“It was the first of what would be most of the rest of my educational and professional career being one of the only minorities. I guess I learned how to deal with that early, and I see that as a positive,” Jackson says.

In high school, she applied for a summer program that pushed underrepresented minorities into science. There she listened to a young chemical engineer discuss her job designing a polymer used to make windshield glass shatterproof. “I remember the moment … I could see [engineering] applied to real life in a way that, in this particular case, actually helped save lives,” she says.

After getting a degree in chemical engineering from Yale and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon, Jackson’s love of teamwork and her impatience with solitary research jobs led her away from academia to a career in management consulting. A decade later she joined Capital One in Washington, D.C., first as senior director, then as vice-president. In 2018, she moved to Toronto to become president of Capital One Canada, becoming one of the only women – and even rarer, one of the only Black women – running a large Canadian corporation.

Despite rising to the top of the corporate world, Jackson says that being both Black and a woman has meant that she’s often been underestimated, passed over and excluded – and once even mistaken for waitstaff at a corporate event. “We’ve always been taught that we need to do twice as much work and work twice as hard to get the same things.”

Jackson says her science background comes in handy in the numbers-obsessed financial services industry and has also helped her build common ground, even when race and gender made her an outsider. “Ultimately, we have more in common than we have differences, even if that’s not always apparent. Sometimes it takes more conversation or personal exposure to get to that point,” she says.

With Jackson at the helm, Capital One Canada has tried to support young women of colour by sponsoring the annual Black Girl Magic Summit, which engages young women on entrepreneurship, financial and personal wellness, and money management.

Jackson’s advice to corporate leaders: “Ensure there’s a diversity plan. Be mindful of bias in our recruiting and development process, develop meaningful promotion and performance reviews. And then lead with empathy.”

Wes Hall

Founder of Kingsdale Advisors and the BlackNorth Initiative

Wes Hall learned early how to make it on his own. When he was 13, his mother packed all his things into a straw bag and kicked him out of their home, a tin shack in rural Jamaica. Hall earned money “selling peanuts on the street,” paying for his own food, clothing and school expenses, before moving to Canada to live with his father at 16.

Years later, that same determination propelled him to leave his job at the investor services firm Georgeson to start Kingsdale Advisors, a company dedicated to helping activist investors effect change within public companies. Working in corporate Canada, Hall says that he was never invited into any boardrooms, so he channelled his entrepreneurial drive and founded his own firm. “I wanted to create something … and control my own destiny,” he says.

He soon became one of Bay Street’s most powerful brokers, but he and his family continued to experience systemic anti-Black racism. After the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May, Hall felt compelled to write an op-ed in The Globe and Mail. He wrote of seeing Floyd when he looked in the mirror and called for the dismantling of systemic anti-Black racism. Numerous business leaders, including CIBC CEO Victor Dodig, reached out to him after reading the piece, asking how they could help.

With their support, Hall launched the BlackNorth Initiative, which urges businesses to support diversity, inclusion and the Black community. Their pledge was signed by more than 300 Canadian CEOs of companies representing a market cap of more than $1 trillion, including Capital One Canada’s Jennifer Jackson. The signatories commit to hiring at least 5% of their student workforce from the Black community and ensuring that 3.5% of board and executive positions are held by Black people by 2025.

Hall’s advice to racialized professionals: “If you’re stuck in [a] position for a sustained period of time and you’re an ambitious person, leave. Look at other companies that have a better track record in promoting racial diversity, even if you have to get less money and work your way up, because at least they’ll give you an opportunity.”

Michael Lee-Chin

Founder of Portland Holdings

In the late 1970s, Michael Lee-Chin drove 120 kilometres every day to his job in Tillsonburg, a small town in southern Ontario whose sweltering tobacco fields were immortalized in an eponymous song by Stompin’ Tom Connors. He had received only three job offers after returning to Canada, where he studied civil engineering at McMaster University, from an engineering job in Jamaica, where he was born and raised. The offers were all outside his intended field: long-haul truck driver, soap salesman and financial advisor. It was accepting the third that brought him to Tillsonburg and the world of finance.

As an advisor, Lee-Chin would spend his days cold-calling potential clients. If lucky, he was invited to their homes. “I was so excited that someone would really say yes to me and give me the opportunity to come and present,” he says. “I would say to myself while in the middle of the presentation at the kitchen table, ‘What’s the highest value I can give this family here tonight?’ And the answer kept coming back to me: make them wealthy.”

