Volunteer at Heart

Ask what Karin McDonald would consider a satisfying legacy, and the recipient of the Ron Judd Heart of RIMS Award would likely respond to give what she has received.

McDonald was exposed to heart and passion about risk management early on in her career while working with Brian Carmody, a founding father of the Canadian Capital Chapter of the Risk Management

Society (RIMS) Canada. “He acted as a mentor to me,” says McDonald, now director of risk and insurance at Hydro One Networks Inc., where she is responsible for the procurement and administration of insurance, loss prevention and claims management programs.

Carmody’s passion for risk management, coupled with a deep belief in serving the discipline through volunteerism, proved infectious. Twenty-eight years after she began in the cash management department at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) in the 1980s, McDonald is still passionate and still a volunteer.

“I do it hoping to inspire other people and what greater reward than to have been acknowledged by my peers,” she says.

Recipients of Heart of RIMS are nominated by chapters for furthering risk management at the chapter level. For McDonald, that recognition follows her many roles and many years of work on behalf of the Ontario chapter of RIMS (ORIMS).

“Karin’s professional decorum directly promotes the risk management profession and sets a very positive image of the Ontario chapter and RIMS amongst its membership, as well as the outside community,” notes one comment in the nomination submission. “I have worked with a number of strong leaders in the past, and rarely have I met someone that I have such uncontrived respect for,” adds another.

“It just touched me beyond words,” McDonald says. “You do what you’re very passionate about. I do it for my own personal reasons, not expecting to receive anything for it.”

List McDonald’s service to ORIMS and the list quickly grows long: president, 2002-2003; social director, 2005-2010; co-chair of industry and exhibit, RIMS Canada Conference, 2008; and co-chair, ORIMS 50th Anniversary Committee, Gala Celebration, 2010. Today, McDonald is involved at the RIMS national level, serving on the RIMS Canada Council and as chair of the council’s National Conference Committee. She is also shadowing the secretary position on the council, a position she will assume in 2014.

LONG-TERM VALUE

McDonald touts the benefits of volunteering, both for the person specifically and for risk management generally. “To me, I think you get far more out of volunteering than anyone ever puts into it,” she says.

McDonald notes she has met many, many people, both north and south of the border, as part of her involvement in RIMS. “When you call upon people and they see you in a volunteer role, they often share more information with you,” she says. “You’re investing in your future.”

Consider the value of volunteering at the registration desk for an event, having an opportunity to meet and chat with all attendees. Consider also that planning an event is not solely about the resulting lunch, meeting, conference or gala. Bringing an event to fruition demands many things: chairing meetings; holding board members and vendors accountable; budgeting; taking part in contract negotiations; project management; problem solving; recruiting; fundraising for charities; and building sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities, to name a few.

The value in volunteering is a message McDonald would like to send to all, but perhaps especially to young people. “It’s easy for people who have been around forever to step up to the plate; it’s hard to sell to the young ones coming up that volunteering to advance your career is an important step.”

That may be why McDonald works toward mentoring and onboarding new chapter, board and RIMS Canada Council volunteers and members, as well as takes on risk management co-op students through work experience programs.

LEARNING CURVE

McDonald gained plenty of her own experience while working with Carmody. When she first started, she says, “I had no experience. I was completely green – didn’t know anything about insurance.”

That all changed under Carmody’s tutelage. He “loved to sit there and draw diagrams and dummy (risk management) down and show me,” she recalls.

“He would spend hours explaining things in detail so that I understood it.”

The more McDonald got involved and the more she learned, the more Carmody would give her, including full authority. That taught her to move more cautiously – not to go “gang-busters” just because she could – and to consider everything. “Sometimes the short-term solutions seem right, but when you look at it in totality, you say, ‘Hmm, no we can’t do that,'” McDonald says. “I really attribute a lot of successes to my early days, to the way I was mentored and taught.”

McDonald eventually was responsible for managing domestic coverages at AECL. She left the organization in 1990 amidst massive layoffs.

McDonald then took on the task of director of risk management for Minto Developments, a landlord and land development company with home construction, light industrial, office towers and thousands of rental properties.

As would be expected, the risk portfolio at Minto was completely different than that at AECL. The focus shifted to include managing a larger claims portfolio, ranging from construction losses to residential claims.

This breadth served to further enhance McDonald’s claims understanding. “I had to figure out how to deal with this, and we had different groups that needed to be dealt with in different ways,” she says.

In December 1999, McDonald moved again, this time to Toronto for her current position at Hydro One. “It’s not atomic energy and it’s not a real estate company, but we do have a lot of customers,” she says, all of whom have different needs and must be treated fairly in a consistent manner.

Risk management is a lot of different things, too, and is ever-changing. McDonald says she expects her risk management education will continue, pointing out that the entreprise risk management group recently joined Hydro One’s treasury and risk department.

“Having both enterprise and operational risk groups within one department – and communicating together – I think is going to provide some synergies, and certainly it’s going to broaden my knowledge of enterprise risk management.”

Then there are considerations around emerging areas, such as cyber and climate change.

“A lot of insurers are still in the infancy stages of product development, and are not sure where they’re going to take it, what the losses might be. So it’s an area that’s much under development, both from an organizational perspective, as well as an industry perspective in their responses on how to deal with it,” she says of the former. With regard to the latter, “as our environment changes, as weather changes, we become more technology-driven and products need to be developed,” McDonald adds.

Ensuring that risk is always part of the conversation – whatever the particular risk or department involved – stems from the C-Suite, McDonald says. “For it to work and grow, you need to have the buy-in at the most senior level of the corporation,” she emphasizes.

McDonald will do her part to keep the risk management conversation going through volunteering at the RIMS national level and espousing the benefits of getting involved. “I’m still learning new things after all of this time,” she says.

What would Karin McDonald consider a satisfying legacy?

To inspire, to teach and to hear someone else say, “I’m in it, I’m in it for the right reasons and I love what I do.”