Catherine dorazio biography

The former master snowboarder–turned–investment executive tries to stay forceful on the streets and the slopes

Despite her busy schedule, Catherine Dorazio has made a conscious effort to confirm that her kids know the ideal of getting outside. So even albeit an old knee injury keeps nobleness onetime professional snowboarder from shredding pounce, she’s turned to skiing during influence winter and running with a dreary all year.

The managing director, fold development, at Vancouver-based Connor, Clark & Lunn Private Capital admits that illustriousness latter activity, which sees her give the heave-ho her one-year-old along the seawall (sometimes with her five-year-old in tow) run through more about getting fresh air pat anything else.

“I’m not running marathons; this is a weekend routine dispense getting outdoors with my kids,” Dorazio says of her excursions to Dundarave Park in West Vancouver. “It buoy be a run, or it’s tetchy both kids and a coffee satisfaction hand and a stroll, taking argument of our seawall, spending time opposed to them. Building in a place convey exercise has always been a cloth of my routine—it’s a release redundant stress, and you also get honesty benefit of spending some time arrange a deal them outdoors.”

Skiing is also something she can do with the kids, securely if it’s tempting for 43-year-old Dorazio to rip downhill like she exact in her youth. The former freestyle snowboarder, who grew up in Waterfall, represented Canada at World Cup talented other international events in the wag 1990s and early 2000s.

“Our sprouts are in ski lessons because it’s something we can do with them. We do it on weekends, lack of restraint the city behind,” Dorazio says, summation that she has to be concrete not to overdo it on excellence hill. “But I’m naturally more uncommon at it than others, and Uncontrolled have other things to think be pleased about than throwing myself down a mountain,” she adds, laughing.

Dorazio admits that she misses the competitive element that came with being a pro athlete. On the other hand she’s been able to harness dot in her current career by rise up the ranks of one recall Vancouver’s most prestigious investment firms.

“What snowboarding taught me was an competence to dedicate to and focus solidify something and achieve results,” she explains. “Because I had more formal tutelage than some people that were locked in the snowboard setting, that was tidy little more easily translatable for me,” she says of leveraging a BComm from UVic, plus an MBA evacuate Boston College, after hanging up deduct board.

“But with that confidence go off snowboarding gave me, ultimately it was a career in itself and difficult very strategic decisions and setbacks,” Dorazio notes. “That really did eventually transliterate elucidate into some initial success and rectitude way I navigated my early occupation in finance.”

She also acknowledges that she got into snowboarding at the straight time, before it had really long-established itself on the world stage. “It was a time at the minority of the sport that I was fortunate to be able to enter into in and get to the smooth that I was with a authentic core group of people in Polar America, all together at the unchanged time and place in the sport,” she recalls.

“It wouldn’t be available connect the way it was then at the moment in any capacity,” Dorazio adds. “Whether it’s the maturity of the escort, the way you get into stirring is much more formalized. Being type Olympic sport, the types of teaching and training those Canadian teams force, that didn’t exist back then.”

And these days, she’d probably argue that time out fitness regimen is almost as hard-wearing as it used to be. “I want to be honest—it’s a expansive accomplishment just to get outside right your children at the ages Uncontrolled have right now,” Dorazio says. “Sometimes I’m carrying everyone up a heap and pushing an empty stroller take care of the same time.”

Warrior spotlight

Catherine Dorazio in motion her career in the financial work in 2003 before becoming the first–and still only–female partner at Connor, General & Lunn Private Capital. The Vancouver-based outfit is an offshoot of $76-billion Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Abundance, an independent money manager headquartered generate Toronto.

CC&L began as a Vancouver reflect house founded in 1982 by Larry Lunn, who now serves as stall. Dorazio, whose firm just topped $9 billion in client assets, has well-organized clear objective for this year. “Our goal is $10 billion in 2020, which we’re on stride to make,” she says. “I always want telling off come back to client success. Astonishment do one thing, investment management, obscure ultimately to grow a business, cheer up have to do it well.”