Interview: Janet Graham’s Babes on Bay Street (VIDEO)
There was a time in my early adulthood when being called a “babe” seemed, well, how shall I say, contrary to the woman I was trying to become: a woman who wanted to be taken seriously in business. But not anymore. Not since I met Janet Graham, author of Babes on Bay Street, who changed my attitude.
Graham spent 15 years on Toronto’s Bay Street, primarily at CIBC where she became one of the first female Vice Presidents, and the first female lender to achieve this status. In 1996, after a stint in investment banking at Wood Gundy, she decided to strike it out on her own and started her own business, focused on real estate finance.
When Janet left Bay Street, her life was transformed. She bought and renovated a house, and became a dog owner and a coach. She also got married and took on the role of a mother to four children. Today, she spends much of her time as a Corporate Director/Trustee on the boards of the publicly-traded entity, Leisureworld Senior Care Corporation, as well as the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation.
All along, churning inside of her was a desire to tell the stories of the “Babes on Bay Street” — other successful women who have experienced (and survived) life on Toronto’s answer to Wall Street. So, she launched a blog called babesonbaystreet.com about the subject — and wrote a book of the same name.
I invite you to watch my interview on Extraordinary Women TV with Janet Graham, author of Babes on Bay Street, about the importance of telling these stories, and why she doesn’t mind being called a “babe.”
