Belinda Stronach

Belinda Stronach is a business and public leader who cares deeply about issues of quality of life both in Canada and abroad. In 2002, she was ranked #2 by Fortune Magazine in its list of the world’s most powerful women in business. In 2004, TIME Magazine ranked Belinda as one of the world’s 100 most influential people and in 2005 the World Economic Forum named her a member of its network of Young Global Leaders.

Belinda is Member of Parliament for Newmarket-Aurora (Ontario), representing the community where she has lived most of her life. She was first elected to the House of Commons in the 2004 general election and then re-elected in the 2006 general election. In 2005 at the invitation of the Prime Minister, she joined the Cabinet and assumed responsibility for two separate and senior portfolios as Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, and Minister responsible for Democratic Renewal. She is currently the elected Chair of the Women’s Caucus of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons.

Belinda is also Executive Vice-Chairman of Magna International Inc., one of the largest global suppliers of automotive systems and components in the world with 83,000 employees in 23 countries. Under her earlier corporate leadership as the former President and CEO of Magna, the company had record sales and profits in each year and its stock price nearly doubled in value.

In 2006, Belinda co-founded Spread the Net, a Canadian campaign with Rick Mercer, an award-winning satirist, playwright and television personality. Inspired by the devastating effects of malaria observed on a trip to Africa in 2005, Belinda and Rick launched Spread the Net in partnership with UNICEF Canada to raise awareness and funds to combat death from malaria.

Belinda is a Director of the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. and a Director of Millennium Promise Canada, where she is involved in supporting the work of Professor Jeffrey Sachs with Millennium Villages as a model of integrated international development. Based on her personal experience with breast cancer in spring 2007, she is also patron of the Belinda Stronach Chair in Breast Cancer Reconstructive Surgery at the Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation. The Chair provides guaranteed funding for a program to ensure that the important option of reconstructive surgery for women who have undergone mastectomies is more widely available.