Janice Fukakusa

Early life and education Janice Fukakusa was born in 1955 in a family of 8 children. Her parents were Japanese immigrants to Canada, and her father was an entrepreneur. Her first job was as a cashier at a dry cleaning business.

Fukakusa studied at the University of Toronto where she received a Bachelor of Arts in political science and philosophy. She then studied to become a chartered accountant and obtained a Master of Business Administration at York University's Schulich School of Business in 1979.

RBC In 1985, Fukakusa started to work at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in mergers and acquisitions. In 2004, she was appointed chief financial officer of the bank, and also became chief administrative officer in 2009. She says that, in these roles, she worked to diversify the upper echelons of the bank to include more women and people of diverse backgrounds, and coached multiple women to take leadership roles at RBC. In 2013, Fukakusa took part in the administration of RBC's acquisition of Ally Canada, the Canadian operations of Ally Financial, which were fully integrated into RBC. In 2014, she was nominated as Canada's CFO of the Year by Financial Executives Canada, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Robert Half. That year, she earned C$4.96 million in compensation excluding pension, the highest she made in one year.

For four consecutive years from 2013 to 2016, the American Banker magazine named Fukakusa one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking.

Canada Infrastructure Bank In July 2017, Fukakusa became the founding chairperson of the board of directors of the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB). She says she "spent a lot of the first six months just setting up base infrastructure, premises, governance in place, all of that". That fall, Fukakusa announced her intention to step down from the bank leadership. She eventually left the CIB in April 2020.

Toronto Metropolitan University In 2018, Janice Fukakusa became Ryerson University's fifth chancellor, the first woman in that position. Under her chancellorship, the university changed its name to Toronto Metropolitan University in 2022.