Five senior women in Canadian mortgage finance gathered for a Canadian Mortgage Professional roundtable to examine why women hold only 25 percent of C-suite positions and four percent of CEO roles despite making up 45 percent of the management pipeline. Representatives from Haventree Bank, MCAN Home Mortgage, First National Financial, Sherwood Mortgage Group, and EQ Bank spoke candidly about retention, mentorship, personal brand, authentic leadership, and the early conditioning that shapes professional confidence for decades.
Women are well represented in middle and senior management in Canadian mortgage finance but consistently lose ground as they move toward the top. Elena Robinson, senior leader at First National Financial LP, noted that four of her six senior managers are female and her residential department has 60 percent women in senior leadership, yet the C-suite remains the exception. "There's been progress, absolutely. But the level that hasn't shown representation is the C-suite," Robinson said. Leanne Conroy, senior leader at MCAN Home Mortgage, pointed to projections showing full boardroom gender parity will not arrive until 2129, a 103-year gap. "I thought, that's only three years away. Then I looked again. It's unacceptable," Conroy said.
A small number of firms have achieved internal leadership parity. At EQ Bank's Personal Lending division, two of four executives are women. At Haventree Bank, Line Allaire, CPA, CA, vice president of operations and client experience, reports to a female CEO within an executive team that has reached parity. Allaire drew a direct line from diversity to results: "Having women in leadership is good for business. The more diversity you have, the better organizations perform. We can do the job. We just need the opportunities to get there." Zamina Walji, executive of Personal Lending at EQ Bank, added there is "a genuine appreciation for how women solve problems differently, collaborate differently, and make decisions differently."
Retention, not recruitment, is where most mortgage organizations fall short, and the most vulnerable period is mid-career, when caregiving responsibilities collide with professional ambition. Allaire, who is caring for both children and aging parents, argued that flexibility must be deliberate rather than accidental: "It doesn't mean we don't want to work hard. It just means we need room to figure out how to get the work done and still be present." Walji said organizations "have to get to a point of understanding individuals well enough to create an environment where performance and personal priorities can coexist," whether through scheduling flexibility or stretch assignments tied to what genuinely motivates each person.
Mentorship emerged as the connective tissue of every career story at the roundtable. Conroy argued for deliberate structure rather than informal goodwill: "We need more intentional, thoughtful mentoring." She also named a barrier women create for themselves: "We need mentors and champions. That's just part of it. I don't know why we do this to ourselves. We're afraid to be uncomfortable." Robinson offered a concrete example, describing how she identified an underwriter's potential and guided her toward a sales role. Once placed, the woman immediately began asking what she could do next, exactly the kind of self-driven growth organizations need to retain talent.
Walji described a clear pattern from her own hiring experience showing that the strongest candidates send a researched pitch rather than a standard resume. "When I post a role on LinkedIn, the better candidates send me a pitch. Not just an email. They've done research on the problems I'm facing, and they tell me why they can help. They immediately jump to the top of the process," she said. Walji acknowledged that "women can sometimes not advocate for themselves as much" and stressed that personal brand requires consistency: "Your brand is everything. You define it and shape it, but you have to stay consistent and true to it. You never know when someone is deciding whether to give you a seat at the table based on what you're known for."
The roundtable pushed back firmly on that idea. Michele Steko, leader at Sherwood Mortgage Group, said that if there was pressure to conform, "I may have broken the mould a little, because I've always led with kindness and understanding." Robinson told male colleagues directly: "I lead differently than you. I believe in being kind and empathetic, with open communication and clear expectations. I don't want to conform to how you think I should lead." Walji described building confidence in her own approach over time: "I have focused on being clear, consistent, and outcome-oriented, while ensuring people understand that strong leadership and empathy are not mutually exclusive."
Several panellists traced professional self-doubt directly to childhood messages. Steko cautioned that what girls absorb early is formative: "We were put in a box. There was an expectation and it was safe. If we don't enable and encourage girls at a younger age, they carry that self-doubt into their careers." Allaire connected gender conditioning directly to workplace behaviour, noting that boys and girls are taught different emotional scripts from a young age, and said she is deliberate about dismantling those scripts at home. Robinson shared that when her daughter named a modest career option as a child, she replied: "No, you're going to be the prime minister." Her daughter ran for office at 22. "You start this at home. You encourage them to think bigger, to see more possibilities," Robinson said.