Mitacs Board Position / Postes au sein du conseil d’administration de Mitacs

Location: The Board positions are open across Canada with an emphasis on British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec.

The Board is actively seeking up to six qualified candidates.

Be part of our innovative and entrepreneurial Board.

Mitacs is a national not-for-profit organization that helps industry and not-for-profit partners solve strategic challenges by leveraging Canada’s world-class post-secondary talent and a global network of industry, academic, and government partnerships. Through these collaborations, Mitacs helps business and community partners succeed, improves students’ on-the-job skills development, and strengthens Canada’s world-class innovation ecosystem. At Mitacs, we strive to develop the next generation of innovators with vital research and business skills. In partnership with domestic and international companies, not-for-profit organizations, community partners, governments, and academia, we support a new economy using Canada’s most valuable resource — its people.

Mitacs is committed to a culture of inclusiveness and values the benefits that diversity can bring to its Board of Directors, as outlined in the Mitacs Diversity Policy. Equity, diversity, and inclusion are part of Mitacs’s core values. To learn more about Mitacs and our values, please visit ourwebsite.

Being a Mitacs Board member allows you to have oversight of the strategic direction and operations of a well-established Canadian innovation intermediary while networking with a board of directors comprised of leaders from across the country. Mitacs’s mandate drives innovation in Canada through its relationships, including its federal, provincial, and territorial funders, private sector enterprises, and Canada’s post-secondary educational institutions. The Board leads the establishment of strategy, risk management, and has oversight of an executive management team responsible for achieving impact deploying an annual budget of approximately $270M to drive innovation and attract and retain talent in Canada.

KEY COMMITMENTS:

• Strong background and skills in corporate governance and oversight of strategy, risk management, and operations of a national or regional organization.
• Act as an ambassador of Mitacs.
• Time and travel commitment:
  • The Board meets four times per year. You must be willing to participate in scheduled Board meetings. (This is a volunteer position; travel expenses to attend Board meetings are thus covered by Mitacs.)
  • Board members are expected to join at least one Committee.
  • Willingness to travel within Canada for Board meetings.
  • Board members commit up to eight to twelve hours per Board meeting cycle.

ESSENTIAL SKILLS:

• Experience in corporate governance in for-profit or not-for-profit corporations.
• Creative, effective, resourceful problem solver and collaborator able to enhance Mitacs’s contribution to innovation and productivity in Canada.
• Understanding of research and innovation and its contribution to economic growth and social progress.
• To enhance the Board’s overall skills matrix, Mitacs is seeking candidates with backgrounds in the following areas: government, post-secondary institution expertise at the senior level, private sector expertise at the senior level, and/or finance. French language proficiency is an asset.

Mitacs is a signatory to the Government of Canada’s 50 – 30 Challenge. The goal of the program is to challenge Canadian organizations to increase the representation and inclusion of diverse groups within their workplace while highlighting the benefits of giving all Canadians a seat at the table. The 50 – 30 Challenge asks that organizations aspire to two goals — gender parity (50% women and/or non-binary people) and significant representation (30%) of equity-deserving groups — Racialized, People with disabilities (including invisible and episodic disabilities), 2SLGBTQ+, and/or Indigenous Peoples.

The Board is actively seeking nominees who represent Canada’s diversity and will help us meet the 50 – 30 Challenge.