This led to another question: how?

He devised a formula for wealth creation: all wealthy people own a few high-quality businesses in long-term growth industries they deeply understand. They spend money prudently and view wealth through a long-term, intergenerational lens. Applying the formula to himself, he snapped up financial-services firms and ballooned their assets under management. The CEO of Portland Holdings and chair of the National Commercial Bank of Jamaica now has a personal net worth pegged at $1.5 billion. The philanthropist’s donations also helped found the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management’s Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship.

Lee-Chin notes that despite his impressive career, which includes being one of the few Canadians on the Forbes billionaire list, he’s never been invited to sit on a corporate board. “I can’t attribute it to anything other than that I must be less attractive than the worst board member in all the Canadian companies,” he jokes.

His approach to racism during his early career was shaped by a young man’s naiveté. Growing up in Jamaica to Black and Chinese-Jamaican parents, Lee-Chin says he never experienced racism and entered Canada colour-blind. “Had I been overthinking [colour] right out of the door I would have said to myself, ‘There’s no way I, as a Black man, should go and cold call in rural Ontario, where whenever they see Black people, they’re picking tobacco, not giving financial advice.’”

When asked how to fight systemic racism, Lee-Chin cited Newton’s law of inertia: an object will remain at rest unless an external force pushes it into motion. Similarly, he says, corporate Canada will remain complacent unless outsiders – be they consumers, activist investors or policy-makers – force it to change.

Tracy Miller

Senior vice-president of CP Rail

Long before Tracy Miller became a senior vice-president at CP Rail, he studied mathematics at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was scouted by a Chicago rail company.

Miller says his “lifestyle growing up as a young Black man [in Tennessee] and all the things that you deal with, mixed with this mathematical, analytical way of thinking,” readied him for a 25-year career in the sector. He says understanding the challenges of being one of the few Black executives in corporate America, and now corporate Canada, requires focusing on the words “one of the few.”

“You worry about a lot of different variables that come into play when there’s no one else around that’s like you. You feel like you have to be stronger than normal and at least twice as good sometimes to get some of the recognition that you deserve,” he says, echoing Jennifer Jackson’s sentiment.

In April 2019, Miller filed a suit against a former employer, alleging that racial discrimination had led to his being passed over for promotions five times since 2015, despite his excellent employee record and his reputation among his peers. He left to join CP as VP of corporate risk in March 2019.

Miller, like Hall, advises emerging Black leaders to find inclusive companies that value their talent: “Remain hopeful. Be persistent and be realistic.”

He adds, “I think there are a lot of young Black leaders who would excel if they were given an opportunity.”

The post Leading while Black appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The online broadcast, which was watched live by more than 3,000 people, was organized by the recently forged Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism in partnership with the Canadian Black Chamber of Commerce.

The council – which was founded in June by Kingsdale Advisors founder Wes Hall, along with his co-chairs, CIBC CEO Victor Dodig, Cisco Canada CEO Rola Dagher and Fairfax Holdings CEO Prem Watsa – has been pushing Canada’s top corporations to take concrete action to support Black employees and end anti-Black systemic racism. The council was created in response to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. 

The BlackNorth Initiative pledge outlines the steps companies must take to fight anti-Black racism, including hiring at least 5% of their student workforce from the Black community, expanding unconscious-bias and anti-racism education, and ensuring that at least 3.5% of board and executive roles are held by Black leaders by 2025. By the start of the summit, more than 200 CEOs of major Canadian companies, representing over $1 trillion in market capitalization, had signed on to the pledge, including 30% of companies on the TSX 60. 

“Until now, Blacks have been left behind by the diversity movement in Canada. Today, that changes,” said Hall in a statement issued ahead of the summit. “These organizations will also be ambassadors for the creation of a new Black-friendly and Black-enabling Canada – progressively attracting those people and organizations whose values align with the BlackNorth Initiative,” added Hall. 

To date, Black Canadians have been underrepresented in corporate leadership positions. An analysis of S&P/TSX 60 companies by Corporate Knights found that less than 1% of board and executive positions in these companies were held by Black people. No member of this small percentage was Canadian, meaning the 3% of the Canadian population that identifies as Black is unseen in boardrooms of C-suites at Canada’s top corporations.

