Joanna Rotenberg

Success and serendipity

Joanna Rotenberg always thought she'd be a lawyer. The aptitude tests she took as a teenager confirmed it, and even her high school science teacher predicted it. But, says Rotenberg, "It's amazing where fate can take you, just based on who you sit beside in a library."

As Rotenberg studied for her LSAT at the University of Western Ontario, she made some friends who were applying for the JD/MBA at UofT. She didn't know the first thing about business, but liked the idea of the dual degree. "If you think about it," she says, "it's just one more year for an extra degree. So it feels like a no-brainer."

Today, at 34, Rotenberg is senior vice- president in the strategic management office at BMO Financial, and says that decision is possibly the best one she's ever made. "The network, as well as the skills you get, are well worth that extra year of time," she enthuses.

Rotenberg's epiphany, as she describes it, came while she was summering at a law firm in New York.  A discussion about a pending telecom asset purchase lit a spark that changed her life. She realized, she says, that she didn't want to execute deals - she wanted to invent them. Rotenberg returned to Toronto with a new focus, and has been on the business end ever since.

She joined McKinsey and Company after graduation, eventually made partner, and jumped to BMO last July. There, she strategizes deals and executes them, including the group's recent purchase of a Wisconsin bank for $4.1 billion in stock.

"I think it was a huge catalyst in my success," Rotenberg says of the JD/MBA program.  "It paid back so many times in dividends that I can't even count."

By Karen Gross

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