Corporate Director

Stella Thompson brings more than 30 years of executive and governance expertise to the boardroom. Over the last seventeen years she has sat on numerous boards and, as co-founder and principal of Governance West Inc. from 1996 to 2008, Ms. Thompson worked with over 250 clients providing consulting services to boards of directors of a broad range of corporate and not-for-profit organizations. In recent years, she has been a frequent speaker and lecturer on governance issues at venues across Canada. Since 2008, Ms. Thompson has focused on her various board commitments.

Previously an executive in the petroleum industry, Ms. Thompson has extensive experience in the energy sector and is currently a director on the boards of Atomic Energy of Canada, Alberta’s Electricity Balancing Pool and Talisman Energy. Ms. Thompson also sits on a number of boards involved in the science and technology sector including Resverlogix Corp. (a TSX listed pharma company), Genome Alberta (Vice Chair) and WaterSMART.   Ms. Thompson currently chairs the Governance and/or Human Resource Committees for Atomic Energy, the Balancing Pool, Resverlogix, and Talisman and sits on a number of Audit Committees.

Most recently, Ms. Thompson has been appointed to the Alberta Provincial Audit Committee which advises the Auditor General and the Alberta Legislature on various audit and financial issues, a unique body in Canada. In addition, Ms. Thompson is currently a director with the Calgary Airport Authority and the Calgary Herald Advisory Board.

Between 1994 and 2003, Ms. Thompson served on the board of Laidlaw Inc., a transportation company with over 100,000 employees throughout North America. In this role, starting in 2001, she participated in the successful restructuring of the company as it simultaneously worked its way through Chapter 11 and CCAA, the first company in North America to do this. During this time she sat on a number of standing and special committees, including one that oversaw the two large medical divisions of the company. Ms Thompson also became the Lead Director responsible for ensuring that Laidlaw’s safety performance was exemplary during the restructuring.

Ms. Thompson also sat on the Board of Enmax Corporation until June 2003. As Calgary’s electricity distribution and energy services company, the corporation was transforming from a city department to a multi-billion dollar competitor. Until May 2000, she was also a director of AGRA Inc., an international engineering firm, and Perigee Inc., an investment management firm, (both TSX listed companies), when international firms purchased both companies. At the time of these transactions, she served on both boards’ independent committees assessing the offers for their fairness to shareholders.

She has also served a number of years on other boards such as Allstate Insurance Company of Canada, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Mount Royal College, the Prime Minister's National Advisory Board on Science and Technology, and the Alberta Research Council.

Before becoming a consultant and board director in 1991, she worked for 20 years in the petroleum industry, first in Australia and then in Canada. During the eighties, she held senior positions with Petro-Canada, where she was responsible for a number of operating departments in the refining and marketing sector. While a Vice-President in the Products Division, she was responsible for strategic planning, the controller function, information systems, the credit card operation, materials management and energy futures trading.

Ms. Thompson has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Calgary and a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Alberta. In 2005, the Institute of Corporate Directors granted her the ICD.D corporate director designation. That same year the Women’s Executive Network and the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business recognized her as one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women.