GPC Edmonton Chapter Event: Board Diversity

What new requirements are you addressing, and what discussions are you facilitating for your board around recruitment, policies and disclosure?

Moderator:
Jennifer Addison, SVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, EPCOR Utilities Inc.

Panelists:

Colleen Legge, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Capital Power;
Diane Pettie, J.D., FCIS, Q.C., ICD.D, Corporate Director
Margot Semkowski, Senior Associate and Member, Spencer Stuart

Speaker Bios:

Jennifer Addison is Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary of EPCOR Utilities Inc. and oversees the delivery of all Canadian legal services for EPCOR, as well as compliance, ethics and privacy functions.  She is also responsible for information services, physical security and supply chain management.  As Corporate Secretary, Jennifer works closely with EPCOR's Board of Directors. 

Jennifer holds a law degree from Queen's University and is a member of the Law Society of Alberta. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Edmonton's Citadel Theatre, The Queen's Law Alberta Advisory Council and the CABREE Advisory Board.

Colleen Legge has been Capital Power’s Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary since August of 2018. She has overall accountability for leadership of Capital Power’s legal team. As Corporate Secretary, Colleen works closely with Capital Power’s Assistant Corporate Secretaries (for Canada and the US) as well as its Board of Directors and Executive Team on governance related matters.  Colleen has over 28 years of experience as a lawyer and has worked both in-house and in private practice. Prior to joining Capital Power (previously with EPCOR) as Senior Legal Counsel in October of 2005, Colleen worked at a national law firm based in Calgary, a boutique law firm providing services to major energy companies, and in-house with a Calgary based energy company.  Colleen holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alberta.

Diane Pettie is a retired lawyer with over 35 years of legal experience and significant executive experience in the energy and chemical sectors. She has her Juris Doctorate from the University of Alberta, is a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute of Canada, and has her ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors.

Current directorships: Chartered Professional Accountants of Alberta, Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, Women in Law Leadership

Past directorships: Society of Management Accountants of Alberta, Accountants Unification Joint Venture Board, Association of Women Lawyers, Law Society of Alberta (Audit Committee), Calgary Region Arts Foundation.

Margot Semkowski is a Senior Associate and member of Spencer Stuart’s Industrial and Boards practices, based out of the Calgary office. Margot has completed over 250 board and executive search assignments for clients in Canada, the United States and internationally. She primarily works with clients in the industrial sector, including oil and gas, power and utilities, renewable energy and mining.

Previously, she served as Knowledge Manager for the firm’s North American Energy Practice where she was responsible for providing strategic practice-level support necessary to maintain and enhance levels of knowledge of industries/markets, functions, companies and candidate pools and to support to the practice by facilitating collaboration and sharing of best practices.

Sector Expertise:
Margot has 10 years of executive and board search experience. She joined Spencer Stuart in 2014 as a Research Analyst supporting clients in the energy sector.

Prior to joining Spencer Stuart, Margot worked with another global executive search firm where she focused on search assignments in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

Prior to her executive search career, Margot worked for a leading reservoir simulation technology supplier.

Margot holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Dalhousie University.