Advisory Council

Zabeen Hirji

Retired Chief HR Officer, Royal Bank of Canada
Executive Advisor, Future of Work, Deloitte

Now in her “purposeful third act”, Zabeen is a strategic advisor to the private and public sector on Leadership, Talent, Culture, and Diversity and Inclusion in the Future of Work.  Prior to this, she had a distinguished career at RBC, spanning senior executive roles, including Chief Human Resources Officer and Chair of the RBC Foundation for 10 years until her retirement in 2017.     As executive Advisor at Deloitte, she advises clients on these issues and leads CHRO20, a forum of CHROs from leading organizations collaborating to build a more skilled, inclusive, and resilient workforce.  As a long-standing champion of inlusive prosperity through unlocking the potential of people, she advises senior levels of government and academia, including the Clerk of the Privy Council for the government of Canada. A long-standing community leader, Zabeen chaired CivicAction until last year and engages both at the grass tops and grass roots.  She is an executive-in-residence at Simon Fraser University Beedie school of business, (she holds an MBA from SFU),  visiting Professor at the Policy Institute at King’s College UK, and a member of the Global Skills Opportunity advisory group for Universities and Colleges Canada.