Board of Directors

Mr. Young has been a member of the Board of Directors of Intact Financial Corporation since 2018 and was appointed Chair in May 2022. He has extensive public company board experience. He was a member of the Magna International Board of Directors from 2011 until May 2022 and has chaired that board from 2012 to 2022. He was also appointed Chair of the Board of Directors of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. in September 2020, and has extensive experience in the private equity sector. He co-founded and was a partner of Monitor Clipper Partners, a private equity firm established in 1998. He is also a founding partner of Westbourne Management Group (1988) and was a partner in the European practice of Bain & Company (1981 to 1988). Mr. Young possesses significant operational experience, as well as extensive mergers and acquisitions experience. He is Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Queen’s University, which he chaired from 2006 to 2012 and he is chair of the board of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Mr. Young has significant private company board and board leadership experience over the last 20 years, including a number of European and U.S.-based companies. He is a professional engineer (P.Eng. – Ontario) with a B.Sc (Honours) in chemical engineering (Queen’s) and an MBA with distinction (Harvard).

William L. Young , , , Chair of the Board of Directors

Charles Brindamour is Chief Executive Officer of Intact Financial Corporation. IFC is the largest provider of property and casualty insurance in Canada, a leading provider of global specialty insurance, and, with RSA, a leader in the UK and Ireland. He began his career with Intact in 1992 and has held progressively senior roles, in Canada and abroad, within Intact and its former affiliates, including Senior Vice President of Personal Lines and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Brindamour was appointed President and CEO in January 2008.

Under Mr. Brindamour’s leadership, the company became an independent and widely-held Canadian company in 2009 and two years later, acquired AXA Canada; at the time, the largest acquisition in the history of Canada’s property and casualty insurance (P&C) industry. In 2017, Mr. Brindamour grew the company’s presence further into the United States with the acquisition of OneBeacon Insurance Group, Ltd. In 2021, Mr. Brindamour successfully completed the acquisition of RSA Insurance plc, Intact’s largest acquisition to date, growing premiums from $12 to $20 billion.

Mr. Brindamour is a graduate of Université Laval in Actuarial Science and an Associate of the Casualty Actuarial Society. In May 2019, Mr. Brindamour received an honorary PhD from HEC Montréal. He is a board member of Intact Financial Corporation, the Geneva Association, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the Business Council of Canada.

Charles Brindamour , , , Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Clarke has had a long and established career in the insurance industry, having spent more than twenty-five years at PartnerRe, most recently serving as President and Chief Executive Officer.

Over his tenure at PartnerRe, a leading global reinsurer, Mr. Clarke held various underwriting leadership roles in the company's property and casualty (P&C), specialty lines, and international divisions. In 2015, he was appointed President of the company and shortly thereafter took on the role of President and Chief Executive Officer, where his leadership was instrumental in building the company's global reinsurance business.

Mr. Clarke serves on various boards, including the Board of Directors of Wakam, Tremor Technologies, and Compre Group.

Emmanuel Clarke , , , Corporate Director

In 2015, Ms. De Silva was named President & CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, one of the largest and most influential business organizations in North America. Prior to this role, she had 14 years of international CEO experience in Asia leading Sun Life Financial’s businesses in Hong Kong and Mainland China. She co-founded and later sold Retail China Limited, a company that worked with international retail brands operating their retail stores and managing their franchises in China. Ms. De Silva was also Dean of Ivey Asia, leading the Hong Kong campus and mainland China operations of Ivey Business School at Western University. She presently serves as a board member of Blue Umbrella Limited, a global compliance technology company headquartered in Hong Kong. She is a past member of the board of the Asian Corporate Governance Association. She has served terms both as Chair and President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and Chair of the Canada China Business Council, Beijing.

In 2019, Ms. De Silva was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to represent Canada on the APEC Business Advisory Council. Ms. De Silva holds an MBA from the Ivey Business School at Western University and a Doctor of Law honoris causa from Thompson Rivers University.

Janet De Silva , , , President & CEO of Toronto Region Board of Trade

Ms. Kingsmill is an experienced executive who served in a wide range of roles in the insurance, asset management and real estate businesses of Manulife over her career, from 1988 to 2019. Most recently, she was Senior Advisor to Manulife’s CEO and led the Company’s ambitious expense efficiency program. Prior to that, Ms. Kingsmill was Executive Vice President, Human Resources with responsibility for Manulife’s workforce of 35,000 people located primarily in 13 countries. From 2006 to 2010, she was Senior Vice President & General Manager, Real Estate, responsible for Manulife’s multi-billion dollar investment portfolio of prime office and industrial properties across markets in Canada, the US and Asia.

