Catherine (Cathy) Stewart has extensive experience as a business leader and human resources executive with an excellent reputation for building relationships, and collaborating with senior leadership and cross functional teams in organizations to develop and implement HR strategies and best practice HR programs, systems and processes that are aligned with and support their business strategies. As a trusted HR advisor, Cathy has supported business executives and front-line managers through challenging organizational and structural changes and has launched many new initiatives and held several unique HR roles. She is recognized as someone who “gets things done” to meet the HR operational requirements of the business and drive significant change, when required.

Cathy has led the HR function for small and mid-size organizations and held HR leadership positions with large multi-national organizations in the financial services, high tech/ telecommunications, business services and national and international sport sectors. Cathy recently retired as the Executive Director, Human Resources for the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC). Following a major review of the organization in 2015 Cathy successfully led the transition of the COC and Canadian Olympic Foundation (COF) to being recognized in 2020 as one of Canada’s Best Workplaces and certified as a Great Place to Work by the Great Place to Work Institute© in 2019 and 2020. Among her many accomplishments at the COC/COF, Cathy developed and facilitated a semi-annual leadership and senior leadership team succession planning process to identify and develop high potential and emerging leaders for both organizations, and to mitigate attrition and leadership risks identified through the organization’s enterprise risk management framework. Cathy is now working as an independent HR consultant, assisting organizations across a spectrum of HR functional areas.

Cathy has a Physical Education undergrad degree and MBA with a focus on Organizational Behaviour from York University.  She is a Certified Human Resources Leader (CHRL) and has facilitated programs for the Life Office Management Association (LOMA) and the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario (HRPA).