Wendy Kelley

WENDY KELLEY specializes in advising boards, management and in-house counsel on legal and reputational risk management and corporate preparedness, particularly in turnaround situations. She is a senior legal executive with extensive experience in analyzing, identifying and managing complex multi-faceted legal risks and crisis within a corporation and implementing legal risk and governance processes and procedures that enhance corporate value.

Recently she completed a mandate to assist Biovail Corporation – Canada’s largest publicly traded pharmaceutical company (NYSE:TSX) in resolving its legal and reputational issues, where she resolved major civil and criminal actions, and implemented a compliance program as well as “best practices” in corporate governance. She was also a member of the senior management team in the strategic change. Those two major initiatives were instrumental in Biovail winning two proxy contests and later merging with a U.S. pharmaceutical company, where the stock rose 70%.

Prior to Biovail, Wendy was VP, Associate General Counsel & Chief Reputation Risk Officer for BMO Financial Group (NYSE:TSX). Wendy oversaw enterprise-wide corporate governance, regulatory relations, legal & reputational risk management and all securities litigation and regulatory issues. Throughout which, she developed an expertise in advising on processes and procedures around risk, compliance and audit to mitigate legal risks.

Wendy began her career as a commercial litigator at Torys LLP and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program, Queen’s University Faculty of Law, and a member in good standing of the Law Societies of Ontario and Saskatchewan.

She is a frequent guest speaker at conferences and seminars on Corporate Governance, Reputational Risk, and litigation crisis management.