September 18, 2025

Leith Wheeler: Investing in Women

Our job as an investment manager is to help our clients turn $1 into $2 or $3 (or more) over time. To achieve this, we need to see things differently from others – identify mistakes in others’ assessments of stocks or bonds, and then wade in with confidence. You know the adage: buy low, sell high

Central to that skill – seeing what others don’t – is welcoming and promoting diverse perspectives. We challenge management teams of companies we own to achieve parity in the board room and it’s ultimately at the core of everything we do in our own firm – not only because we believe it’s the right way to look at the world but because it yields better results for our clients.

With respect to gender diversity in particular, this commitment takes many forms across our firm. While we are not perfect – and we know we have some distance to go to achieve our ideals – we are proud of the strides we’ve taken to build an inclusive and gender-equal workplace, as well as the difference that our partners make in supporting women’s causes in our community.

Supporting Gender Equality Through Vital Signs

Leith Wheeler Investment Counsel is proud to be the national sponsor for Community Foundations of Canada’s Vital Signs program. Vital Signs is Canada’s most extensive community-driven data program, which helps to measure the vitality of our communities and support action towards improving collective quality of life.

As a part of its commitment to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality, CFC is releasing a national Vital Signs report series on gender equality this year. The reports deal with the themes of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, specifically Power, Peace, and Planet. The reports provide data and analysis on the state of gender equality across Canada, and explore how different dimensions of inequality intersect in people’s lives.

From a lack of representation in political and decision-making positions to increasing wage gaps, economic inequalities and staggering rates of gender-based violence, it’s clear that there is work to be done. Published today, the reports are available here: Power // Peace // Planet

Lifting Up Leith Wheeler Women

We are one of Canada’s last large, independently owned investment managers, and we believe we are unique in that we have a very broad and diverse shareholder base. Of the 116 full-time employees at the firm, 87 are shareholders, roughly half of whom are women.

To broaden our human resources (HR) toolkit, in 2019 our Board of Directors appointed financial services HR veteran Nola Joorisity as an Advisor. One of her focuses has been helping us identify ways to support our female partners and attract more women to the firm, a process which includes ensuring that a diverse and gender-balanced list of candidates makes every hiring long list. We also run mentorship and cross-training programs to develop our rising stars. A majority of those participants are women.

One of those mentors dedicated to supporting our female professionals is Portfolio Manager and Head of Private Clients, Leanne Scott, who hosts lunches, sharing her extensive experience in the industry, her personal story, and practical advice. Leanne mentors women both inside and outside the firm.

Over the years, our Chief Financial Officer Cecilia Wong has also invited all of the firm’s female employees to participate in “Sisterhood” sessions, where staff gathered to discuss common issues, and identify ways to support one another.

Supporting Women in our Community

The Leith Wheeler team is also very active in the community, volunteering our time to help organizations that support and promote women.

This year, Portfolio Manager Cindy Huang served on the Planning Committee for “Her Wealth Summit,” a full-day financial empowerment conference focused on the financial betterment of women – an event the firm also sponsored.

A few years back, a number of our team helped Women in Capital Markets (WCM), Association of Women in Finance, and CFA Society Vancouver (CFA SV) collaborate to produce a panel luncheon asking, “What is Driving Change in Board Diversity?” WCM’s goal is to create solutions for the progression on equality in the Canadian finance industry through advocacy, research, programming, and recruitment. Portfolio Manager Catherine Heath co-founded the Vancouver chapter of WCM and remains active in it, including providing leadership for this event, along with Leith Wheeler’s Marketing Head Mike Wallberg, who served as master of ceremonies.

Catherine provides mentorship for these and many other organizations, including undergraduate business students in Simon Fraser University’s “BEAM” program – where she’s actively advocated for increasing gender diversity in the program since its inception nearly 20 years ago, and recruited additional women to the advisory committee. Catherine is also a valued mentor to our Leith Wheeler colleagues.

Portfolio Manager Kirsten Nelms co-chaired SheBiz Vancouver for WCM, a free day-long event for 345 girls in grades 9 to 11 that offers unique access to leaders in STEM. By creating an engaging and educational experience SheBiz empowers young women to pursue studies and careers in Technology, Engineering, Finance and Accounting.

Portfolio Manager Michael Schaab also engaged Leith Wheeler to support Brescia University College, Canada's only women's university, by sponsoring their BresciaLEAD Awards Gala, an event which honours inspiring women as well as organizations that are leading the way in their field. Michael and Kirsten worked with high schools in the London and greater Toronto area to bring female high school students to the event to be inspired and encouraged by the women that have walked before them.

Michael also championed the firm’s sponsorship of Calgary Health Foundation’s 2025 Women’s Health Golf Tournament – and hit the links with several of our Calgary colleagues.

Toronto-based Portfolio Manager Stephanie Hickmott is an active, volunteer member of the 100 Women in Finance (100WF) Toronto Main Committee. 100WF is a global organization of finance industry professionals working together to empower women at every stage of their careers through peer engagement, education and philanthropic initiatives. In 2019 Stephanie co-chaired 100WF’s “Investing in the Next Generation” event which partnered with the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award program to raise money for a new platform of tools and resources to make the program more accessible to diverse young Canadians, and to encourage young women to challenge themselves by pursuing the program’s highest level of achievement. Stephanie also served on the organizing committee for the Invictus Triumph Gala, a joint event between 100WF and True Patriot Love which raised over $200,000 in 2017 for Canadian military family service centres.

Within Leith Wheeler, Cindy and Portfolio Manager Tricia Wu have co-founded an initiative: dedicated client servicing for Chinese clients. Conceived and executed by the two dynamic women, the platform strives to better serve the diverse communities that support us. Since its 2019 inception, Cindy and Tricia have hosted finance-focused seminars for new immigrants via S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) and funded (and appeared on!) CCS’s national telethon and radiothon.

Beyond the work with new immigrants, Cindy has also mentored women and girls through her participation in “I Know a Girl,” a UBC student-led organization that focuses on empowering and supporting women and delivered investment workshops for “Her Dollars & Sense” – free finance sessions in Vancouver intended to help women improve their financial literacy and increase their investment confidence.

Tricia has also been a mentor with UBC Young Women in Business (YWIB) since 2024.

In Canada, we may be in the middle innings of achieving the goal of gender equality, and the financial services industry is arguably even further behind. As a firm, we continue to strive to identify new ways to support our talented female peers, and are proud of the work being done by the team to raise up young women in our communities.