During the summit, Hall spoke of how difficult it’s been for Black Canadians to break the glass ceiling, sharing the story of Robert Sutherland, who was the first Black graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School in 1855. Hall asked why, if the first Black lawyer existed in the 1800s, there are still no Black partners.

“Why are we still talking about the first Black [person] when we’ve been here for 400 years?”

High-achieving young Black Canadians shared stories of being the only Black person at their law school, being belittled by their peers and being ignored by employers in spite of graduating at the top of their class. 

Speakers at the summit said workplace racism isn’t just harmful to the Black community; it also impacts the bottom line at corporations that lack diverse leadership. A study conducted in 2017 by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that businesses with ethnically diverse teams were 33% more likely to outperform their non-diverse peers. 

“If high-performing companies and high-performing investors are all more diverse, our challenge is now to figure out how we can implement that in each of our companies, and more systematically as a society,” said Dame Vivian Hunt, managing partner at McKinsey in the United Kingdom and Ireland. 

As part of a panel discussion broadcast live from Toronto, CIBC’s Dodig said tackling systemic racism is “not a sociological project … it’s an economic project,” since doing so would raise Canada’s standard of living. 

“Candidly, I believe that this is going to drive economic growth. This is gonna be great for our country to make sure that … every Black Canadian can bring their entire self to their organization and contribute their entire self to everything that their organization is doing,” he said.

Speaker after speaker stressed that for this to happen, companies must go beyond lip service and cosmetic changes to their organization. 

“Let’s not come here and say … ‘Okay, we’ve done it. Okay, we’ve done this association, and we’ve hired this person in human resources, and we’re good to go,’” said Masai Ujiri, president of the Toronto Raptors. “We have to be intentional. We have to be deliberate.” 

“For me,” said Dagher, “diversity is more than checking off a box.”

Being deliberate and intentional means examining your unconscious biases and learning about how the experiences of Black people may differ from yours, said Watsa. He acknowledged that, despite having immigrated from India, he himself had not experienced the degree of racism that his Black associates had experienced in Canada. He recommended that leaders speak with Black employees about racism, to better understand how it affects their lives. Watsa also stressed the importance of harsher punishments for racist behaviour, drawing a parallel to how the #MeToo movement culled sexists and sexual predators from the workplace. 

“You [display] racism, you’re fired,” he says. 

But racist behaviour can’t be addressed without an inclusive environment. Akim Aliu, former NHL player and co-head of the Hockey Diversity Alliance, an organization that aims to eliminate systemic barriers for racialized people in hockey, said he feared for his job when he criticized Calgary Flames coach Bill Peters for allegedly making racist comments. 

“One of the things that we fear, obviously in playing in the highest level of sports and I’m sure I can say in the corporate world, is losing your job,” he said.

Dagher said companies have to eliminate this fear and foster a culture of inclusivity, calling anti-Black racism a virus that corporate Canada needs to tackle. “Just as we’re fighting COVID, we’re fighting another virus. We need to make sure we have a stronger impact,” she says. 

The post Corporate leaders pledge support for diversity at BlackNorth Summit appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Until recently, that’s how many may have imagined anti-Black racism in business: isolated acts of discrimination performed by a prejudiced few. But the death of George Floyd – an unarmed 46-year-old Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer onMay 25 – and the widespread protests that have erupted globally in response are forcing Canada’s business community to rethink racism.

In the weeks since Floyd’s death, businesses around the world have been scrambling to make diversity pledges. On June 8, the Financial Times reported that major corporations had recently donated more than $450 million to American civil rights groups. Last month, the Business Council of Canada had over 130 CEOs sign a statement denouncing all forms of racism. But anti-racism advocates say corporations will need to go beyond words and donations, particularly since research reveals that systemic racism in offices and executive suites isn’t a deviation from the norm – it is the norm.

A study to be released next month by Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute analyzed the diversity of companies in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Toronto in 2019. Of 1,639 board members from 178 corporations, they found only 13 Black board members (0.79%), while white members held 1,483 spots (91%), and other racialized members held 61 spots (the institute was unable to classify some members). To put that in context, almost a tenth of Toronto is Black, while Black people make up 3.5% of Canada’s population, according to the most recent census.

Corporate Knights did its own count. After analyzing S&P/TSX 60 companies, we found that only six of the 799 senior executives and only four of the 686 board members at all 60 companies were Black. That’s less than 1%.

