Dominic Schaefer/Vancity
Fresh out of business school with an MBA in strategic management, Christine Bergeron embarked on a career that harnessed the power of finance as a force for social good. As a young venture capitalist in the early 2000s, Ms. Bergeron was at the vanguard of cleantech, a branch of investing that supports technologies aimed at reducing negative environmental impacts, including climate change.
Two decades later, she left her mark as an inaugural member of the United Nations board that oversees the global banking system’s progress in decarbonizing lending and investment portfolios.
On Feb. 13, in Vancouver, the visionary business leader died of glioblastoma. She was 51.
“I’ve spent my career working with organizations that put people first, leading companies that are building sustainable communities and allocating capital to influence positive change,” Ms. Bergeron wrote in an undated last post on LinkedIn.
She was eulogized as a brilliant strategist, an inspiring leader, a collaborative board member and a powerful role model for prioritizing both family and work. She was a dancer, hiker, soccer player, nature lover and, according to her family, a “fiercely proud mother” to 15-year-old Everett and 13-year-old Theo.
Greg Sullivan, a colleague from Ms. Bergeron’s venture capital days, vividly recalls their wild off-road car ride through bushes to get to a crucial meeting in Silicon Valley. He was at the wheel stuck in traffic when Ms. Bergeron brandished a map and informed him she had found a way. They made it with one minute to spare.
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Ms. Bergeron was a change maker. The organizations she led as chief executive officer – Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) and real estate developer Concert Properties Ltd. – both operate with a governance mandate to have a positive environmental, social and community impact while sustaining profitability.
Eric Usher, head of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), spoke of her influential role on the Principles for Responsible Banking Board.
“As CEO of Vancity, Christine led an organization that became a guiding light for the responsible banking community. She understood that finance must have purpose and that banking is about community, economic development and meeting the needs of everyday people,” he said in an online tribute. Ms. Bergeron, who also served on the UNEP FI’s leadership council, was a member of the organization’s banking board from 2020 to 2023.
By 2025, more than 350 major banks representing 50 per cent of global banking assets had committed to measuring and managing the impact of their financing decisions on people, society and the planet, the UNEP FI said in a progress report, and banking practices were shifting.
“Collectively, we make thousands of decisions every day about who and what gets financed and…in aggregate, these decisions really do determine the economy of the future,” Ms. Bergeron said at a responsible banking roundtable in 2023.
For all her considerable accomplishments, “Christine was so well-grounded and so unpretentious,” said her husband, Richard Holt, an environmental engineer. “While running these big companies and being on 20 different boards in her career, she was also the volunteer class parent responsible for being the go-between for all the parents and the teachers.” She made a point, as well, of supporting other working parents in the organizations she led.
Richard Holt, Christine Bergeron, and their sons, Everett and Theo.Supplied
Friend and fellow director Jill Earthy said Ms. Bergeron would arrive at board meetings by bicycle, hair a little windblown, change her shoes and get down to business. “She was unapologetically authentic,” Ms. Earthy said.
As a director, Ms. Bergeron was also masterful at listening to all points of view and building consensus, said Ms. Earthy, who served on a number of not-for-profit boards with her. They worked together at InBC Investment Corp. when Ms. Earthy was CEO and Ms. Bergeron chaired the board of the Crown corporation, which invests in businesses and funds that can provide returns to the province while contributing positive economic, social and environmental impacts.
Ms. Bergeron’s family was overwhelmed by the hundreds of tributes from former colleagues and employees who characterized Ms. Bergeron as a rare leader who inspired people to greater heights, her brother Marc Bergeron said.
Before accepting the CEO roles at Vancity in 2021 and Concert Properties in 2023, Ms. Bergeron consulted her sons and husband about whether they would be okay with the greater demands on her time.
“We said ‘yeah, go for it.’ We were so proud of her. Ultimately, there were more demands on her time but she was just so efficient, she could get so much work done that she was almost always home for dinner and she often saw the kids’ soccer games,” Mr. Holt said.
Her siblings laughingly recalled that they had no choice but to be efficient. Raised in Cornwall, Ont., Lianne, Marc, Christine, Eric, Monique and Michelle shared one bathroom. There were group sandwich-making sessions in the evenings so they could grab their food and go in the mornings. The “Bergeron bus,” a gigantic brown and beige Dodge van, was a familiar sight as it criss-crossed town to hockey rinks, soccer fields, dance class, piano lessons. The hockey players were given three minutes to get into their gear.
