Title: Senior Executive Assistant

Company: Morrison Hershfield Limited

Location: Toronto, Ont.

For the past 15 years, Heather Martin has been with the consultancy, Morrison Hershfield Limited, and current serves as senior executive assistant. She helped implement the company’s safety and compliance program, which took over two years. With the approval of Senior Management, she also initiated the company’s Corporate Administrative Excellence program, which provides all the tools and resources to elevate every admin in the company. She also initiated the MH Games, since the Pan Am games are going on now in Canada. Ms. Martin really makes the best of everything and wants to make the company as profitable as possible.

As a woman in today’s world, Ms. Martin attributes her success to her outstanding mentors, especially her chief operations officer, Catherine Karakatsanis. She has been working with her for 10 years. Her advice to the younger generation of women is to be brave and discover self-strength,embrace challenges and know there is nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it. She prepared for her career by taking numerous course, webinars and seminars. She is also currently pursuing My PACE Certification. The biggest challenge of her career is that there are few women executives in the engineering sector, but she have been very lucky to have a female executive boss who mentors and encourages her.

One of Ms. Martin’s greatest accomplishment to date is becoming a notary for the Province of Ontario. A very small percent of the Ontario population can become a notary if they are not an attorney. She is very proud that she has proven herself as a respectable citizen and earned that title. She is also the first female executive assistant to be offered stock options in the company.  Ms. Martin also works closely with the company’s E&O Claims specialist overseeing the company’s legal claims and is the company liaison for the Shareholders overseeing the annual share transaction process. Ms. Martin’s professional goals are to complete my PACE Certification and take on a stronger leadership position within the firm.

Morrison Hershfield Is a multi-disciplinary firm that delivers innovative, cost effective and technically sophisticated engineering projects. The firm is committed to developing sustainable solutions that help clients achieve their goals.  Morrison Hershfield was established in 1946 in Toronto when Carson Morrison, Charles Hershfield, Joe Millman and Mark Huggins formed a partnership offering civil, structural and mechanical engineering services. Today the company has an impressive track record of award-winning projects and has systematically grown to over 750 employees in fifteen offices across North America.