Sheelagh Whittaker

Sheelagh Whittaker (born 9 April 1947) is a Canadian business executive and author. Whittaker was the first female CEO of a TSX listed company and during her career held senior positions at Electronic Data Systems, Royal Bank of Canada, CanWest Global Communications Corporation and Standard Life. She has regularly spoken on feminist issues.

Early life Whittaker was born in Ottawa and raised in Alberta, Canada.

Career Whittaker began her career as a federal anti-trust officer and gained her MBA at York's Schulich School of Business. She spent much of her early career working for The Canada Consulting Group, now Boston Consulting Group, as a director and then partner. Following this, Whittaker became vice president of planning and corporate affairs at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She then became the president and CEO of Canadian Satellite Communications, better known as Cancom and now a part of Shaw Broadcast Services.

In 1993, Whittaker joined Electronic Data Systems (EDS) based in Plano, Texas (now a part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise), at that time one of the leading providers of information technology services. Serving first as the president and CEO of EDS Canada, Whittaker went on to become the executive vice-president in Asia Pacific in 2001, before transferring to London where she served as the managing director, United Kingdom, Africa and Middle East until her retirement in 2005. As a result, Whittaker has been featured on the front of The New York Times as having broken the glass ceiling and been labelled ‘The Pioneer’ by The Globe and Mail in their ‘Women in Power’ series.

Executive appointments While serving at both Cancom and Electronic Data Systems, Whittaker was appointed to several non-executive roles in North America and the UK. She then became an independent director of Imperial Oil in 1996. She worked as an independent trustee of CanWest Mediaworks Income Fund as well as later serving as both a director for CanWest Mediaworks in Canada and a general partner of the CanWest Mediaworks Income Fund. She served on the board for four years, before retiring in 2013, moving from the parent company to join the board of Standard Life Canada with Chairman David Nish announcing Whittaker would assist the company's ‘implementation of their strategy in the evolving Canadian market environment’. Mount Saint Vincent University described her as ‘an accomplished Canadian businesswoman with a history of breaking glass ceilings’. Along with Diane McGarry, CEO of Xerox in Canada and Maureen Kempston Darkes, President of General Motors Canada, Whittaker was thought to have been among the first women to cross gender lines and gain power and wealth in an increasingly meritocratic society in Canada. She reportedly used to pretend to be her own secretary to better screen calls and breastfed her youngest son in the boardroom of RBC.

A self-described feminist, Whittaker has advocated for the promotion of female executives. However, her views have often been met by opposition. She also received the Outstanding Executive Leadership Award from York University in 1992, the same year she was chosen as “Woman of the Year” by Canadian Women.

The Slaidburn Angel tells the true-crime story of a murder in Whittaker's own family, the infanticide of Thomas Gardner in May 1885. The murder occurred near a village in the north of England called Slaidburn. Her second book, Evaline: A Feminist’s Tale, is a chronicle of the impact of the sixties Women's liberation movement on the life and career of a fictional woman called Evaline Sadlier.