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Born in Cornwall on Oct. 15, 1974, Christine was the third child of Ronald and Marilyn Bergeron (née Battista). With a francophone father and an anglophone mother, the children grew up fluently bilingual and attended French schools. Ronald, an electrical engineer, and Marilyn, a former physiotherapist, owned an electrical contracting firm called Bergeron Electric. In addition to doing volunteer work in the community, the Bergeron brothers and sisters put in a shift at the family business every Friday after school. It was a happy, chaotic childhood.
“Christine was in the middle, very smart, strong but quiet,” Lianne said. She excelled at everything she took on, although once wanted to quit hockey camp when she found she was the only girl and had to change in a broom closet. In an interview last year with the hometown paper, Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, Christine said her parents persuaded her to give it one more day. She was 12. “I went the second day and then of course I just kept going. It forced you beyond what you thought was a problem.” It was a valuable lesson.
She played centre midfield in soccer. “That was Christine to a T,” Monique said at a recent celebration of life for Ms. Bergeron. “She liked to control the field and help everyone win.” That was Christine’s management style as well, Michelle added. “She was powerful without being loud.”
Ms. Bergeron studied sociology at the University of Guelph before moving to Vancouver for her MBA at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. She started her career at Chrysalix Energy as part of a team that pioneered cleantech investing at a time when the emerging sector had difficulty qualifying for loans from major lenders.
Chrysalix co-founder Wal van Lierop credited Ms. Bergeron with helping build the company into an internationally respected venture capital firm. Ms. Bergeron went on to co-found a hedge fund with Mr. Sullivan before joining Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, in 2011.
Ms. Bergeron engendered enormous respect at Vancity because of how she treated people, said Nez Aquino, who served as Ms. Bergeron’s chief risk officer. “The organization really wanted to deliver for her.” She was more interested in ideas than titles and brought a sharp intelligence to every conversation whether you were a branch teller or a chief financial officer, Ms. Aquino said.
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She was collaborative “and crazy smart,” said John Dooling, CFO and interim CEO at Vancouver-based Concert Properties, which is owned by unions and pension funds. The business already “had a licence” to do good because of its ownership structure, but Ms. Bergeron took it to the next level. ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles were factored into every business decision. With affordable housing, for instance, “you’d consider it at the outset of a project and find a way to make it work because it was the right thing to do versus doing it so you could get financing.”
Ms. Bergeron did have some critics. Private-sector business leaders asked if she expected them to trade off returns for “this responsible stuff.” Business wasn’t a charity, they’d say.
Ms. Bergeron talked about the pushback in a 2022 speech at a forum organized by Payments Canada. “Of course business has to be profitable to be successful…but I have always questioned the basic premise that maximizing returns matters above all else. My perspective is that a truly successful business ensures that the community around it is also thriving,” said Ms. Bergeron, who led Vancity to record profits while delivering on its social justice agenda.
The world’s major banks were making progress in addressing global warming, but it was a long road to net zero emissions and the world had already suffered a series of catastrophic extreme climate events, she said in her keynote address at the responsible banking roundtable. “People need help from us today,” she said.
In June, 2021, more than 600 British Columbians died in a heat wave. Vancity sent teams into communities to help find remedies. The credit union provided $5-million to help non-profit housing providers retrofit their buildings and supported First Nations initiatives to install energy efficient heat pumps that cool buildings in the summer and heat them in the winter.
Ms. Bergeron was an exceptional leader, creative, innovative and respected for her work nationally and internationally, said Anita Braha, who was board chair during Ms. Bergeron’s tenure as CEO. She made a tremendous impact.
“Her legacy lives on through the companies she strengthened, the people she mentored and the organizations she led,” Mr. van Lierop, of Chrysalix, wrote in an online tribute.
After her diagnosis in June, 2024, Ms. Bergeron enjoyed a period of relatively good health. “This allowed us to throw a huge bash for her 50th birthday,” Mr. Holt said at the celebration of life. Ms. Bergeron was totally in her element that night. “She loved fun, she loved dancing, she loved music,” Ms. Earthy said.
Ms. Bergeron leaves her husband, sons and parents, as well as her siblings and their families. She also leaves a legion of bereft friends and colleagues.
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