Four women who’ve smashed Algoma Steel’s glass ceiling

Around this time last year, as Algoma Steel was preparing to launch as a publicly traded company, its boardroom and executive suites were very much a man's world.

All 15 of the director nominees and executive officers described in Algoma's regulatory filings were men.

"Upon closing of the merger, Algoma will have no women on its board of directors and no women as executive officer," the steelmaker said in a preliminary proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission.

As SooToday pointed out, the last company on Standard and Poor's 500 with an all-male board had finally added a woman director a little over two months earlier.

Even six years before that, only a dozen firms on the S&P 500 had no women directors, compared to 60 companies a decade previously.

By last October, Algoma Steel had changed its tune.

It announced it had found two female directors worthy of its board: Mary Anne Bueschkens and Gale Rubenstein.

Both were lawyers with extensive business experience.

Bueschkens had been president and chief executive officer of auto parts supplier ABC Technologies Inc.

Rubenstein was an expert in things like corporate pensions, governance, restructuring, regulatory matters and crisis management.

Now, Algoma Steel has served notice it wants to add a third woman director at its upcoming annual general meeting on Sept. 20, 2022.

The company has also introduced a skills matrix to evaluate the qualifications of its directors.

Interestingly, Algoma Steel's best-qualified director appears to be a woman.

But the history of ceiling-smashing at Algoma Steel goes back to 2007, when local lawyer Victoria Chiappetta became the steelmaker's vice-president, legal and general counsel.

She was the first and only woman named so far to Algoma's executive ranks.

After five years of service there, Chiappetta was named a judge with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Since late 2020, she has been chairperson of the federal Specific Claims Tribunal, a joint initiative with the Assembly of First Nations aimed at accelerating the resolution of specific claims "to provide justice for First Nations claimants and certainty for government, industry, and all Canadians."

The latest female addition to the Algoma Steel board is expected to be Ave Lethbridge.

Here's how Lethbridge is described in a recent Algoma regulatory filing;

Lethbridge is a corporate director and was most recently executive vice president, chief human resources and safety and ethics officer at Toronto Hydro Corporation, an electric utility and energy service company, a position that she has held since November 2013 until her retirement in December 2021.

During her career spanning 23 years from 1998, she has held various progressive senior executive leadership positions with Toronto Hydro encompassing human resources, environment, health and safety, business continuity and pandemic incident command, corporate social responsibility, sustainability (ESG), climate change strategy targets, mergers and restructuring, executive succession, enterprise risk, security & crisis management, regulatory compliance, strategy, technology change and innovation, government relations, and corporate governance.

From 2002 to 2004 she was vice president, organizational development and performance & corporate ethics officer. From 2004 to 2007 she was vice president, human resources and organizational effectiveness; and from 2008 to 2013 she was vice president, organizational effectiveness and environmental health and safety.

Her experience also includes the gas, utility and telecom industry. Ms. Lethbridge has served on the board of directors of Kinross Gold Corporation, a TSX and New York Stock Exchange-listed issuer, since 2015, and currently services as a member of the corporate governance and nominating committee and chair of the human resource and compensation committee.

She previously served on the audit and risk committee of Kinross from 2015-2018 and the corporate responsibility and technical committee from 2018-2019.

Ms. Lethbridge holds a Master of Science degree in organizational development from Pepperdine University in California, with international consulting in the US, China and Mexico.

She has completed the directors' education program from the Institute of Corporate Directors at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and currently holds the ICD.D designation.

She is a Certified Human Resource Executive and a former board governor for the Georgian College.

In 2021, she was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2021 OEA Energy Awards) from the Ontario Energy Association.

Algoma Steel admits it still lacks any formal policy on representation of women or other designated groups on its board or senior management, because it considers diversity as part of its overall annual evaluation of candidates.

As SooToday has reported, Algoma's new CEO Michael Garcia came to the Sault three months ago with a reputation for promoting gender and racial diversity in leadership.

Garcia uses social media to congratulate women and racialized persons appointed to corporate boards and management.

He's a member of the Latino Corporate Directors Association who was welcomed to the Sault last month by members of the Northern Ontario Latin-Hispanic Association.

"Gender is of particular importance to us in ensuring diversity within the board and management," the company recently advised the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission.

"Recommendations concerning board nominees are, foremost, based on merit and performance, but diversity is taken into consideration, as it is beneficial that a diversity of backgrounds, views and experiences be present at the board and management levels."

"The level of representation of women has been, and will continue to be, considered by the company, the board and the nominating and governance committee in the making of executive officer appointments."

"In searches for new executive officers, the nominating and governance committee will consider the level of female representation and diversity in management as one of several factors used in its search process."

"This will be achieved through continuously monitoring the level of female representation in senior management positions and, where appropriate, recruiting qualified female candidates as part of our overall recruitment and selection process to fill senior management positions, as the need arises, through vacancies, growth or otherwise."

Meanwhile, if Algoma's skills matrix is any indicator of suitability for leadership, the company's most qualified director is Mary Anne Bueschkens.

Her skills and knowledge cover 25 of the 30 areas listed on the Algoma matrix:

• Accounting
• Banking & Finance
• Brand Management
• CEO/Executive Management
• Compensation
• Environment
• Governance
• Health & Safety
• Information Technology & Cyber Security
• Labour Relations
• Law - Corporate
• Law - Labour
• Maintenance
• Major Construction Projects
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Operations
• Public Board Experience
• Risk Management
• Sales
• Strategic Planning
• Supply Chain
• Training & Development
• Manufacturing - General
• Manufacturing - Discrete
• Manufacturing - Process

The only areas in which Bueschkens is not listed as having skills or knowledge are marketing, public relations, government relations, electric arc furnaces and integrated steelmaking.