Industry moves: AIMA Canada, SIMA welcome new directors

Each week, we summarize notable moves across the financial industry.

• Salomon Elbaz has been appointed as head of legacy planning at Heritage MD after more than four years as a senior financial planner with MD Financial Management’s Signature Private Wealth division. Cindy Lavoie has been named vice-president of client relations, joining the firm from Scotiabank, where she served as a business advisor for more than six years.
• John Findlay, managing director at Scotiabank’s Global Family Office Group, has retired. He’s been with the bank in various roles since joining in 2009 as managing director of global equity sales, and has 35 years of capital markets experience.
• Heather E. Wahl has been appointed vice-president and head of fund services at National Bank Trust. She joined the firm as senior director of ETF services last January. Wahl brings 20 years of industry experience to the role, and previously served as chief compliance officer at AGF Investments America Inc., and vice-president and head of compliance at Horizons ETFs, which is now called Global X Investments Canada Inc.
• Meghan MacNicol has been named director of business development at Lakeshore Securities Inc. She brings more than 20 years of experience, including more than 11 years with TD Securities as director, corporate access and advisory for institutional equity sales and trading.
• Lauren Cooper has been appointed director and head of Canada at the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), effective Feb. 23. Cooper, who comes to AIMA from Romspen Investment Corp., where she is director of marketing & investor communications, is succeeding Claire Van Wyk-Allan, who will join TD Securities in March. Cooper has held investor relations, communications and business development roles with Deloitte, Waratah Capital Advisors Ltd. and Star Mountain Capital.
• Marcy Einarrson has joined the Securities and Investment Management Association as director, regulatory compliance. She brings more than 25 years of compliance and reporting experience to the role, including as chief compliance officer for CWB Wealth, Sun Life Global Investments and SEI.
• Evan Warsh has been appointed vice-president of operations at Designed Wealth Management. Warsh joined the firm as portfolio management supervisor in 2023, and previously held portfolio manager, investment advisor and trading roles at Gravitas Securities Inc., Lorne Steinberg Wealth Management, Inc. and Foster & Associates Financial Services Inc.
• Mike Osborne has been named regional vice-president of Western Canada at CI Assante. He has more than 25 years of industry experience and founded Ægir Group, a practice management advisory for advisors, private equity firms and alternative investment dealers, in 2017.
• Delmar Miller has been promoted to executive director and head of marketing at J.P. Morgan Asset Management in Canada from head of marketing.
• Matthew Burbridge has been named vice-president, capital formation and real estate investments with Timbercreek Capital, where he will lead the firm’s U.S. fundraising initiatives.
• Dominique Lavoie has joined Sun Life Global Investments as director of institutional business development and client relationships. She has more than 15 years of pension and investment management experience, including a dozen years with Mercer Canada. She was most recently president of Optimum Actuariat conseil inc.
• Alison McKay, CEO of the Saskatchewan Healthcare Employees’ Pension Plan, will be retiring on June 26 after 18 years. She first joined SHEPP in 2008 as chief financial officer before taking on the chief executive role in 2014. The pension plan’s board of directors has begun a search for a successor.
• Hratch Panossian has been appointed chair of the Canadian Bankers Association’s board of directors. Panossian, who has served in senior roles with CIBC for the past 15 years and is currently senior executive vice-president and group head of personal and business banking, will serve a two-year term. He succeeds previous chair, Erminia Johannson, a senior advisor with Bank of Montreal’s personal and business banking division.
• Jeff Allsop, Rick Byers, Deborah Starkman, and Georgia Woods have been appointed to the Ontario Securities Commission’s board of directors. Each will serve a two‑year term. Allsop is a partner with TVG Partners and former chairman and CEO of HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc.; Byers, who recently served as an MPP, previously headed up BMO Capital Markets’ government investment banking group and was an executive vice-president at Borealis Infrastructure at OMERS pension fund; Starkman has served as CFO of Dream Unlimited Corp. and GMP Capital, and is a current board member of Crombie REIT; and Woods is a tech executive and former executive vice-president and chief information officer at Canada Life, and a former senior vice-president at CIBC. Mary Anne De Monte-Whelan, a former OSC board director first appointed in 2019, passed away in January. She spent most of her career in corporate and investment banking and was president of The Delan Group, a consultancy.
• Lawrence Ritchie has been appointed to the board of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), effective Jan. 15. A partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, Ritchie brings more than three decades of legal, regulatory and capital markets experience.
• Women in ETFs (WE) Global has announced several appointments. Samantha Nystrom, senior director of content marketing at NinjaTrader, and Kelsey Mowrey, president of Motley Fool Asset Management, have been named co-heads of mentorship; Lee Turner-Conn, head of strategic partnerships at S&P Dow Jones, and Katya Nelyudova, chief revenue officer at Scientific Beta, have been named co-heads of sponsorship; and Roma Lotay, a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, has been appointed WE Global secretary.

If you know of other people moves in the financial industry and/or would like us to consider your announcement, email Alisha Hiyate at alisha.h@newcom.ca.