Hope you all had an egg-cellent Easter holiday break. Easter is the one time of year when it’s good to put all your eggs in one basket and the bunny spared no egg-spense with my basket this year!
On that egg-cited note, I would like to thank the IR club board members for the invitation and members for subsequent election to the Board. Congratulations to all the current board members for winning re-election. I appreciate your confidence in selecting me and putting me forward towards contributing ideas in the best interest of our members.
As a former board member and programming chair of the Canadian Investor Relations Institute (CIRI), I enjoyed interacting with all members, colleagues, IROs, fund managers, analysts and ‘The Young and the Restless’ IR professionals across different sectors.
In retrospect, most of my IR experience gained was from working in the mining sector for a Toronto based small cap that grew over the span of 6-8 years to a large cap. I have currently transitioned into the healthcare sector here in Switzerland. The experiences gathered alongside amazing leaders was definitely exciting and informative on issues of transparency, building trust, commitment, current trends all while staying focused on building a targeted IR strategy and growing the business.
IR has always been an evolving role and the responsibilities have changed dramatically over the last 15 years, with much of that transformation happening since the 2008 financial crisis. What was once a pure communications role within publicly traded companies has evolved rapidly into a position of vast importance, more recently the emergence of virtual IR.
When I moved to Switzerland in 2011, I started my search to network with IR professionals reaching out to IROs, corporates and was pleased to land on irclub.ch. I remember reaching out to the President at the time who was kind enough to invite me to attend an event as a guest. The event was hosted at the lake of Zurich (not a bad spot to network I thought). So there I was, stepping into a place where I met some wonderful people staying in touch with them and with all other professionals I met along the way.
My goal is to provide support, insights to our members especially those new to the field or country and use the member services as a career partner. Few people come right out and say it, but the desire to belong and feel like you’re a part of a community is a basic human need and longing. I look forward to getting started on enhancing the services to our IR club members.
Looking forward to meeting you all in the near future. Stay safe and well.
Hazel