Winnipeg Sun: Balmoral to fete Shell CEO Cook
By LINDSEY WARD, STAFF REPORTER
Mon, June 14, 2004
All-girl school Balmoral Hall is honouring Shell Canada's Linda Cook as the first female CEO of one of the largest integrated oil and gas companies in Canada. Cook will receive the school's second annual Yes She Can award at a special dinner at The Fairmont Winnipeg tonight.
"It was established to celebrate positive role models for Balmoral Hall students while co-currently recognizing exceptional women who have gained national and international prominence in their area of expertise," the school's director of advancement, Tina Alto, said of the honour.
The Yes You Can dinner committee, composed of a board of directors from the school, chose Cook to receive the award -- a commissioned bronze statue of an older female and a student in a Balmoral Hall uniform by Canadian artist Anna Wiechec.
After the presentation, Cook will speak to the crowd of sponsors, student prefects and residence students about key qualities of success and what inspired her to get where she is today.
Alto says Cook is a role model for the students because she has pursued an engineering degree, is only in her mid-40s, and with two children is able to balance a family and a career.
"We encourage the girls at Balmoral Hall to strive to achieve their personal best in all that they do and this woman embodies that," she says.
Cook joined the Shell Oil Company after receiving a degree in petroleum engineering at the University of Kansas. Last August she was appointed president and CEO and a member of the board of directors of Shell Canada Ltd., and this July she'll head to the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. of the Netherlands to become a managing director and a member of the committee of managing directors for the global Royal Dutch/Shell group.
The first Yes She Can award was presented in 2002 to Maureen Kempston Darkes, General Motors group vice-president and president of General Motors in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/WinnipegSun/Business/2004/06/14/498484.html