs, government relations, media, real estate and sustainable development. She began her career at Stikeman Elliott as a tax lawyer in 1984. She then worked at BCE and Bell Canada International before joining Emergis in 1999, which was acquired by TELUS in 2008.

Ms. Mercier previously sat on the Board of Directors of the Bank of Canada. She gives back to the community through her involvement on the Board of Directors of the Thoracic Surgery Research Foundation of Montreal.

Ms. Mercier holds a degree from the Faculty of Law at Université de Montréal and a master’s degree in political science from Oxford University, where she was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship.

In June 2018, Ms. Mercier received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Canadian General Counsel Awards. In 2017, she received the title of Emeritus Lawyer from the Quebec Bar. In 2016, she was honoured as Woman of the Year by the organization Women in Communications and Technology (WCT). In 2015, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Women’s Executive Network Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada.

Career

Danielle G. Morin is a corporate director. She has extensive experience in finance, including more than 35 years of experience in various sectors of the financial services industry. She worked for Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada from 1977 until 1990 and for the Laurentian Imperial Company from 1990 until 1994, where she was Senior Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer. She then worked for Desjardins Group in the group pensions and pooled investment funds areas, before joining Canagex Inc., a Desjardins Group investment subsidiary, as Vice-President, Finance and Operations, in 1999. In 2001, she joined the Public Sector Pension Investment Board as Senior Vice-President of Financial Operations. Ms. Morin then worked as Senior Vice-President, Distribution and Client Services, at Standard Life Investments Inc., from 2006 until 2013.

Ms. Morin has been on the boards of ASSURIS, Standard Life Investments Inc., Université Laval and the Fondation de l’Université Laval.

Ms. Morin graduated from the Institute of Corporate Directors where she got her ICD.D designation and obtained her bachelor’s degree in actuarial science from Université Laval. She was a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries from 1980 to 2019.

Career

Marc Poulin currently serves as a corporate director. He was a senior-level manager in the food industry in Canada. Over the last 19 years he was at Sobeys Inc., he held, successively, the roles of Vice-President, Purchasing and Merchandising, Executive Vice-President and Assistant General Manager (Quebec), Head of Operations for Quebec and, from 2012 to 2016, President and Chief Executive Officer. He also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Empire Company Limited from 2012 to 2016. Prior thereto, Mr. Poulin had held the strategic positions of Vice-President at Desjardins-Laurentian Life Group and at Culinar.

Mr. Poulin is a member of the Human Resources and Corporate Governance Committee of Richelieu Hardware Ltd. He also currently advises various private companies in the food industry.

Mr. Poulin holds a bachelor’s degree in actuarial science from Université Laval and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston (Illinois).

Career

Suzanne Rancourt is a corporate director with more than 30 years of experience in consulting and management in finance and information technology.

From 2006 to 2016, Ms. Rancourt was Vice-President Enterprise Risks and Internal Audit at CGI. Since her arrival at CGI in 1985, she held increasingly senior positions in consulting, strategy and information technology, business development, project management and corporate functions in a multinational environment. Prior to her arrival at CGI, Ms. Rancourt began her career as an auditor and worked in operations, finance and accounting in distribution, retail and financial industries.

Ms. Rancourt is a member of the board of directors of the Institute of Corporate Directors (Quebec Chapter).

Ms. Rancourt holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Université du Québec à Montréal and an ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors. She is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA).

Career

Denis Ricard has been President and Chief Executive Officer of iA Financial Group since September 2018. He is an engaged leader who values employee development in a learning, socially responsible organization.

Mr. Ricard began his career at iA Financial Group in 1985, after completing his bachelor’s degree in actuarial sciences at Université Laval. Over the years, he has assumed positions of increasing responsibility in sectors ranging from actuarial to business development to corporate management.

Mr. Ricard has been involved in the community for many years. He currently serves as honorary chair for various charitable events and campaigns. Among these, he co-presides the fundraising campaign cabinet for the Musée des sciences and the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City, the Grande Campagne of the Maison Michel-Sarrazin Foundation and is a member of the campaign cabinet of the IUCPQ Fondation.

Mr. Ricard is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (FCIA) and of the Society of Actuaries (FSA).

Career

Ouma Sananikone serves as a corporate director. She has extensive experience in finance, particularly investment management and ESG, covering all asset classes, including private equity, infrastructure, real estate, renewable energy and real assets, having spent over 30 years in the industry at both executive and board levels.

Ms. Sananikone was CEO of Aberdeen Asset Management (Australia), CEO of the EquitiLink Group (Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada and UK) as well as founding Managing Director of BNP Investment Management (Australia).

Ms. Sananikone currently serves on the board of directors of Ivanhoe Cambridge (Canada). She has also served on the boards of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (Canada), Smarte Carte (USA), Air-Serve Holdings (USA), Moto Hospitality Ltd (UK), and State Super Corporation of NSW (Australia). She also acted as an honorary Australian Financial Services fellow for the USA on behalf of the Australian government.

Ms. Sananikone has always been committed to the community, serving as director for a number of arts, education and charitable organizations, among them, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Ms. Sananikone holds a BA (economics and political sciences) from the Australian National University and a Master of Commerce (economics) from the University of New South Wales. She is a recipient of the Centenary Medal from the Australian Government for services to the Australian finance industry.

Career

Rebecca Schechter is a Senior Vice-President and General Manager of the Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) at Nuance Communications Inc., a Microsoft Company, focused on transforming the provider-patient experience and improving total health outcomes. She holds a track record of profitably growing and transforming businesses in group benefits, retirement and healthcare.

Prior to Nuance, Ms. Schechter was an executive at Optum, a leading information and technology-enabled health services business where she served as Chief Executive Officer of United Behavioral Health, during which time she drove transformation across coverage, care delivery and digital capabilities. Before that, she served as Executive Vice-President, Commercial Insurance and President of Liberty Mutual Benefits where she led a division focused on group, individual life & annuities and voluntary benefits. Before joining Liberty Mutual, Ms. Schechter worked for State Street Corporation as Senior Vice-President, Asset Servicing for corporations, nonprofits and mid-market employers. She also held executive roles as Chief Risk Officer, Asset Servicing and Senior Managing Director, Electronic Trading. Prior to State Street, she held leadership roles at Thomson Financial, as well as a consulting role at McKinsey.

Ms. Schechter serves on a nonprofit board at Jumpstart. In addition, she is a member of the McGill University Desautels Global Experts Panel and of The Boston Club’s Executive Advisory Committee.

Ms. Schechter holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University and a Master of Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management.