Stephani Kingsmill , , , Corporate Director

With over 30 years of experience in the financial services sector, Ms. Kinney is a recognized leader in governance, risk management, regulatory compliance and internal audit services. Until 2019, she was Vice Chair of Deloitte and she is a former member of its leadership team. Prior to that role, she occupied various positions at Deloitte, including Canadian Managing Partner, Quality & Risk and Global Chief Risk Officer. She is also a former member of Deloitte’s Board of Directors and Risk Committee. Ms. Kinney’s governance and risk experience includes numerous reviews and independent evaluations of organizations responding to regulator findings. A substantial portion of her practice has focused on the evolving areas of Risk Governance and Risk Appetite.

Ms. Kinney is an active member of the community and has been a member of various boards, and is presently a Director at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and Chair of the Audit & Finance Committee. She also is a long-time supporter and the current Chair of the Patron’s Council of the Alzheimer Society of Toronto. Since 2019, she has been a board member of Cenovus Energy Inc., and in February 2021, she was appointed a director of Nautilus Indemnity (Europe) DAC, a private insurance company based in Ireland. She is a leader of her profession and has been recognized as a Fellow of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario, in addition to being a frequent speaker at conferences focusing on Regulatory Compliance, Internal Audit, Corporate Governance and Enterprise Risk Management. Ms. Kinney has a Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo and was recognized with an Alumni Achievement Award in 2013. She has been an advocate for women throughout her career and was recognized as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women in 2014.

Jane Kinney , , , Corporate Director

Mr. Leary is a corporate director. He was previously CEO of The Olayan Group, a private international investor and a diverse commercial and industrial group with operations globally. Mr. Leary was also previously CEO of Nuveen, a U.S. based investment management firm that was acquired in 2014 by TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund), now known as TIAA. Mr. Leary had joined TIAA-CREF in 2013 and was instrumental in the acquisition and invigoration of Nuveen as well as its integration with TIAA’s pre-existing asset management business. In that role, Mr. Leary oversaw the expansion of TIAA / Nuveen’s socially responsible and ESG assets under management. Mr. Leary began his career as a lawyer for White & Case in New York, and then moved into the financial services arena with J.P. Morgan & Co., where he led the development of fixed-income derivative applications and investment strategies for pension plans and other investment managers. In the course of more than 20 years in the industry, Mr. Leary helped build AIG Financial Products’ investment business and led all of its client-facing businesses from marketing to distribution globally, and later was CEO of ING Investment Management Americas and ING Insurance U.S. At ING U.S., he was responsible for the investment management, retirement, insurance and annuity businesses, as well as operations, IT and marketing in the U.S. He has been a frequent speaker or panelist at numerous industry conferences and has appeared in major financial media. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science at Union College and his law degree from Fordham University School of Law.

Robert G. Leary , , , Corporate Director

Sylvie Paquette has spent her entire career in the P&C insurance industry in Canada. She joined Desjardins Group in 1984 and held a variety of progressively senior roles within the organization before being promoted in 2008 to Senior Executive Vice-President and General Manager of the Group’s P&C insurance division as well as President and Chief Operating Officer of Desjardins General Insurance Group (DGIG). During Ms. Paquette’s tenure as President and COO, she spearheaded Desjardins’ acquisition of State Farm’s Canadian operations in 2015. She retired from Desjardins Group in December 2016.

Ms. Paquette has been actively involved in key industry associations. In recent years, she was a Board member of the Insurance Bureau of Canada (Chair in 2015 and 2016), of the General Insurance Statistical Agency, of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction and of the Centre for Insurance and Financial Services Development (Chair from 2009 to 2014). Throughout her career, Ms. Paquette has co-chaired major fundraising campaigns, and she sat on the Board of Laval University’s Foundation until recently. Ms. Paquette is a graduate of the Actuarial Science program at Laval University. She is also certified as a corporate director (Administrateur de sociétés certifié (ASC)) by the Collège des administrateurs de sociétés.

Sylvie Paquette , , , Corporate Director

Mr. Russell is a pioneer researcher in Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) who co-authored in the mid1990s Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field. His research on AI covers a broad range of topics including machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning and real-time decision making. He joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley in 1986 and is a Professor (and formerly Chair) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering. Mr. Russell also served as Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Council on AI and Robotics, and he is a co-founder and Vice-President of Bayesian Logic, Inc., a data analysis start-up under contract with the United Nations Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. Mr. Russell is also a member of the advisory boards of Varo Money, Inc., ReciTAL SAS, Planet Labs Inc., Faculty Science Ltd. and Semiotic Labs BV.

