Colleen Moorehead Wins the 2024 Ted Anderson Community Leadership Award

July 22nd, 2024

Colleen Moorehead has always been a champion of women. Throughout her career, she has worked tirelessly as a mentor, advocate, role model, philanthropist, and catalyst for change, and is widely recognized for her contributions to the community. The former Chief Client Officer for Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, Moorehead spent 12 years implementing the firm’s client-focused

business development strategy, including its highly recognized emerging and high-growth companies, private equity, venture capital, and fund formation practices. She began her career in financial services at Merrill Lynch and subsequently joined CIBC. In 1996, she co-founded E*TRADE Canada and has remained passionate about financial technology innovation in Canada ever since.

Early on in her career, Moorehead became interested in gender equality and gender-based leadership. “I paid a lot of attention to the contributions that women were making and quickly saw that they often weren’t valued in the same way that men’s contributions were,” she says. “As I climbed the ranks, I wanted to change that and find ways to help other women get ahead.”

In 2003, Moorehead did just that when she co-founded The Judy Project, one of Canada’s top leadership forums designed specifically for executive women ascending into executive leadership and C‑suite positions. A part of the University of Toronto’s Joseph Rotman School of Management, Moorehead says the Judy Project’s focus is on ensuring that women who are selected are well equipped to be exceptional leaders, navigate any bias related to female leadership, and advance their careers.

Over the past two decades, more than 500 women have participated in the Judy Project’s week-long leadership forums. Many of their experiences and stories have also been captured in a book called “The Collective Wisdom of High-Performing Women: Leadership Lessons from the Judy Project” that Moorehead spearheaded and edited. More than 20,000 copies of the book have been sold since it was published in 2019.

Moorehead is also very interested in women’s healthcare. Her vision and leadership in that area led to the creation of the Women for Women’s luncheon, Ontario’s largest event in support of women’s health. An annual fundraiser, the luncheon has helped raise nearly $6 million to help support the Women’s College Hospital’s (WCH) most urgent needs.

In addition, Moorehead is a member of the WCH Foundation’s advisory board and the former vice-chair of the Campaign for Women. She is also a founding member of the Foundation’s 100 Women initiative, which convenes women philanthropists committed to driving change for the future of healthcare.

“Colleen is one of the most philanthropic people I’ve ever met,” says Michelle McBane, Managing Director of StandUp Ventures, who met Moorehead early in her tenure at Osler. “She has done so much to support women and is truly a force to be reckoned with. People always rally behind her and whatever initiatives she’s working on.”

Moorehead played an important role in advising McBane as she was launching StandUp Ventures. “She took me under her wing and basically adopted me,” says McBane. “That’s when the magic happens for the many women whose lives she’s touched. In my case, she was a huge help as I developed the fund’s strategy and was always ready to connect me to the right people across her extensive network.”

Among her many other roles, Moorehead also contributes her time to a variety of organizations as an advisor and community builder for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. She is co-chair for Kids Help Phone’s $300 million Feel Out Loud campaign. KHP is Canada’s only coast-to-coast youth mental health service provider. She previously held board positions with Covenant House, the largest agency in Canada serving homeless youth; Toronto Artscape which provided space for arts, culture and community in Toronto; and the Stratford Festival Theatre.

Within the early-stage startup ecosystem, Moorehead has played a role on the board of advisors for NEXT Canada, an organization that is helping create the country’s next generation of high-impact entrepreneurs; 111, which provides space for early-stage technology companies; and Creative Destruction Labs, a nonprofit organization that delivers objectives-based programming for seed stage science- and technology-based companies. She is currently the Chair of Dye & Durham (DND‑T), sits on Inovia Capital’s board of advisors, is an operating advisor for VERTU Capital, and is a member of the Advisory Committee for Novacap Financial Services Fund.

For these and her many other contributions, Moorehead has been named the winner of the 2024 Ted Anderson Award, sponsored by Apex Innovative Investments Ventures. “It’s a huge honor and I’m incredibly grateful,” she says. “You don’t do things to win an award, you do them because they make sense to you and because you hope to add value. I feel very fortunate to have been able to work with so many wonderful people throughout my career who share my passion for supporting women.”