EY Alumni Spotlight: Chana Martineau - EY Edmonton, 2004-18

Chana Martineau originally turned down the invitation to join EY. Three times. But when she finally joined the firm, she started a journey that led her to her dream role as CEO of the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation (AIOC). We had the opportunity to talk to this dynamic and empathetic leader about her time with EY, the AIOC’s mission of levelling the financial playing field for Indigenous Peoples, and her own cherished Indigenous heritage and how it’s informed her life, both personally and professionally.

In brief

• Chana Martineau originally turned down the invitation to join EY three times before she accepted. And she stayed with the firm for 14 years.
• It took Chana a long time to embrace her Indigenous heritage in the workplace. Now she’s very comfortable with her authentic self in all spaces.

Tell us about your career at EY and what is the most valuable lesson you learned while you were working at EY?

When I was at EY, I often said that I was paid to talk to interesting people about what they do for a living and how we could help them. I’m passionate about helping people and businesses succeed. Part of my success at EY was helping high-performing individuals and teams in our clients, and in the firm, achieve their goals and be successful. The firm has a myriad of tools to help you be almost an executive coach, both to our professionals and our clients. I've made lifelong friends in both groups.

I really had three different careers during my time at EY, and I also took some time to have a couple of children. I had a broad range of diverse companies and teams I worked with and that kept my mind happy. I love to problem-solve and I was always working on something different and often with different teams.

My first career experiences with EY were in the oil boom — working with highly transactional, fast-growth companies and private equity coming to Alberta to invest. It was just an amazing time.

The next segment was to build out our large corporate footprint. The Edmonton office was very small and didn't have presence with our large corporate accounts, so I got to build that out.

The third leg was when I came back after maternity leave and was asked  to build out the public sector practice. We were starting from ground zero in Alberta at that point. We were sixth or seventh in revenue spend with the Alberta Government and we moved from last to first in less than four years. It was an amazing opportunity. This challenge of building up a practice, building teams and learning a whole new segment of the market was invigorating!

I also got to work on the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program, which I absolutely loved. And I led the Professional Women’s Network in Edmonton over almost all of my years at EY since I’m really passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) and helping women succeed.

Were there any particular lessons you learned about yourself during that time?

So many!

EY was an environment where I could be at my best. It was dynamic and fast paced. You had to be able to take in a lot of information and translate that easily. I learned that I did this really well and I was able to thrive.

I was recognized as a strong and engaging leader, and building high-performing teams was becoming a theme in my career. I became more aware that I could bring people together for pursuit teams at EY, which mirrored my sports passion outside of work. I continued building high-performance teams inside and outside the boardroom after my time at EY.

Tell us about your sporting life.

Flexible work was just coming to the forefront when I joined the firm and I was a natural advocate for that. At that time, we typically thought of work-life balance for people who had children. I was a young, 30-something female who didn’t have children, but I was a high-performance athlete. I was curling at the national and international levels. Our Edmonton Office Managing Partner, Aroon Sequeira, really supported that — and so did my clients — which was amazing.

I took every Friday afternoon off and every other full Friday, from September to early February, so I could train and compete. We were on the road a lot and I’d often take calls from wherever I was

The firm really supported my flexible work arrangements. It’s a really great example that flexibility isn’t just about child care or elder care — it’s also about pursuing your dreams, whatever they may be.

Who stood out to you as a mentor or influence during your time at EY?

As I mentioned before, Aroon Sequeira has been an amazing influence. Not just for me, but I think for everyone who worked with him at EY. He took over as the Managing Partner of the Edmonton office at a really difficult time. He really taught me to never assume, always ask questions and always be humble. He really took people and saw their best and tried to align them with where their passions were. He has a passion for finding people’s superpowers and helping them achieve great heights, and he’s a champion for DE&I.

And then there are the peer mentorships. [Current EY Calgary Managing Partner] Alison Jackson is definitely at the top of that list. And then there’s Meghan Harris-Ngae, Heidi Staub, Carla Madra and Kavita Sharma. What a special group of women! We’ve held each other up over the years and we’ll always be friends. This is an amazingly strong group of women to work with, and I count on them still.

Shifting gears now, tell us about your current role. How is the AIOC building a better world for Indigenous communities, and what are your goals to help them achieve that?

We’re a Crown corporation created by the Alberta Government to help Indigenous communities access capital for large-scale, economically transformative projects. Indigenous Peoples think in terms of how decisions today will impact seven generations into the future. Think about how different that is from our typical quarterly perspective and short-term shareholder results.

There are a number of projects that have a renewable energy focus — power plants, solar facilities, equity-share ownership — that can actually transform their communities. When you think about the underrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples through education and in the labour market and the business community, it’s amazing what this can do for them.