Mr. Russell is a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation, the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, the World Technology Award (Policy category), the Mitchell Prize of the American Statistical Association and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, the Feigenbaum Prize of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the ACM Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, and the AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator Award. Mr. Russell holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honors in Physics from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

Stuart J. Russell , , , Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California at Berkeley

Dr. Samarasekera is a corporate director and Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones, LLP. Dr. Samarasekera served as the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Alberta from 2005 to 2015. She is internationally recognized as a leading metallurgical engineer, including for her work on steel process engineering for which she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Among other things, Dr. Samarasekera was previously a member of Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council as well as Canada’s Global Commerce Strategy. She possesses an M. Sc. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, as well as a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Samarasekera has also been elected as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S. She currently serves on the board of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, together with Mr. Young. Dr. Samarasekera is also a committee member of the TMX Group/Institute of Corporate Directors’ Committee on the Future of Corporate Governance in Canada.

Dr. Indira Samarasekera , , , Corporate Director

Mr. Singer is an internet pioneer and entrepreneur whose career and philanthropic accomplishments have spanned a broad range of sectors from media, education, arts, science and veterans affairs. Until December 2021, he was CEO of Echo360, which provides a next-generation educational software platform to help over 1,200 schools in 20 countries deliver better educational outcomes, he was subsequently named Chairman of the board of directors of Echo360. Previously, Mr. Singer was a Senior Advisor to Masayoshi Son, President and CEO of Softbank Corporation in Japan and was also active as a venture partner at Softbank Capital in the U.S. Prior to Softbank, Mr. Singer held a number of senior roles at AOL including Chief Operating Officer of AOL Studios, Chief Operating Officer for ICQ (instant messaging) and Senior Vice President of Emerging Products. Prior to AOL, he was a founder of the Washington Post Online Service (now WashingtonPost.com) and a consultant with Bain & Company. Mr. Singer has served on a number of business, charitable and educational boards including DoubleClick, Motley Fool Company, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (International Committee), Queen’s University School of Business, Upper Canada College, The Langley School and “Warrior to Cyber Warrior”, which focuses on providing distance learning training in the field of cybersecurity to wounded veterans. He was named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s “Tech Titans” in 2013 and 2015. He has also funded pioneering research in autism with the Children’s National Medical Center and Stanford University. Mr. Singer holds an MBA from Harvard University, as well as an LL.B, MA in Philosophy, BA with Distinction in Philosophy and a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from Queen’s University in Canada. He is also a recipient of the Tricolour award at Queen’s University.

Frederick Singer , , , Corporate Director

Ms. Wilkins had a distinguished twenty-year career at the Bank of Canada, serving as Senior Deputy Governor for the last six and a half years, overseeing strategic planning and economic and financial research. She was a member of the Bank’s Governing Council and served as a member of the Bank’s Board of Directors. Ms. Wilkins recently led the development of the Bank’s market liquidity facilities as part of its COVID-19 response. She was active in international policy fora, including the Financial Stability Board. Before her appointment as Senior Deputy Governor, Ms. Wilkins was an Advisor to the Governor and a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Prior to joining the Bank, she held senior analytical roles related to economic forecasting and fiscal policy development, at both the Department of Finance Canada and the Privy Council Office.

Ms. Wilkins holds an Honours BA in Economics from Wilfrid Laurier University and an MA in Economics from Western University. She was named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award by the Women’s Executive Network in 2016 and 2018.

Carolyn A. Wilkins , , , Corporate Director

In 2014, Mr. Katchen co-founded Wealthsimple which now holds $15B assets under management. He has been called an Industry Mover by the Financial Post, a Change Agent by Canadian Business Magazine, and one of Toronto’s 50 most influential people by Toronto Life. Mr. Katchen has received the Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young, Canadian Startup Awards, and Techvibes, as well as been named one of Canada's "Top 40 Under 40". Prior to co-founding Wealthsimple he worked at top firms including Ascentry.com and McKinsey & Company.

Mr. Katchen is an active member of the Canadian Business Council and is on the Board of the SickKids Hospital Foundation, and the Wealthsimple Foundation, an initiative that helps children from low-income families save for post-secondary education. Mr. Katchen holds an honours degree in Business Administration from the Ivey Business School at Western University.

Michael Katchen , , , Co-Founder and CEO of Wealthsimple