How Canadian companies are responding

Corporate Knights reached out to S&P/TSX 60 companies for comment. Of the 60 firms, the only companies that had Black leaders in their boardrooms or showcased on their websites’ leadership pages at the executive level were CIBC, CP Rail, Brookfield Asset Management, CGI Inc., TD Bank, Emera Inc. and Enbridge. (Corporate Knights restricted its executive count to those featured on companies’ leadership webpages. For example, two of Gildan’s VPs are Black but were excluded from our count because of this criteria.)

Of the companies that had no Black representation at the board or executive level, Restaurant Brands International (RBI) – which owns such companies as Tim Hortons and Burger King – acknowledged that change was needed. “We absolutely agree that we need more gender and racial diversity within our board and leadership teams,” said an RBI representative. To ensure there is “a permanent diversity shift that permeates our culture,”this week RBI’s CEO, José Cil, committed to ensuring that at least 50% of final-round candidates interviewing for roles at RBI offices will be from “demonstrably diverse backgrounds, including race.”

Suncor says it’s reviewing its inclusion and diversity strategy, which currently focuses on women, Indigenous peoples and the LGBT+ community, to ensure a more active involvement of Black and racialized communities.

A number of companies said that they have established diversity and inclusion (DC&I) councils, including Canadian Tire, Bell, BMO, Bausch Health, Agnico Eagle, Telus and Magna International. Magna stated that its DC&I council is “aligning with our talent review process to ensure we have broader visibility and opportunity to increase our diversity in leadership roles.”

Some corporations also highlighted their financial support for the cause: BMO donated $1 million to a number of social and racial justice groups while Canadian Tire donated $800,000 to various Black organizations. Canopy Growth noted it has been a longtime supporter of Cage-Free Cannabis (which provides legal services to communities of colour that have been disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs).

Canopy Growth says it’s also “rolling out a number of D&I [diversity and inclusion] initiatives, including benchmarking diversity and publicly reporting on our progress.”

Fortis Inc. said that while there are no Black executives in its holding company, several of its subsidiaries have Black executives and directors. Notably, FortisTCI recently appointed Ruth Forbes, a Black woman and current VP of corporate services, as its incoming president and CEO.

Teck Resources said that it considers diversity in the selection criteria for new board members and senior management team appointments and that “4 out of 12, or 33%, of directors on Teck’s board are visible minorities.”

Telus and Loblaw have both stated that 18% of their executives identify as “visible minorities”. Like most companies%, Loblaw acknowledged that it didn’t “break those numbers down further.”

Telus, which has been named one of the Best Diversity Employers in Canada by Mediacorp nearly a dozen times, told Corporate Knights, “We are committed to increasing the presence of underrepresented groups across key areas of our organization, including our Board.” Telus shared no specific targets.

Push for concrete corporate commitments

Wes Hall, executive chairman of Kingsdale Advisors, finds Corporate Knights’ TSX 60 data unsurprising. “We live those numbers every day,” he says. “We’re not shocked by them.”

Though Hall says he has seen companies increase diversity when they set their minds to it, drawing a parallel to the recent corporate push for gender diversity at the board level. “All of a sudden last year, every single company on the TSX 60 has a woman on their board, right? Because they put their mind to it. But where were the women before? They were stuck in middle management, they were stuck at that glass ceiling, looking up.”

On June 10, Hall formed the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism. The council’s membership is a who’s who of Canadian business, including CIBC CEO Victor Dodig, Cisco Canada president and CEO Rola Dagher, and Fairfax Financial Holdings CEO and chair Prem Watsa. It aims to ensure that businesses deliver on promises they’ve made to fight systemic racism and support the Black community.

The council’s BlackNorth Initiative, which will hold a summit on July 20, is urging CEOs to sign a pledge to remove systemic anti-Black barriers. Commitments include earmarking 3% of corporate donations and sponsorships to create economic opportunities in the Black community, ensuring that at least 3.5% of executives and board roles based in Canada are held by Black leaders, and hiring at least 5% of our student workforce from the Black community, all by 2025.

“We need to be uncomfortable and embrace the challenge to grow,” says BlackNorth Initiative co-chair Dagher. “It is absolutely time for us to stand up . . . A statement without a commitment is not anything at all.”