I want to highlight the Willow Lake Métis group. They had no home. They had no land. And within one year of their first project realization, they had sustainable revenue, so they can now buy land and establish a home. And when you think about what home brings you — home is a sense of belonging, it’s security, it’s a fundamental need.

The work the AIOC does is an amazing marriage of my finance career and my Indigenous heritage. I'd been looking for something that would bring these parts of me together and I have found it with the AIOC. It’s like someone took my last 30 years of experience in finance and at EY and custom-built me a job. All my public sector knowledge, all my large corporate knowledge, working with major capital projects and my banking career have allowed me to pursue my passion, which is really helping Indigenous Peoples achieve equality, parity and so much more. 

Talk to us about your Indigenous heritage.

I am Treaty Cree from Frog Lake First Nation. I grew up with a lot of Indigenous culture, but I didn’t realize the way I grew up was an Indigenous way of life. It was just how the Martineau family lived. I’m proud of my family heritage: there's a Martineau area in Cold Lake, Alberta and a Martineau River named after my family. 

How do you see yourself advancing the AIOC? How are you going to help AIOC achieve its goals as an entity?

I think any leadership role is to help the team be the best they can be. I feel like I need to bring all my experiences to this team — we have a very strong group of professionals. I intend  to build on, engage and promote the Indigenous culture in this organization and make sure we don't lose that Indigenous identity as we go about this business.

I am a very inclusive, collaborative leader. This style has been described as servant leadership, and it is an innately Indigenous way that I didn’t fully appreciate earlier in my career. It’s important for people to know you can be successful in that collaborative and inclusive manner.

Tell us about your most rewarding career moments.

There have been a lot! Within EY, I was so thrilled to see Karen Fischer join the partnership and other people I’ve mentored also be successful. I’ve been fortunate to work with many amazing female leaders from our clients and our firm. My time at EY was a great experience. For me, my CEO role at AIOC is a dream come true and I believe the best is yet come. 

You’ve said it took a long time before you felt free to embrace your Indigenous heritage and be your authentic self at work. But you’ve since been instrumental in creating an environment to empower everyone to feel a sense of belonging. What advice would you give younger professionals starting their careers who face similar barriers so they can feel free to bring their true selves to everything they do?

I didn’t talk about my heritage much earlier in my career. At my core, I am Indigenous, and at the same time I've felt incredibly privileged to have had the life I’ve had. My experience in the world is very different because of the way I look, compared to family who look “more Indigenous” or have grown up on reserves or in small towns. They’ve had many very racist and terrible experiences. I have been so privileged with the access to education and other experiences I’ve had.

I never felt allowed to claim my heritage, and maybe nor should I because I haven’t experienced the racism others have. Somehow now I feel it’s finally okay to celebrate my Indigenous heritage and culture.

I've learned a lot along the way. For advice, I would say: You don’t have to be something you’re not. I can't help being the collaborative person I am. Yet I’m someone who gets things done. I  always lead with relationships, which is a very Indigenous way of going about business and life. And you can be successful with those approaches in any environment, but you have to be true to yourself. One of my lessons would be to try to celebrate that. You need to operate in the world you’re in, but in a way that is uniquely yours. You have to believe if you have positive intent that you can get there. Sometimes it’s okay to say goodbye to environments when your time is done and when its time to make a change.

When you think about how you would show up in 2004, for example, vs. how you may show up now — like entering a room or meeting someone new — is there anything specific that’s different that people can learn from? How do you convey to people your authenticity?

I think I try less now. I used to try harder to fit in. I was hyper-aware of fitting in — with the right clothes, trying to be very polished — to the extreme. And now I take a step back to be more at peace with who I am, and not to feel so anxious about fitting in or wondering if I might say the wrong thing.

The financial services sector should provide a level playing field not only for its professionals, but also for its customers. How does AIOC reduce barriers in terms of how Indigenous People access capital or engage with potential business partners? 

Many of our corporate partners and potential partners have been moved by the residential school discoveries, and awareness of how tragic the experience of Indigenous Peoples has been. There are many corporations that want to partner with Indigenous groups but struggle with how to do that well. The AIOC can help. Many corporate groups will say, “We’re thinking about structuring a deal this way, how would that look from your perspective?” We work in lockstep with all the parties — the Indigenous groups, the corporate groups and the banks — to bring those ideas to fruition.

What advice would you give the younger you when you were setting out on your career journey?

That’s so interesting. It's a hard question. I think it’s two things. Be open to diverse possibilities. In my younger career, I was very track oriented and structured. My brother actually stopped me at one point and said, “You don’t have to race up the corporate ladder. You’ll get there.” Set your intentions and have faith in what turns out.

I could have never imagined my roles at EY and Canadian Western Bank and AIOC. Be open to possibilities, and set out to leave things better than the way you find  them. When you set such positive intentions in the world, good things come back to you.