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BMO honoured for executive gender diversity by The Globe and Mail

March 28, 2024 | Diversity, equity and inclusion, Recognition

For the fourth consecutive year, BMO has been recognized on The Globe and Mail Report on Business magazine’s Women Lead Here list – an annual benchmark of Canadian businesses with the highest achievement in executive gender diversity.  

In line with its Purpose to Boldly Grow the Good in business and life, BMO is committed to accelerating initiatives that eliminate economic and societal barriers to achieve meaningful and sustainable progress for underrepresented communities, including women. The bank’s commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in its workforce has yielded impactful results: 

  • Over 42 per cent of senior leadership roles are held by women; globally, this number has remained above 40 per cent since 2016.  
  • Half of the independent directors on BMO’s Board of Directors are women. 


Women who lead here: Tina DeGustino, Global Chair of BMO Alliance for Women 

BMO Alliance for Women, BMO’s largest Employee Resource Group with over 10,000 members, champions the inclusion, connection, development, advancement and support of women within BMO’s workforce and culture. Global Chair Tina DeGustino recently reflected on why BMO is a workplace that works for women: 

“Our work to eliminate barriers to inclusion is part of everyone’s responsibility at BMO – it’s embedded in our culture and founded on our values of diversity, integrity, empathy and responsibility. Research has demonstrated that diverse teams are stronger, higher-performing teams. It’s critical that our leadership teams represent the diversity of our workforce and the communities we serve.” 

– Darryl White
CEO, BMO Financial Group 

“We are honoured to be recognized for another year by Report on Business’ Women Lead Here. Gender equity is a key pillar of BMO’s Zero Barriers to Inclusion strategy, which is enabling us to drive progress for women and other equity-deserving groups – both inside and outside the bank.” 

– Sharon Haward-Laird
General Counsel and Executive Champion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, BMO 

“Recognizing the achievements of companies that effectively address the challenges of executive gender parity represents a pivotal stride forward. Although there’s always more that can be done, the businesses showcased here serve as catalyst for corporate Canada, inspiring them to progress toward gender parity and, in turn, cultivate exceptional enterprises.” 

– Dawn Calleja
Editor, Report on Business magazine 

BMO is committed to promoting gender equity in the workplace and beyond. Additional initiatives include: 

  • BMO made a commitment to increase the number of women-owned businesses supported across our Canadian footprint. As of 2023, BMO supported more than 146,000 women-owned businesses in Canada with more than $10 billion in loans. 
  • BMO has established customer programs, BMO for Women (CAN) and BMO for Women in Business (US), which focus on advancing gender parity for the bank’s clients, supporting the growth of women-owned businesses and empowering women to feel confident about their finances and their financial futures. 
  • BMO has a partnership with 1871, which has led to the development the WMN•FINtech program. Since its inception in 2018, over 15 percent of all women fintech founders in North America have come through this initiative. 
  • In 2020, to support women entrepreneurs during the pandemic, BMO for Women launched the Celebrating Women Grant Program. Over the last three years, it has provided 56 business owners across North America with over half a million dollars in grant funding. 
  • In 2023, the Advocate Strategy began connecting women business owners with region-specific Commercial and Business Bankers trained and dedicated to supporting women clients. 
  • BMO recently partnered with the National Women’s Soccer League’s (NWSL) Angel City Football Club (ACFC). As part of ACFC’s sponsorship model, the organizations reallocated 10 percent of the partnership into the community through a sponsorship of Girls Play Los Angeles (GPLA), where BMO is supporting over 400 high school-aged girls and non-binary youth across Los Angeles with no-cost access to soccer. 
  • BMO proudly supports the purse for The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. The Prize is the largest English-language literary award in the world for women and non-binary writers, celebrating creativity and excellence in fiction in Canada and the United States while aiming to help address inequalities in literary reviewing, reading and prize culture. 


For the 2024 ranking, The Globe and Mail Report on Business conducted a journalistic analysis of approximately 500 large publicly traded Canadian companies based on revenue, evaluating the ratio of female-identifying to male-identifying executives in the top three tiers of executive leadership. The resultant data was applied to a weighted formula that also factored in company performance, diversity and year-to-year change. 

The 2024 Women Lead Here list is in the April 2024 issue of Report on Business magazine, distributed by The Globe and Mail and online at tgam.ca/WomenLeadHere. 

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