Heather Reisman | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | McGill University (BSW) |
Occupation(s) | CEO of Indigo Books and Music Co-founder and past Chair of Kobo |
Spouse | Gerald Schwartz |
Children | 4 |
Heather Maxine Reisman OC (born August 28, 1948) is a Canadian businesswoman and philanthropist. Reisman is the founder and chief executive of the Canadian retail chain Indigo Books and Music. She is the co-founder and past Chair of Kobo, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019.
Reisman was born in 1948 to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec and educated at McGill University. [1] [2]
Reisman was first employed in social work as a caseworker. [2] After her first marriage ended in divorce, she switched careers and joined her brother Howard’s company. In 1979, she co-founded Paradigm Consulting and served as the managing director of this strategic change consultancy until 1995. [3] [2]
In 1995, she was invited to become a "front-line investor" for Borders Group, which was planning to enter the Canadian market. When Borders was unable to obtain the necessary federal regulatory approval in Canada, Reisman founded a company called Indigo Books and Music. [3] She raised $25m from a group of investors based on the original concept document for Indigo. In 2001, Indigo Books and Music acquired its main rival, Chapters, to form the largest book retailer in Canada, obtaining a clear leadership position in the book retailing industry. Reisman co-founded Kobo Inc. in 2009 and two years later, sold Indigo’s majority stake in Kobo to the Japanese company Rakuten for $315 million. [4]
Since 1998, Reisman has also chosen more than 262 "Heather's Picks" for Indigo, which are books specifically recommended by her and come with a money-back guarantee. [5]
Although Indigo has increasingly stocked giftware in its stores, Reisman said this in a 2018 interview about the company's core product: "Books were, are, and always will be the heart and soul of our business". [4] She began expanding Indigo into the US in 2018, starting with the first store at Short Hills in New Jersey. [6]
Reisman has also served as a governor of the Toronto Stock Exchange and of McGill University. [1] She has been a board member of several companies, including Williams Sonoma and J. Crew. She is currently a Director of Onex Corporation and Mt. Sinai Hospital. [3]
In 2014, Reisman was executive producer of Fed Up along with Katie Couric, who also narrated the documentary, and producer Laurie David. [7] Reisman was executive producer with David on The Social Dilemma in 2020. [8] Reisman and David also authored a book together titled Imagine It! A Handbook for a Happier Planet (2021). [9]
In August 2006, due to differing reactions by the two main Canadian political parties to the 2006 Lebanon War, Reisman withdrew her longtime support for the Liberal Party of Canada and chose to support the Conservative Party of Canada under Stephen Harper. [10]
She drew praise and criticism in October 2001 after announcing that Indigo would not sell Hitler's Mein Kampf in its bookstores. [11] [12]
On July 5, 2010, Reisman launched an online petition to save an Iranian woman, Sakineh Ashtiani, from the death penalty by stoning. Her initiative found support around the world. Sakineh was not subjected to the stoning. [13]
Reisman is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group, [14] and participated in all its conferences between 2002 and 2017.
In 2006, Reisman founded the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation, whose mission is to enrich the libraries in under-resourced public schools. Since its inception, the group has donated millions of books to over 3,000 Canadian public elementary school libraries. [15]
In 2005, she and her husband Gerald Schwartz founded the HESEG Foundation, which provides scholarships to "lone soldiers", individuals who have served their time in the Israeli military and who do not have immediate family in Israel.
Mount Sinai Hospital announced in December 2013 that a $15 million gift from Reisman and Schwartz would be used to "reshape emergency medicine" at the facility. [16] [17]
The Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation donated $5.3 million to St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in late 2018 to create scholarships, bursaries and increased recruitment of business students. [18]
In March 2019, University of Toronto announced that Schwartz and Reisman were giving the university $100 million to build a 750,000-square foot innovation centre, through The Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation. According to Reisman, the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre will be used to improve technology, particularly artificial intelligence, and how the public can relate to it. One of the two towers will house the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence while the other will include labs for research in regenerative medicine, genetics and precision medicine. [19] [20]
In May 2015, Reisman was inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame. [3]
Reisman is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Ryerson University (2006), [21] Wilfrid Laurier University (2009), [22] Mount Allison University (2010), [23] St. Francis Xavier University (2013), [24] and University of Manitoba (2016) [25] McGill University (2017), [15] Weizmann Institute of Science (2017), [26] and University of Toronto (2021). [27]
She is an Officer of the Order of Canada. [28] [29]
In 2009, the Financial Times listed Reisman as one of the top 50 businesswomen in the world. [30]
Reisman was also included in the Women's Executive Network's Top 100 Most Powerful Women. [31]
In 2022, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto as "Canada’s Most Recognized Literacy Advocate". [32]
Her father, Mark, was a real estate developer; her mother, Rose, owned a clothing store; and her brother, Howard, founded computer company Time Systems. [1] She is the niece of Simon Reisman.
Reisman was married earlier in her life but divorced her first husband. In 1982, she married Gerald Schwartz, the founder and CEO of Onex Corporation. Reisman has four children and nine grandchildren. [33] Two of the children are from her first marriage and two are step-children from her marriage to Schwartz. The couple are members of the Reform synagogue, Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. [1]
Indigo Books & Music Inc., known as "Indigo" and stylized "!ndigo", is Canada's only major English-language bookstore chain. It is Canada's largest book, gift, and specialty toy retailer, operating stores in all ten provinces and one territory, and through a website offering a selection of books, toys, home décor, stationery, and gifts. Most Chapters and Indigo stores include a Starbucks café inside. As of 2022, Indigo has started selling music, and select audio equipment.
