CEO SPOTLIGHT: CIBC’s VICTOR DODIG

BEATRIX DART: The 30% Club started out in the UK in 2010. What made you want to be a part of it here in Canada?

VICTOR DODIG: It was actually you who called me and said, ‘Victor, what they are doing in the UK would be great for Canada; but we need some profile for it: Would you be willing to sign on as Chair?’ And I said, absolutely. A month after I started at CIBC, we had a big kick-off on International Women’s Day. The team from the UK came over to share their learnings to date, and from that point on, we have done things in our own Canadian way.

Talk a bit about how you tweaked the Club’s mandate to reflect the Canadian environment.

The focus in the UK is on FT 100-listed companies. We cast a significantly broader net, to cover professional services firms — law firms, accounting firms and executive search firms — as well as listed companies. If you look at CIBC’s proxy statement on boards — which reflects the Ontario Securities Commission’s gender diversity initiative — our chairman called for us to have a minimum of 30 per cent women on our board, as opposed to simply aiming for 30 per cent. Our wording was very specific from the start, and we have now reached 35 per cent.

The two women we added most recently were technology executives, one from Silicon Valley and one from New York, both with an American