Media Releases

Rotman School of Management and TD announce think tank initiative Women @ Work: Intersections of career, family and legacy essay competition

March 3, 2015

TORONTO, ON – The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment and TD Bank Group (“TD”) are announc­ing the estab­lish­ment of a two year think tank ini­tia­tive to sup­port the advance­ment of women.  Through com­mu­ni­ty out­reach with an essay com­pe­ti­tion and lat­er a research paper, the Rot­man School and TD are seek­ing to gen­er­ate and share inno­v­a­tive per­spec­tives about wom­en’s career, fam­i­ly and lega­cy aspi­ra­tions.

“We know that women and men think dif­fer­ent­ly about their fam­i­ly, career and lega­cy choic­es,” said Walid Hejazi, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Rot­man School, who will lead the research paper of this ini­tia­tive. “Work­ing togeth­er with TD will allow us to delve into these dif­fer­ences and under­stand the pro­gres­sion of choic­es women make regard­ing their careers, and the role edu­ca­tion and finan­cial sec­tors can play in con­tribut­ing to their solu­tions and suc­cess.”

“Through our Women Investor Pro­gram, TD has been com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing women in finance and we’re proud to work with the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment to estab­lish an inno­v­a­tive think tank to bet­ter under­stand the chal­lenges women con­front in their pur­suit of career, fam­i­ly and lega­cy,” said Sandy Cimoroni, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, TD Wealth. “We want to take a real and hon­est look at how women bal­ance and rebal­ance com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties through­out their careers, and this col­lec­tion of essays is the first step toward build­ing the foun­da­tion for future insights.”

Women with more than 10 years of work expe­ri­ence liv­ing in Cana­da are encour­aged to sub­mit a max­i­mum 1,500 word per­son­al essay about the choic­es made between their career, fam­i­ly and lega­cy aspi­ra­tions. Essay­ists are asked to pro­vide an assess­ment of their career goals and how these have changed as a result of emerg­ing fam­i­ly and/or lega­cy aspi­ra­tions. Insights into the under­ly­ing dri­vers and per­son­al impact of these choic­es are also being sought.  The com­pe­ti­tion will be led by the Rotman’s Ini­tia­tive for Women in Busi­ness. Dead­line for essay sub­mis­sions is 5:00pm on Thurs­day April 23, 2015.

Five semi-final­ists will be select­ed to present to a pri­vate audi­ence of Rot­man School and TD judges in Toron­to on June 15, 2015. Imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, the judges will delib­er­ate to final­ize the win­ner, who will receive a cer­tifi­cate of acknowl­edge­ment and a cash award of $10,000. The win­ner will be announced at a lunch with senior TD and Rot­man lead­ers in Toron­to on June 15, 2015.

All details for the TD & Rot­man Women @ Work Essay Com­pe­ti­tion can be found at: www.rotman.utoronto.ca/tdwomenatwork

About TD Bank Group

The Toron­to-Domin­ion Bank and its sub­sidiaries are col­lec­tive­ly known as TD Bank Group (“TD” or the “Bank”). TD is the sixth largest bank in North Amer­i­ca by branch­es and serves more than 24 mil­lion cus­tomers in three key busi­ness­es oper­at­ing in a num­ber of loca­tions in finan­cial cen­tres around the globe: Cana­di­an Retail, includ­ing TD Cana­da Trust, TD Auto Finance Cana­da, TD Wealth (Cana­da), TD Direct Invest­ing, and TD Insur­ance; U.S. Retail, includ­ing TD Bank, Amer­i­ca’s Most Con­ve­nient Bank, TD Auto Finance U.S., TD Wealth (U.S.), and an invest­ment in TD Amer­i­trade; and Whole­sale Bank­ing, includ­ing TD Secu­ri­ties. TD also ranks among the world’s lead­ing online finan­cial ser­vices firms, with approx­i­mate­ly 9.7 mil­lion active online and mobile cus­tomers. TD had CDN$1.1 tril­lion in assets on Jan­u­ary 31, 2015. The Toron­to-Domin­ion Bank trades under the sym­bol “TD” on the Toron­to and New York Stock Exchanges.

About TD Wealth

TD Wealth rep­re­sents the prod­ucts and ser­vices of TD Water­house Cana­da Inc. (Mem­ber-Cana­di­an Investor Pro­tec­tion Fund), TD Water­house Pri­vate Invest­ment Coun­sel Inc., TD Wealth Pri­vate Trust (offered by The Cana­da Trust Com­pa­ny) and TD Wealth Pri­vate Bank­ing (offered by The Toron­to-Domin­ion Bank).

Rot­man School of Man­age­ment

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness chal­lenges. The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is a leader in pro­mot­ing and sup­port­ing gen­der diver­si­ty and is the only busi­ness school in Cana­da with a ded­i­cat­ed Ini­tia­tive for Women in Busi­ness. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

Rotman’s Ini­tia­tive for Women in Busi­ness has been com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing the female tal­ent pipeline since 2008. With pro­gram­ming tai­lored for each stage of a woman’s career, par­tic­i­pants gain strate­gic deci­sion-mak­ing and lead­er­ship skills, and learn how to influ­ence and inspire teams. Togeth­er with award-win­ning fac­ul­ty and cor­po­rate part­ners, we proud­ly sup­port women’s career devel­op­ment as a key­stone to orga­ni­za­tion­al pros­per­i­ty.  www.rotman.utoronto.ca/women

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416–946-3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca

Natasha Fer­rari
Cor­po­rate & Pub­lic Affairs
TD Bank Group
416–983-7180
Natasha.ferrari@td.com