Jean Augustine is a Grenada-born Canadian politician. She was the first Black Canadian woman to serve as a federal Minister of the Crown and Member of Parliament.
Chapters Inc. is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a separate company competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001. As of July 2017, it operated 89 superstores under the banners Chapters and Indigo, and 122 small format stores under the banners Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company.
Gerald W. Schwartz, OC is the founder, chairman and CEO of Onex Corporation. Schwartz has a net worth of US$1.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.
The Holy Blossom Temple is a Reform synagogue located at 1950 Bathurst Street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the oldest Jewish congregation in Toronto. Founded in 1856, it has more than 7,000 members. W. Gunther Plaut, who died on 8 February 2012 at the age of 99, was a long time Senior Rabbi for this synagogue. Notable members and supporters include Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz who made donations to create the Gerald Schwartz/Heather Reisman Centre for Jewish Learning at Holy Blossom Temple.
Avril Phaedra Douglas "Kim" Campbell is a former Canadian politician, diplomat, lawyer, and writer who served as the 19th prime minister of Canada from June 25 to November 4, 1993. Campbell is the first and only female prime minister of Canada. Prior to becoming the final Progressive Conservative (PC) prime minister, she was also the first woman to serve as minister of justice in Canadian history and the first woman to become minister of defence in a NATO member state.
The HESEG Foundation is an organization created by Canadian CEOs Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman in 2005 to provide free tuition to former lone soldiers who serve in Israel's military under Israel Defense Forces.
Sol Simon Reisman was a Canadian civil servant, and the country's chief negotiator for the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement.
Rakuten Kobo Inc., or simply Kobo, is a Canadian company that sells ebooks, audiobooks, e-readers and formerly tablet computers. It is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is a subsidiary of the Japanese e-commerce conglomerate Rakuten. The name Kobo is an anagram of book.
The 2013 Bilderberg Conference took place June 6–9, 2013, at The Grove hotel in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. It was the first Bilderberg Group conference to be held in the United Kingdom since the 1998 meeting in Turnberry, Scotland.
Shilpi Somaya Gowda is the award-winning, New York Times and internationally bestselling Canadian author of Secret Daughter, The Golden Son, and The Shape of Family. She lives in California with her family.
The 2015 Bilderberg Conference took place between 11 and 14 June 2015 at the Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol in Telfs-Buchen, Austria. The hotel had previously held the Bilderberg Conference in 1988.
Gillian Kereldena Hadfield is a professor of law and of strategic management who is the inaugural Schwartz Reisman Chair in Technology and Society at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She is also director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Previously, she was the Richard L. and Antoinette Schamoi Kirtland Professor of Law and Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. At USC, Hadfield directed the Southern California Innovation Project and the USC Center in Law, Economics, and Organization. She is a former member of the board of directors for the American Law and Economics Association and the International Society for New Institutional Economics. From 2018 to 2023, Hadfield served as Senior Policy Adviser to the artificial intelligence company OpenAI.
Zainub Verjee CM, is a Kenya-born Canadian video artist, curator, writer, arts administrator and public intellectual. She began her career in the Vancouver arts community of the 1970s, which was steeped in interdisciplinary, intermedia, and intercultural practices. Having made her mark as an emerging artist, she shifted the emphasis of her work to curatorial, administrative and policy arenas. Applying the insight, creativity and criticality of an artist, she has brought “institutional critique” into the workings of the institution itself. Deeply engaged with the UK’s British Black Arts, Tactical Video Movement, Third Cinema and the post-Bandung Conference decolonization, Verjee has been embedded in the history of women’s labour in British Columbia. In February 2020 she was awarded the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for “outstanding contribution to the arts”. In 2021 she was conferred an honorary doctorate by the OCAD University recognizing her outstanding contribution to arts, racial and gender equity She was elected as a Senior Fellow of the Massey College at University of Toronto in the fall of 2021. Earlier she was appointed as McLaughlin College Fellow at the York University. In 2022 she was conferred Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa, by Nova Scotia College of Art and Design NSCAD University, Halifax She was the recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts given by Simon Fraser University, Burnaby in the Spring Convocation of 2023. Her contribution to the pioneering prison theatre program in Canada and for integral role in the formation of the British Columbia Arts Council was recognized by University of Victoria by conferring her with an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts in Spring Convocation in 2023.
Jodi Kovitz is a Canadian lawyer and nonprofit executive. She is the founder and CEO of #MoveTheDial, an organization to advance the participation and leadership of women in tech.
Michelle Good is a Cree writer, poet, and lawyer from Canada, most noted for her debut novel Five Little Indians. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good has an MFA and a law degree from the University of British Columbia and, as a lawyer, advocated for residential-school survivors.
Five Little Indians is the debut novel by Cree Canadian writer Michelle Good, published in 2020 by Harper Perennial. The novel focuses on five survivors of the Canadian Indian residential school system, struggling to rebuild their lives in Vancouver, British Columbia after the end of their time in the residential schools. It also explores the love and strength that can emerge after trauma.
Eternity Martis is a Canadian journalist and author from Toronto, Ontario. Her debut publication They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing up won the 2021 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for non-fiction.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Some scholarships will be worth up to $80,000 each, according to the news release.
University president Meric Gertler said the donation "will enable a deeper examination of how technology shapes our daily lives."