Broadening the recruitment pool 

While businesses are being called out for fumbling on diversity, public boards are making progress. Ryerson’s Diversity Institute says government-appointed boards – like those on publicly owned energy utilities, public transportation agencies and cultural institutions – boasted 63 Black board members out of a total 2,684 (2.35%). While the percentage is still small, it’s almost three times that of corporate boards.

That jump in diversity could be key to colour-correcting corporate Canada. Wendy Cukier, director of the Diversity Institute, says corporations often overlook talent found in public boards. She noted that non-profit boards often recruit candidates with corporate experience – but it’s not a two-way street. “There are lots of racialized people – and specifically Black people – who are lawyers, accountants and IT specialists that represent community organizations and could make significant contributions to corporate boards,” she says.

A study by Stacey R. Fitzsimmons, associate professor of international management at the University of Victoria, observed how often hiring happened through informal networks: 73% of Canadian board members reported that the most common method used to recruit board members involved recommendations by existing directors. Cukier says informal networks like these consist mainly of people with similar backgrounds, thus excluding qualified, diverse candidates.

“People tend to associate with people just like them, who belong to the same golf clubs,” says Cukier. Case in point: a 2014 study published by the Public Religion Research Institute, which found that 75% of white people in the U.S. have completely Caucasian social networks.

Some companies are now vowing to address this bias by changing how they hire. RBI reps say the company has “updated our search criteria for all senior positions to urge our recruiters to increase the diversity of candidates being forwarded,” adding that a steering committee of senior leaders is heading up its diversity and inclusion efforts.

Cukier says moves like this encourage budding Black leaders to envision themselves in leadership roles, which affects their aspirations and their access to mentorship.

The rewards of cultivating diverse leadership are well documented: a study by the management consultant firm McKinsey found that companies with more gender- or racially diverse executives were 33% more likely to have above-average profits. Those with diverse boards were 43% more likely to see above-average profits. Inclusively staffed companies enjoy broader talent pools, the ability to respond to a diverse set of markets, and reduced legal and reputational risk, researchers say.

But even when Black Canadians break into the boardroom, they still brave racism both overt and covert. Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Mitzie Hunter described how, after giving a speech for the Toronto-based technology incubator she was then the CEO of, a man told her she was the most “articulate Black person” he had ever heard.

“I’m pretty sure he thought he was giving me the highest compliment,” says Hunter. “Right in that moment, I stopped being the CEO . . . on a big stage representing my organization, and I became almost a little girl because of his words.”

Hunter says such comments can leave Black people feeling undermined and exhausted.

“That’s a waste,” says Hunter. “Your energy and your creativity and your talent and your thoughts and your ideas should be going into solving challenging problems that you’re there to do, rather than guarding yourself against this type of aggression.”

It’s also a wasted opportunity to reduce risk and group-think, says Cisco Canada’s Dagher, who fled Lebanon as a child.“You don’t want to hire people that look like you, that speak like you, that think like you; you want to hire people that can challenge you,” she says.

Regulating diversity 

Some diversity advocates question whether the recent corporate pledges can translate into real change. Canadian Senator Ratna Omidvar says that, while the recent response from corporations is encouraging, lasting change comes from regulation.

“What we have to rely on, then, is the law. It is the law that changes behaviours,” she says.

When it comes to long-standing efforts to improve gender diversity on boards, Senator Omidvar’s statement is largely backed up by empirical evidence, which shows that the countries that have made meaningful progress in increasing the number of women on boards all have legal targets or quotas driving that progress.

Canada’s legal system has only recently begun supporting corporate diversity. Introduced by Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Bill C-25 makes companies disclose or explain why they’re not creating plans to increase the number of women, racialized people, persons with disabilities and Indigenous citizens they hire in senior management and board positions. As of January 1, 2020, this applies to federally incorporated companies such as airlines and banks.

A growing number of companies, including Calgary-headquartered Cenovus Energy, now have formal board diversity targets. Cenovus says it has “an aspirational target to have at least 40% of independent directors be represented by women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities.”

Omidvar hoped that Bill C-25 would make such targets mandatory, but her amendment to the bill making this so was not approved by Parliament.

“I’d describe the government’s legislation as a tap on the shoulder of business to do the right thing, whereas I would have preferred a nudge,” Omidvar says.

The post How to colour-correct corporate Canada’s diversity problem appeared first on Corporate Knights.