Most McGill graduates agree on one thing – that the years they spent at the University had a major impact on their lives. Certainly, Josée Goulet, MBA’90, and Jean-Charles Caty, BCom’63, feel that way – and they want to help French-speaking students from Quebec and other parts of Canada have life-changing experiences of their own at McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management.
In 1987, Goulet was working as a young electronics engineer at Bell Canada when she decided to start work on an MBA at McGill.
“My MBA, particularly the strategy and marketing courses, were a perfect preparation for the changes underway at Bell Canada, which lost its monopoly in 1992. Adding competition to our business meant that customer service became strategically vital,” says Goulet, who helped introduce cell phones to Canada and played a key role as her company shifted its focus to the internet.
An entire generation separates Goulet from Caty, who began studying management at McGill in 1959. The son of a mining engineer from Montreal, he grew up in a small village in northeastern Ontario and moved to Montreal when he was 13 to study at Collège Mont-Saint-Louis. “Students at McGill came from all over America and Europe,” he says. “I met my best friends there, who went on to become doctors, scientists, and nuclear engineers.”
Caty recalls being deeply influenced by an economics course taught by F. Cyril James, a London School of Economics graduate who was also the University’s principal.
“I was lucky to study at a time when we were given a lot of freedom to do what we wanted, as long as we passed our exams,” says Caty.
He went on to a long career in the investment industry, including a 28-year stint at RBC Dominion Securities where he earned a position on the executive committee and was responsible for its equity division. He chaired the board of governors for the Toronto Stock Exchange from 1989 to 1991 and was president and CEO of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada from 1991 to 1995. “I have always given back to McGill. I owed them that, and I felt fortunate to be in a position to contribute.”
“I grew up in Drummondville,” says Goulet, “and chose McGill over HEC because of the opportunity to improve her English. “I was working as an engineer and was lucky to be allowed to study part-time so I could do the program over three years.”
Goulet remembers one course in particular, a class on organizational development, that left its mark on her. “Not many of the other students had professional experience, so they didn’t like the course as much as I did. But I was working at Bell, so it opened my mind to the importance of teamwork, and therefore to human resources. It has helped me through my whole career.”
“McGill has built its reputation abroad and in the United States, but I think we need to get more Quebecers to take advantage of it.”
Josée Goulet
After 20 years at Bell, Goulet launched her own consulting firm, focusing on strategy and marketing, but she never lost touch with McGill—especially after she and her husband, the entrepreneur Jean-Guy Goulet, decided to focus their philanthropic efforts on education.
“I started out as a mentor [for McGill students], then I created scholarships, and now I’m doing something more structural.” In May, Goulet took on a new role for her alma mater, succeeding Ram Panda, MEng’71, MBA’77, as the lead planned giving ambassador for McGill’s Bequests and Planned Gifts unit.
Most of Caty’s gifts to McGill focus on supporting students at Desautels, including an internship award that offers students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience outside their classes. Other gifts have resulted in the Jean Charles Caty Entrance Bursaries, which provide support for French-speaking Canadians studying at Desautels.
“Ten years ago, I made up my mind to support students. At first, I wanted to support French speakers from rural areas like me, but it was hard to determine the criteria, so we changed it to include all French-speaking minorities in Canada.”
Goulet says McGill has long contributed to Quebec’s international reputation. “McGill has built its reputation abroad and in the United States, but I think we need to get more Quebecers to take advantage of it. We’re going to need scholarships specifically for Quebec students.” That was the reasoning behind the creation of the Josée Goulet MBA Fellowships, which will prioritize Quebec students.
Caty agrees it’s essential to support students this way. “I think that in Canada, in general, governments are mistreating their universities, which are all underfunded. The result is that education is becoming more and more expensive, even in Quebec.”
Caty believes that McGill must remain committed to international openness. “What McGill does for Quebec is huge. The Université de Montréal also plays a role at this level, but McGill has been doing it for much longer. McGill has also evolved considerably in terms of language. Everything is now translated and bilingual. It’s wonderful.”
