Bay Street Awards Get Women Back To Work

After extended absences, networking, mentorships help professionals make transition

Back in 2012, Christine Sauriol was chief compliance officer for Canadian operations at Deutsche Bank in Toronto. She also had two small children, and while she enjoyed her job, she was finding the demands of work and home life too much. So Sauriol quit work to devote herself to her family full-time, for five years.

But returning to the workforce proved a challenge.

“When I first started to look for work, I was being discounted for my years out of the industry, so the work that was being offered was almost at a junior level,” she said.

Sauriol then came across the Return to Bay Street Program by Women in Capital Markets (WCM), a network of professional women in the Canadian capital markets and voice of advocacy for women in the industry.

Now in its seventh consecutive year, the Bay Street program helps women return to the capital markets industry after an extended absence, and is meant to get more mid- to senior-level professional women into leadership roles.