Karen Sheriff
President and Chief Executive Officer, Bell Aliant

Karen Sheriff was appointed President and CEO of Bell Aliant in November 2008, after serving as Chief Operating Officer since July 2008.

Taking over in an aggressively competitive environment, Ms. Sheriff initiated a plan of corporate transformation and strategic priority-setting. This resulted in the company being recognized by the Financial Post in 2010 as the top performing Canadian telco based on a three year return to investors.

Ms. Sheriff has led Bell Aliant in its game-changing fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network build, making Bell Aliant the first company in Canada to cover an entire city with FTTH. Under her leadership, the company plans to pass more than 600,000 homes and businesses with its future-proof FibreOP™ technology by the end of 2012.  In 2010, Ms. Sheriff also led the company through its conversion back to a corporation from one of the largest income trusts in Canada.

Before joining Bell Aliant, Ms. Sheriff was President of Small and Medium Business with Bell Canada. Prior to this she was Chief Marketing Officer for Bell Canada, a role she moved into shortly after joining Bell Canada in May 1999 as Senior Vice President of Product Management and Development.

Before joining Bell, Ms. Sheriff was responsible for corporate marketing and branding at Ameritech Inc. She also held a variety of assignments with Ameritech and United Airlines, where she began her career.

Ms. Sheriff is a Director of Bell Aliant Inc., Bell Aliant Regional Communications Inc., and Bell Aliant Preferred Equity Inc. and a past director of Aliant Inc. (from 2004) and Teknion Corporation. She is also the current Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art and an active member of the New Brunswick Business Council.

Ms. Sheriff was recognized as one of Atlantic Canada’s Top 50 CEOs by Atlantic Business Magazine. In addition, she has been named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women three times and in 2007, she was named to the Women’s Executive Network (WXN) Top 100 Women Hall of Fame.

Ms. Sheriff holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, economics and mathematics, from Washington University in St. Louis (1979) and a master’s degree in business administration, with concentrations in Marketing and Finance, from the University of Chicago (1984).

She maintains a residence in both Toronto, Ontario and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

May 2011

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